This dissertation examines the differences in ethnic favoritism across African countries. In the first chapter, using survey data from Afrobarometer we consider to what extent ethnic favoritism arises in sub-Saharan African countries by examining whether a person’s perception of government fairness depends on whether he shares the same ethnicity as the country’s leader. I allow associations to differ not only across time but across types of countries such as democracies versus nondemocracies. Such an approach not only can determine whether ethnic favoritism arises but in what cases it might be more pronounced. Findings indicate that the associations with perceived ethnic favoritism have held steady over time. Differences between low- and middle-income countries are also small. Greater differences arise across political regimes as democracies show less ethnic bias than do nondemocracies. More diverse countries also show more ethnic bias. In the second chapter, with the information from two rounds of the Afrobarometer survey, we consider to what extent gender and ethnicity matter for perceived access and quality of education and health facilities. We allow associations to differ not only across time but across types of countries such as democracies versus nondemocracies. Such an approach not only can determine whether ethnic and gender inequalities arise but in what circumstances they might dissipate. Our findings indicate no differences in the perceived access and quality of education and health facilities nor do differences arise in various subgroups of countries such as democracies, resource-rich countries, ethnically diverse countries, or middle-income countries. The third chapter examines how the Nigerian president’s changes in ethnicity and religion affect certain outcomes. Since 2000, Nigerian presidents have come from different ethnic groups and practiced different religions. Using several rounds of the Demographic and Health Surveys, we exploit this variation in leadership to examine if households see greater material wealth or greater access to public services when the president comes from their ethnic group or when he practices the same religion. The analysis indicates that ethnic groups do not benefit (at least, contemporaneously) from having a co-ethnic as president. In fact, co-ethnics are less likely to have access to electricity, protected water, improved sanitation, and more likely to be in the poorest quantile.

I examined whether interpersonal similarity, an indicator of social closeness, influenced children’s epistemic trust in others’ testimony. Three- to 5-year-olds met two puppet informants, one of whom matched their preferences and physical attributes. Children were encouraged to request novel objects’ names from either informant, after which both informants provided conflicting labels for the unfamiliar objects. Physical and psychological commonalities with an informant differentially guided children’s learning preferences. Children subsequently heard the two informants differ in their accuracy when labeling familiar objects. For half the children the similar informant was accurate and the dissimilar informant inaccurate. Additionally, for half the children the inaccurate informant was blindfolded. Only 5-year-olds were more forgiving of the informant’s inaccuracy when blindfolded (i.e., justified), as compared to wearing a scarf (unjustified inaccuracy), and only for the dissimilar informant. These findings suggest that children’s reasoning about an informant’s state of knowledge varies with social closeness. Implications for children’s recall, mentalistic reasoning, and forgiving of mistakes are discussed. / text

The purpose of this study was to examine privilege in families and uncover the complexities of sibling relationships in adulthood. Through interviewing 13 adult siblings and 3 mothers from 4 families my goal was to gain a clearer picture of what privilege in families means. The sample consisted of a family with 3 sisters, a family with 3 brothers and a sister, a family with 4 brothers, and a family with 2 brothers and a sister. The adult siblings ranged in age from 30 to 60, with an average age of 42. The mothers ranged in age from 62 to 70, with an average age of 67. The study was guided by three theoretical frameworks: a life course, a phenomenological, and a feminist perspective. I conducted this study utilizing an integration of qualitative and feminist methodologies. I used a snowball sampling technique to recruit participants. Data were collected through the use of qualitative in-depth interviews. The interview guides were developed based on the research questions, the review of literature, and the theories guiding the study. I draw 5 conclusions from this study. First, there is a sense of devotion to family that is both expected and fulfilled by simply spending time together, being there for each other in times of need, and at times compromising personal needs or wants. Second, there is an overarching sense of justice that is discussed in everyday language, but at the same time referred to as "something we don't ever think about." Third, descriptions of having a continuous bond among siblings is verbalized as "being the same but different" or just feeling "something in the air," while at the same time mourning the absense of something that is "gone forever." Fourth, interviewing multiple family members extends the understanding of the difficulty of taking different stories heard by each family member and fitting them together into a "family photo." Finally, maintaining an awareness of what it is like to try to "speak for your family" has a different meaning when you also hold the knowledge that everyone else is doing the same thing--but different. / Ph. D.

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Afghanistan a country affected by decades of war and invasions has been subject of democratization and state-building of foreign donors post-2001. Despite the efforts of international community for improvements of state institutions, the country is and has been located at the bottom corruption indexes for many years. This essay tries to understand and explain why Afghanistan has been at the bottom line of corruption despite external actor’s vast democracy aid and building of effective state institutions. The case study of Afghanistan with qualitative method and descriptive text analysis examine causes of corruption in Afghanistan. The materials consist of both statistical data in terms of surveys and scientific literature to provide explanations of corruption in Afghanistan. The analytical framework of the study is based on previous research where formal institutions with focus on political system and informal institutions with focus on clientelism, patronage and neopatrimonialism, are used to explain the empirical data. The findings are that corruption is endemic in Afghanistan, occurring at all sectors of the government and the main reason is the defective political structure along with patronage and clientelistic networks and a state that rest on neo-patrimonialism.

Researchers have begun to explore the role that family members play in maintaining or recovering from an eating disorder. However, little research has addressed the sibling relationship, including nurturance, quarreling, and favoritism. Self-report questionnaires were collected from 120 girls and 87 boys in middle school (N=161) or high school (N=46). Linear regressions, ANOVAs and mediation analyses were conducted to determine the effects of siblings on adolescents’ disordered eating. Sibling favoritism and modeling of bulimic behavior were the only variables significantly related to relationship quality. Our results indicate that family dynamics and structure may play a larger role in adolescent maladaptive behavior than sibling relationship quality. Additionally, sibling relationship quality, bulimic modeling and sibling favoritism may be part of a very complex process leading to disordered eating behavior. Future research should continue to utilize the sibling subsystem as a means of understanding the development of disordered eating behavior among adolescents.

Parental favoritism is the preference or perception of preference of a parent for one child over another. The present study examines parental favoritism as well as the effects perceived favoritism has on one's self-esteem and if the effects are based on birth order. Participants were 325 undergraduate college students enrolled in introductory level classes. The mean age of the participants was 21.4 with 60% being women and 40% being men. Participants completed a parental favoritism questionnaire developed by the experimenter which assessed if the participant thought his/herself to be favored by a parent compared to a sibling. Self-esteem was assessed by the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Inventory. Results indicated no statistically significant main effects or interactions for gender, birth order, or perception of favoritism based on self-esteem. Results also indicated that women perceive favoritism slightly more often than men. Critiques of the present study and implications for future research are also discussed.

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The aim of the current thesis was to explore the possible link between System Justification Theory (SJT) and Terror Management Theory (TMT) in gender context and from the perspective of intergroup relations in a sample of Turkish university students. Having recently attracted research attention, the relation between the two theories is based on the effect of mortality salience (MS) on the tendency to justify the existing system. Accordingly, three research questions were investigated to see whether (1) ambivalent sexism toward women (hostile and benevolent sexism / HS and BS, respectively) and gender-group favoritism (on both explicit and implicit measures / expGF and impGF, respectively) were related to gender-specific system justification (GSJ), and whether (2) gender and (3) MS moderated the relation of GSJ to ambivalent sexism and gender-group favoritism. Based on the literature, it was hypothesized that (1) GSJ would predict HS, BS, expGF, and impGF, and that these predictions would be stronger (2) among women than among men and (3) when mortality is made salient as compared to when it is not. The hypotheses were tested with 185 participants (86 men, 99 women) who completed a questionnaire package including the demographic information form, GSJ Scale, MS manipulation, Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, and a scale measuring expGF along with a computer-administered task for impGF. The results revealed that higher levels of GSJ predicted higher levels of benevolent and hostile attitudes toward women as well as higher levels of explicit ingroup favoritism and lower levels of favoritism toward women. Only GSJ &ndash / HS and GSJ &ndash / expGF relationships were moderated by gender. The moderating role of MS was not observed in any of the four relationships. However, GSJ scores were found to be unevenly distributed across MS conditions, thereby, casting doubt on the reliability of the results concerning the moderating role of MS. The findings, as well as the contributions and limitations of the study, were discussed.

This thesis consists of three essays on banking in the U.S. The first two chapters study how supervisors and regulators influence bank behavior. The third chapter explores how bank CEOs allocate credit. The first chapter uses a quasi-natural experiment, the closure of regulatory offices, to identify the effects of supervision on bank behavior. Under the decentralized structure of U.S. bank supervision, banks in the same geographic area may be supervised by different regulatory offices. The chapter shows that, following the closure of a regulatory office, banks previously supervised by that office increase their solvency risk and lending compared with banks in the same counties that are supervised by a different regulatory office. Further, these banks exhibit lower risk-adjusted returns, lower asset quality, and opportunistic provisioning behavior for loan losses. Information asymmetry between banks and supervisors partly explains the results. The second chapter documents that nearly 30% of U.S. banks employ at least one board member who currently or previously served on a regulator’s advisory council or on the board of a regulator as a form of public service. The chapter shows that connections to regulators undermine regulatory discipline by decreasing the sensitivity of bank risk to capital. Connected banks are able to extract larger public subsidies than non-connected banks by shifting risk to the financial safety-net, resulting in wealth transfers from taxpayers to shareholders of risk-shifting connected banks. One potential reason for these effects is that connected banks receive preferential treatment in supervision from regulators. The third chapter uses the birthplace of U.S. bank CEOs to investigate the effect of hometown favoritism on bank business policies. Exploiting within-bank variation in distances to a CEO’s hometown, the chapter shows that banks make more mortgage and small business lending as well as branch expansions in counties that are proximate to the hometown of the CEO. This is due to the CEO’s altruistic attachment to her hometown; the effects are stronger during economic downturns, among altruistic CEOs, in poorer counties and marginal mortgage applicants. Further, hometown favoritism does not lead to worst bank performance. However, it is associated with positive economic outcomes in counties exposed to greater favoritism.