[pt] Essa tese é composta por três artigos empíricos independentes. No primeiro capítulo é avaliado em que medida diferenças no histórico profissional entre os gêneros influenciam o diferencial de salários observado no mercado de trabalho formal brasileiro. Para isto, utiliza-se uma amostra aleatória e representativa de 1 porcento dos trabalhadores presentes na RAIS / MTE entre os anos de 1994 e 2009. A partir dessas informações é reconstruída a trajetória profissional dos indivíduos pertencentes à amostra. As estratégias empíricas exploram a característica longitudinal dessa base de dados para gerar informações complementares acerca do diferencial de salários entre gêneros. Os resultados revelam que as medidas de histórico profissional têm impactos economicamente relevantes sobre os rendimentos individuais. Períodos de ausência no mercado de trabalho reduzem em média os rendimentos e um maior engajamento dos trabalhadores implica salários maiores. Entretanto, a inserção dessas medidas mais fidedignas de histórico profissional dos trabalhadores acarreta uma diminuição de no máximo 10 porcento na magnitude do coeficiente associado ao diferencial de salários entre os gêneros, ou seja, um impacto bastante reduzido. O segundo capítulo investiga a importância relativa de duas dimensões da qualidade dos professores para a aprendizagem em matemática e língua portuguesa dos alunos da oitava série do ensino fundamental na rede de ensino paulista. Com este propósito, adota-se uma abordagem de função de produção educacional e a principal especificação utiliza um modelo de valor adicionado com controle para o desempenho passado dos estudantes. Os resultados mostram que tanto o conhecimento quanto as atividades pedagógicas dos professores em sala de aula têm impacto positivo e estatisticamente significante sobre a aquisição de habilidades cognitivas. Entretanto, o efeito do conhecimento dos docentes apresenta uma magnitude pequena em termos econômicos. Já os impactos associados à adoção frequente de práticas pedagógicas eficazes tem magnitude bastante relevante. Por exemplo, a intervenção de substituir um professor de matemática que não passa lição de casa sempre por outro que o faz aumenta a proficiência dos alunos em aproximadamente 12 porcento de um desvio padrão da distribuição de notas. O terceiro capítulo analisa a relação entre identidade partidária e as escolhas políticas para o contexto das municipalidades brasileiras no ciclo político entre 2004 e 2008. Para isto, utiliza-se o arcabouço de regressão com descontinuidade para estimar o efeito causal local de um município ser governado por um partido de esquerda ao invés de um de direita sobre as políticas públicas. Os resultados apontam que governos de esquerda gastam proporcionalmente menos com urbanismo e saúde e mais com administração. No entanto, esses maiores gastos administrativos não estão associados a um inchaço da máquina pública com servidores. / [en] This thesis is composed of three independent empirical articles. In the first chapter is evaluated to what extent differences in labor supply factors and careers by gender influence the wage gap observed in the brazilian formal labor market. For this, we use a 1 percent representative random sample of the workers in RAIS / MTE between the years 1994 and 2009. From this information is retrieved the career path of individuals in the sample. The empirical strategies exploit the longitudinal feature of this database to generate complementary information about the gender wage gap. The results show that the labor market history measures have economically relevant impacts on individual incomes. Career interruptions reduce average earnings and workers with continuous labor market attachment have higher wages. However, the inclusion into the analysis of these more reliable job experience variables results in a reduction of up to 10 percent in the magnitude of the gender wage gap estimates. This represents a quite reduced influence. The second chapter investigates the relative importance of two dimensions of teacher quality for the learning in mathematics and Portuguese of eighth graders of the elementary school in São Paulo state. For this purpose, we adopt an approach based on the educational production function and the main specification uses a value added model with control for the students past grades. The results show that both the teachers knowledge and pedagogical activities inside the classroom have a positive and statistically significant impact on the acquisition of cognitive skills. However, the teachers knowledge effect has a small economic magnitude. Yet the impacts associated with the frequent application of effective teaching practices are quite large. For instance, the intervention defined by the replacing a math teacher who does not always give homework for another that does it, increases the students proficiency in approximately 12 percent of a standard deviation of the grades distribution. The third chapter examines the relationship between political partisanship and government size for the context of the brazilian municipalities after 2004 local election. In order to achieve this, we use a regression discontinuity research design to estimate the local causal effect on political choices of a municipality being governed by a left-wing party instead of a right-wing one. The results show that left-wing governments spend proportionately less on urbanism and health, and more on administration. Nevertheless, this higher administrative spending is not associated with an excessive hiring of public employees.

This dissertation is motivated by a straightforward question about a drastic change to American politics: why has the process of staffing the circuit courts of appeals, once so agreeable and bipartisan, seemed to have descended into almost complete partisan bitterness? Across the entire time series, these are, after all, the same courts endowed with the same power of judicial review. And when the process of staffing them was harmonious, the courts were nevertheless deciding the fate of major, controversial policies of national importance---such as the New Deal in the 1930s and civil rights in the 1950s---just as they do today. Yes, many other aspects of American politics have changed through the decades. But what could possibly explain such a complete reversal of course? I argue that this change, toward divisiveness and partisan warfare, is actually about the judiciary itself and the substantive manner by which the nominees are thought of---namely, the entry of judicial ideology into the debate through the innovation of circuit judges being evaluated on ideological terms. While taken for granted as central today, any ideological assessment of circuit court nominees, and in particular viewing them as having a comprehensive judicial philosophy as opposed to just a position on singular pressing issue of the day, was almost nonexistent for generations. Its entry into the process was piecemeal and somewhat complicated, but it eventually came to dominate and irrevocably polarize the business of staffing the courts. I argue that this was the key factor that leaves us where we are today. Broadly speaking, I consider the contributions and particular strengths of my dissertation, relative to previous scholarship, to be threefold. First is my argument and accompanying analyses which put the crucial (and severely understudied) role of judicial ideology front and center. Second, I analyze the entire lifespan of the circuit courts, whereas the previous scholarship looks only at (often relatively brief) subsets of their history. As far as I know, this is the first study to systematically look at all circuit court nominations from the establishment of these courts in 1891 through the modern era. Third, I collect and analyze a great deal of new data. In particular I focus on systematically utilizing extensive archival resources and build two original data sets related to the Senate's public and private evaluation of judicial nominees; and while there is certainly a qualitative aspect to much of this research, I also synthesize and make sense of it with quantitative analysis. In chapter 1, I explain the puzzle motivating this research, elaborate my argument, and lay out the theoretical, methodological, and data collection contributions of this dissertation. I also review the literature and describe the three existing schools of thought. In chapter 2, I give an overview of the history of the circuit courts from their founding to the present. In this data-heavy chapter, I examine multiple metrics individually, and using several of these I build a robust composite score of divisiveness for each nominee ever made to the circuit courts, from 1891 through 2020. As far as I know this has never been done before. I find overwhelming evidence that the process has fundamentally changed and become more divisive. In chapter 3, I dig more deeply into the timing of this change, and begin to explore how and why it happened---and begin my attempt at demonstrating how the evaluation of judicial ideology is central to this change. To do this I examine a massive data source that has never been utilized: the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings for all nominees. With both qualitative and quantitative analysis, I show that the evaluation of nominees has varied widely over time. Prior to 1979, nominees were evaluated almost exclusively based on their qualifications, with ideology examined only under special circumstances, which I explore in depth. In this time period, ideological scrutiny predicted a contentious confirmation process, providing evidence for my argument that ideological evaluation drove divisiveness. Also in this chapter, I analyze the post-1979 transition to the routine ideological evaluation that permanently altered the confirmation process. I find that Republicans and comprehensive judicial philosophies both played a key role. In chapter 4, I examine the senators' private evaluation of nominees, in part to serve as a check on the validity of my earlier data analysis and also to see if there is any difference between the senators' public and private goals in relation to the judiciary. To do this, I build an original data set of over 1000 internal letters and memoranda from senators, by searching the archival records of nearly every president since Benjamin Harrison as well as over 150 senators. Studying this material qualitatively and quantitatively, the findings here largely align with the analysis of the public committee hearings: for much of history senators were concerned mainly about qualifications, with ideological concern rare and under special circumstances, but eventually ideology came to be the predominant concern which ended the consensual and placid process. This immense historical record also brings to light additional senatorial goals, such as ensuring residents of their own state as well as personal friends obtain judicial appointments. In chapter 5, I focus in on the post-1979 era and I find that the more ideologically distant a nominee is from the Senate, the more divisive the confirmation process is. This provides evidence that the process is defined by ideology related to the nominees, not garden variety polarization of the system. In chapter 6, I conclude, trying to synthesize all of my findings as well as offer some thoughts on areas of future research.

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This paper serves to further investigate factors influencing partisanship in Mexican politics with a focus on state spending and drug violence. With state spending, this paper builds on prior literature about political effects of federal social spending (Handelman 1997, Domínguez and Chappell 2004, Díaz-Cayeros 2009) to propose a similar theory regarding state social spending. The proposed panel data model for national elections between 2000 and 2012 finds that for diputados elections, a thousand-peso increase in state spending had a statistically significant influence on party voting – boosting PRI candidates (typically incumbents) by 0.66% and hurting both PAN and PRD candidates by 0.78% and 1.57% respectively. This paper also proposes an alternative theory of state spending whereby the effect comes from a linkage of spending and economic performance. With drug violence, this paper studies the importance of the Mexican Drug War on the Mexican political environment but finds no consistent party impact of instability (modeled with intentional homicide statistics) in national elections from 2000 to 2012. This paper delves into potential explanations for this finding including different effects by election, distrust of political parties, and the perception of little difference between parties. Finally, the paper outlines other responses to instability and drug violence to demonstrate approaches taken by Mexican citizens outside of the ballot box. These alternative strategies include protesting, lobbying, migration, and the rise of private security.

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