My dissertation explores how authoritarian governments use language policy to impact public political trust. Based on a comprehensive examination through survey analyses, experiments, and large-scale text analyses, my research demonstrates that authoritarian governments, such as in China, can use language policy as a political tool to influence citizens’ political attitudes. In particular, language policy empowers the official language used by government representatives, such as street-level bureaucrats, reinforcing their political identities and enhancing citizens' trust in them. Using an original randomized experiment in China based on a new sociolinguistic technique, my research finds robust evidence that listeners hold significantly more trust in bureaucrats who speak the official language than in those who speak dialects, even if the respondent and government representative share the same dialect. Furthermore, my research shows that language not only influences citizens' political trust but also their understanding of political concepts. Using a computer-assisted text analysis of over one million articles from the official newspaper of the dominant party of China from 1946-2003, I indicate a refocusing strategy by which the official discourse about democracy manipulates the meaning of democracy in the Chinese political language without contradicting with the Western democratic values, while simultaneously preserving the authoritarian regime. Drawing on multiple waves of nationally representative surveys from China, my dissertation also identifies distinctive effects of improving listening, speaking, and relative proficiencies of Putonghua on Chinese citizens' political interest, efficacy, pursuit, and institutional-based political trust. This study contributes to political science, and even the entire social science by justifying the important role of language in human social and political lives and turning the research focus from language content to language context.

Background: As rural hospitals in Kentucky face insolvency, stakeholders must assess the value of rural hospitals as well as alternatives such as rural clinics and private physician offices. Objective: To identify the value of attributes of healthcare facilities based on Kentucky’s rural residents’ willingness-to-pay (WTP). Methods: A survey instrument was created and distributed to ten counties in rural Kentucky. A conditional logit model was used to obtain baseline values and then a mixed logit model was used to address heterogeneity among consumers in estimating WTP. WTP values incorporated respondents’ demographic characteristics and their health status from self-reported frequency of use of medical services and distance from these services. Results: The results indicate that on average respondents were willing to pay $69.90 each year for the attribute of a facility that treats patients whether they have health insurance or not, compared to a facility that only accepts patients with private health insurance. Uninsured residents were willing to pay $81.15 for this attribute level. Conclusion: The study suggests that uninsured residents value this attribute level of a facility that grants them access to care. Stakeholders may justify such welfare benefit amounts in support of the establishment or maintenance of such a facility.

In a multi-stage contest known as a two-player race, players display two fundamental behaviors: (1) The laggard will make a last stand in order to avoid the cost of losing; and (2) the player who is ahead will defend his lead if it is threatened. Last stand behavior, in particular, contrasts with previous research where the underdog simply gives up. The distinctive results are achieved by introducing losing penalties and discounting into the racing environment. This framework permits the momentum effect, typically ascribed to the winner of early stages, to be more thoroughly examined. I study the likelihood that the underdog will catch up. I find that neck-and-neck races are common when the losing penalty is large relative to the winning prize, while landslide victories occur when the prize is relatively large. Closed-form solutions are given for the case where players have a common winning prize and losing penalty. Chapter 2 then experimentally examines the prediction of last stand behavior in a multi-battle contest with a winning prize and losing penalty, as well as the contrasting prediction of surrendering in the corresponding contest with no penalty. We find varied evidence in support of these hypotheses in the aggregated data, but more conclusive evidence when scrutinizing individual player behavior. Players tend to adopt one of several strategies. We develop a taxonomy to classify player types and study how the different strategies interact. The last stand and surrendering behaviors have implications for winning margins and the likelihood of an upset, which we investigate. Behaviorally, players are typically more aggressive when they reach a state in the contest by winning rather than by losing. The third and final chapter is a distinct departure from the study of multi-battle contests. Using comprehensive census data for Cornwall County, England, I create a panel dataset that spans six censuses (1841--1891)—possibly the largest panel dataset for Victorian England at present. I present the methodology for linking individuals and families across these censuses. This methodology incorporates recent advances in census linking (including the use of machine learning) and introduces new methods for tracking migration and changes in household composition. I achieve a forward matching rate of 43%. The additional inclusion of marriage and death records could allow for well over 60% of the population to be accounted for from one census to the next. Using this new panel, I investigate the frequency with which sons pursue the same occupations that they observed their fathers doing while growing up. For sons that did not follow in their father's footsteps, I identify some correlates that may have contributed to the change.

The overarching goal of the proposed study is to develop and test a mediated multi-level model of leadership emergence in virtual teams, which aims to better understand not only the processes that result in leadership emergence in self-managed virtual teams, but also how patterns of emergent leadership and team member dispersion can impact team performance in collaborative activities. Virtual teams, which can be defined as "a collection of individuals who are geographically and/or organizationally or otherwise dispersed and who collaborate via communication and information technologies in order to accomplish a specific goal" (Zigurs, 2003), continue to grow in importance as to how organizations function in the 21st century (Hertel, Konradt, & Orlikowski, 2004; Lipnack & Stamps, 2000), and the benefits to companies and individuals are numerous. For employees, virtual teamwork offers flexibility in work-life balance, a decrease in time spent in travel and commuting, and a greater range of work-related opportunities and experiences, particularly for individuals with physical disabilities. For organizations, virtual teams offer cost savings on office space and travel, an increased knowledge base and accelerated organizational learning, access to a wider range of expertise and qualified labor, and increased productivity (Jude-York, Davis, & Wise, 2000; Gillam & Oppenheim, 2006). The model to be tested in the proposed study is predicated on the input--mediator--output--input (IMOI) model proposed by Ilgen, Hollenbeck, Johnson, & Jundt (2005). Also, heeding the recent call for researchers to better incorporate the potential of attribution theory (see Heider, 1958; Kelley, 1973; Weiner, 1986) in explaining organizational behavior (Martinko, Harvey, & Dasborough, 2010), the interpersonal attribution model proposed by Gilbert & Malone (1995) is applied within the IMOI framework for the purposes of this study. At the individual level, the model provides a theoretical linkage between communication behaviors and several outcomes, including team member perceptions/attributions and, ultimately, emergent leadership. At the team level, the model also incorporates the effect of leadership pattern differences across teams, as well as differences in level of virtuality, on overall team performance. Based on the results of an experiment involving 86 four-person teams, it was found that configuration and collocation have significant effects on team performance and peer perceptions of individual team members. A curvilinear relationship was found between the level of dispersion among team members and team performance, such that performance generally decreased as team dispersion increased, yet performance improved at the high end of the dispersion continuum. Collocation also had strong positive effects on perceptions of trust, ability, and leadership emergence. In terms of the relationships between communication-related behaviors and emergent leadership, task-based communications proved to be the strongest predictor of emergent leadership. The use of texting language was positively associated with perceptions of leadership emergence as well. These results have significant practical implications for the design of virtual teams from both a team configuration and a team member skills/individual differences perspective. Several avenues of future research are also discussed.

Dynamic Ionosphere Cubesat Experiment (DICE) is a satellite project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study the ionosphere, more particularly Storm Enhanced Densities (SED) with a payload consisting of plasma diagnostic instrumentation. Three instruments onboard DICE include an Electric Field Probe (EFP), Ion Langmuir Probe (ILP), and Three Axis Magnetometer (TAM). The EFP measures electric elds from 8V and consists of three channels a DC to 40Hz channel, a Floating Potential Probe (FPP), and an spectrographic channel with four bands from 16Hz to 512Hz. The ILP measures plasma densities from 1x104 cm�3 to 2x107 cm�3. The TAM measures magnetic field strength with a range 0.5 Gauss with a sensitivity of 2nT. To achieve desired mission requirements careful selection of instrument requirements and planning of the instrumentation design to achieve mission success. The analog design of each instrument is described in addition to the digital framework required to sample the science data at a 70Hz rate and prepare the data for the Command and Data Handing (C&DH) system. Calibration results are also presented and show fulllment of the mission and instrumentation requirements.

The purpose of this study is to determine the effectiveness of 20 hours of remedial reading instruction as compared with 20 hours of vocabulary instruction on a select group of university freshmen in the Remedial English Program. Three measures of effectiveness used were comprehension, rate, and effective reading rate. The effective reading rate was determined by computing the arithmetic product of level of comprehension and rate of reading. The results indicated that for this particular population, using the materials and instructional techniques described, neither group increased reading rate at the .01 level of significance. The effective reading rate of the reading group increased significantly at the .05 level.

Dans ce travail, on présente une étude des performances d’un capteur solaire plan double passe destiné à la production de l’air chaud permettant d’alimenter et d’améliorer les techniques de séchage. On analyse les cas d’un absorbeur avec et sans ailettes.Les modèles théoriques relatifs au capteur à air double passe avec et sans ailettes ont été établis et résolus numériquement à l’aide de codes élaborés en Fortran pour obtenir une approche globale de leur comportement ou alors à l’aide de Comsol multiphysique pour une étude plus locale. Un dispositif expérimental a été conçu pour valider les résultats obtenus numériquement. Une des particularités du capteur mis au point au laboratoire est relative à son système d'isolation. À cet effet, un matériau local composé de tiges de mil broyées (biosourcé) a été réalisé dans le but d’augmenter les performances du capteur solaire. Les propriétés des matériaux biosourcés utilisés pour l’isolation ont été identifiées à l’aide de moyens existant au laboratoire. Une comparaison des températures mesurées et calculées a permis de valider les deux approches expérimentale et numérique. L’évaluation des performances a montré une forte influence du débit et du rayonnement solaire sur le rendement énergétique du capteur solaire double passe avec ailettes. L’approche globale des bilans thermique au sein du capteur solaire repose principalement sur une bonne connaissance des coefficients d’échange entre le fluide caloporteur et l’absorbeur, un travail d’estimation de ces coefficients d’échange convectif est proposé dans la dernière partie de ce travail.Mots clés : Capteur solaire, double passe, tige de mil broyée, matériau biosourcé, modélisation numérique, expérimentale, performance. / In this work, we present a study of the performance of a double pass flat solar collector for the production of hot air to supply and improve drying techniques. The cases of an absorber with and without fins are analyzed.Theoretical models for the double pass solar collector with and without fins have been established and solved numerically using codes developed in Fortran to obtain a global approach. Comsol Multi-physics code is used for a more local study. An experimental device has been designed to validate the results obtained numerically. One of the particularities of the solar collector developed in the laboratory is its insulation system. For this, a local bio-sourced material composed of crushed millet stems has been developed to increase the performance of the solar collector. The properties of the bio-sourced materials used for insulation were characterized by using available laboratory testing model. A comparison of the measured and calculated temperatures validated both the experimental and numerical approaches. The performance evaluation showed a strong influence of the flow rate and solar radiation on the energy efficiency of the double pass finned solar collector. The global approach to heat balances within the solar collector is mainly based on the heat transfer coefficients between the fluid and the absorber. An estimation of these coefficients is proposed in the last part of this work.Keywords: Solar collector, double pass, millet rod crushed, biosourced material, numerical modeling, experiment, performance.

The goal of this dissertation is to investigate the impact of presentation formats on nonprofessional investors’ impressions of firm performance in the context of digital annual reports. The dissertation implements a three-essay approach. Essay 1 examines whether the effect of positive/negative financial performance news on nonprofessional investors’ impressions of management and firm performance depends on whether the graphical display of that news is vivid or pallid. Conducting a 2 x 2 between-participants experiment with 470 participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk (M-Turk), I find that when the news is positive, presenting graphs vividly allows nonprofessional investors to have a more positive impression of management and firm performance. In contrast, when the news is negative, presenting graphs vividly has little effect on nonprofessional investors’ impressions. The essay informs regulators and practice by demonstrating that vivid graphical website disclosures can significantly affect the behavior of nonprofessional investors when the financial performance news is positive, but the effect is minimal when the news is negative. The essay also contributes to the financial disclosure literature by demonstrating the impact of graphical vividness in presenting financial performance information. Essay 2 conducts a 2 x 2 between-participants experiment with 565 participants from M-Turk. I investigate whether varying the user interactivity and graphical vividness of the presentation of non-financial good news counteracts bad news presented in the audited financial data. I find a positive effect of user interactivity when the graphical presentation of non-financial information is vivid but not when it is pallid. In mediation analyses, I find unexpected results in that user engagement negatively mediates the effects of user interactivity on nonprofessional investors’ perceptions of firm performance and investment-related judgments and decisions. Subsequent analyses indicate that user interactivity alone reduces nonprofessional investors’ satisfaction with digital annual reports, but the joint effect of user interactivity and graphical vividness overcomes this negative effect. These results have implications for designers of digital annual reports, investor groups consuming this information, and regulators concerned about the need for assurance on the (unregulated) non-financial disclosures in annual reports. Essay 3 studies whether using hyperlinks that connect summarized financial graphs with detailed financial statement information reduces the effect of graphical distortions on nonprofessional investors’ perceptions of firm performance. Using 385 participants from M-Turk, I find that while distorted graphs do bias nonprofessional investors’ perceptions of firm performance, the provision and use of hyperlinks to the underlying source information eliminate those effects (i.e., debias). Using the dual-process theory of cognitive processing (Kahneman and Frederick 2002; Evans 2006, 2008), I find that hyperlinks enhance the overriding effect of System 2 processing (i.e., analytical processing) on System 1 processing (i.e., intuitive processing) and indirectly reduce the decision-biasing effect of distorted graphs on nonprofessional investors’ perceptions. The study contributes to standard setting as well as financial reporting practice by providing empirical evidence that the SEC’s policy guidance on implementing hyperlinks has benefits to nonprofessional investors. Second, it contributes to both the literature on distorted graphs and hyperlinks by suggesting hyperlinking to source data as a technique to mitigate the effects of graphical distortions. The findings of the three essays have implications for the designers of digital annual reports, investor groups consuming this information, and regulators concerned about the need to standardize the presentation formats in digital annual reports and potentially require auditor oversight of graphical displays of both financial and non-financial data in these reports.

Phishing is a social engineering attack to deceive and persuade people to divulge private information like usernames and passwords, account details (including bank account details), and social security numbers. Phishers typically utilize e-mail, chat, text messages, or social media. Despite the presence of automatic anti-phishing filters, phishing messages reach online users' inboxes. Understanding the influence of phishing techniques and individual differences on susceptibility and detection accuracy is an important step toward creating comprehensive behavioral and organizational anti-phishing awareness programs. This dissertation seeks to achieve a dual purpose in a series of three essays. Essay 1 seeks to explore the nature of phishing threats that including identifying attack intentions, and psychological and design techniques of phishing attacks. Essay 2 seeks to understand the relative influence of attack techniques and individual phishing experiential traits on people's phishing susceptibility. Essay 3 seeks to understand an individual's cognitive and affective differences that differentiate between an individual's phishing detection accuracy.

This thesis consists of three independent essays, unified by the common theme of the distributional impacts of government. The first paper estimates the price elasticity of demand for pharmaceuticals amongst high-income older people in Australia. It exploits a natural experiment by which some people gained entitlement to a price reduction through the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card (CSHC). The preferred model is a nonlinear Instrumental Variable (IV) difference-in-difference regression, estimated on repeated cross sectional survey data using the Generalised Method of Moments. No significant evidence is found for endogenous card take-up, and so cross-sectional estimates are also considered. Taking all of the results and possible sources of bias into account, the ??headline?? estimate is -0.1, implying that quantity demanded is not highly responsive to price. The elasticity estimate is a key input into the second paper which analyses the distributional impact of the CSHC. I consider the trade-off between moral hazard and risk pooling. There have been few previous attempts internationally to address this trade-off empirically for any health insurance scheme. The utility gain through risk-pooling is found to be negligible. However, the deadweight loss through moral hazard may be considerable. I also use an illustrative model to demonstrate the possible effects of the CSHC on inter-temporal savings behaviour. While the CSHC may induce some people to save, it may have the opposite effect on others. The net impact was not determined. The third paper estimates the Australian public sector wage premium. It includes a detailed critical review of the methods available to address this issue. The chosen approach is a quasi-differenced panel data model, estimated by nonlinear IV, which has many advantages over other methods and has not been used before for this topic. I find a positive average public sector wage premium for both sexes. The best estimates are 10.0% for men and 7.1% for women. The estimate for men is statistically significant (p < 0.04) and borders on significance for women (p < 0.07). No evidence is found to suggest that the public sector has an equalising effect on the wages of its workers.