Water is an essential resource for human life. Even in the tropical environment of the Maya Lowlands, water scarcity is a concern, because the region cycles between abundant rainfall and seasonal droughts. To understand how societies flourished during periods of water scarcity, archaeologists have studied prehispanic water management in the Maya Lowlands. Yet, water management research has tended to focus predominantly on large urban Maya populations, excluding smaller-scale societies that face the same challenges associated with water scarcity. This study investigates the neighboring non-Maya society of Late Classic (A.D.650-900) Palmarejo in northwestern Honduras to explore how water management was organized in a rural setting. Utilizing GIS, soil science, and archaeological investigations, this study explores how Palmarejo's residents may have collected and stored water for certain sectors of the population. This investigation suggests that the elite may have legitimized their rights over water using monumental architecture and site planning.

Building from existing literature on anthropology of food, political economy of food and consumption, and social movement theory, I examine the direct agriculture network of Tampa Bay Florida through a mixed-method ethnography. The research consisted of one year of field-work, with 6 months and over 100 hours of active participant observation, open-ended interviews with eight local producers, and short surveys with 100 market patrons. This thesis is an analysis of the results of this rigorous qualitative and quantitative work and, perhaps more importantly, an account of my own personal struggles in joining the direct agriculture network and my ultimate commitment to the movement. This report documents one student's transition from a researcher to an activist, finally settling in a local place that occupies both worlds in an effort to help increase the accessibility of others who wish to join the movement; an equal access based not only on economic capital, but also social and cultural capital in order to sustain an alternative food social movement.

This study's purpose is to investigate the expansion of social control efforts in American elementary and secondary school settings, particularly the use of zero-tolerance policies. These policies entail automatic punishments, such as suspensions, expulsions, and referrals to the juvenile and criminal justice systems for a host of school-based infractions. The widespread implementation of zero-tolerance policies and the application of harsh, exclusionary sanctions have intensified over the past decade. Numerous studies have documented this rise; however, there has been little effort to explore the explanation of the expansion of school-based social controls. A potential explanation is found in the application of political economic theories in relation to the increased use and evolving nature of social control in the neoliberal era of capitalism. As such, the current study employs a new theoretical approach, which utilizes neoliberal theory combined with theoretical components from existing metanarratives in the literature. By using this new approach in regard to school-based social control, the connection between the expansion of social control of the working class and marginal populations in the criminal justice process, and the retraction of the social safety nets that characterized neoliberal capitalism is extended to the explanation of trends in the social control of school-based infractions. This investigation incorporates a qualitative, empirical exploration of how these school criminalization efforts have been implemented and legitimized by the state, specifically through the authority of the courts. By engaging in textual analysis, the jurisprudential intent that informs both the relevant state appellate and Supreme Court decisions was subjected to legal exegeses to determine how and if the judicial system legitimizes the practice of zero tolerance in schools, which are consistent with neoliberal ideals. In addition, a quantitative component, to this overall study, examined nationally representative School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS) data across three academic years to determine if school security measures and disciplinary actions were increasingly applied to marginal populations in elementary and secondary schools over time. Results from the qualitative inquiry revealed that in the overwhelming majority of court cases evaluated, the courts decided in a fashion that reinforces zero-tolerance policies as legitimate neoliberal social controls in schools. Several theoretically relevant themes emerged from the jurisprudential intent, which are transferable for further theory development and future research. Quantitative findings reveal that, over time, the total disciplinary actions and removals from school without continued educational services are disproportionately applied to schools with the highest percentages of minority students and students who reside in high-crime areas compared to schools with the lowest percentages of minority students and students who reside in high-crime areas. Conversely, the results also reveal that the average use of school security measures (e.g., metal detectors, access controls, security guards, etc.) are more likely to be used in schools with the lowest percentages of minority students than schools with the highest percentages of minorities over time. These results are discussed in detail, and recommendations for changes in school policies and practices are offered, while being mindful of evidence-based best practices that may serve as viable alternatives to the zero-tolerance policies currently being used. Avenues for future research and theory development are also outlined.

The three branches of American government---judicial, legislative, and executive---serve important governmental roles, and present their own interesting political questions. We answer three here. First, what are the differences between judges and politicians, and how does this inform the formers' selection? Second, how do senators behave to satisfy their political preferences and the electorate's? Third, what is the optimal strategy for a candidate in the Electoral College? American states select judges in various ways. In Chapter 1, we analyze "merit selection." Typically, a nonpartisan commission culls applicants for judgeships, and an appointee is selected by the governor. Then, periodically, this judge undergoes a retention election: an up-or-down vote by the state's electorate. We contribute a microeconomic model to analyze these elections. We compare this institution, in welfare terms, to others used to appoint and retain judges. Finally, we analyze a recent and ongoing phenomenon: these elections are transforming from historically rubber stamp formalities into contested, politicized contests. The politicization of issues brought before courts increases the likelihood of judges being ousted. In Chapter 2, we explore the behavior of legislators in the U.S. Senate, and of the voters who elect them. We examine shifts in incumbent senators' espoused political positions over time, as the reelection campaign approaches. We introduce novel game theoretic models of incumbent-challenger interaction. We find, through empirical analysis of senators' roll call votes, that senators moderate their positions over time, as potential reelection approaches. Moreover, this moderation accelerates. This is explained by the behavior of voters: the moderation is mirrored by the attention paid by voters. Also, the identity of an incumbent's challenger plays an important role in the amount of moderation exhibited by the incumbent. In Chapter 3, we consider a highly adaptable game theoretic model of competition in the Electoral College. It takes the form of a repeated game. Candidates make allocation decisions to persuade voters. Candidates get utility from winning office, and disutility from expending resources. We characterize optimal campaign strategy, and present comparative statics. We show, inter alia, that a candidate with an inherent advantage may prefer a longer campaign. / text

In this thesis, I argue that the globalization of production has weakened the power and efficacy of labor unions in the United States. I describe the globalization of production as a set of transformations in both the institutional structure of the economy and in the organization of production, and discuss how these transformations have impacted workers and unions in the American economy. The theoretical framework I employ is the social structure of accumulation approach, which emphasizes the importance of the institutional structures of capitalist economies and how their interaction with forms of production organization and systems of labor control helps to determine levels of aggregate economic growth, the profit rates of individual firms, and the distribution of power, resources, and wealth among economic agents. I argue that the globalization of production involves the transition from the social structure of accumulation of segmentation to the globalized production social structure of accumulation, and the displacement of Fordist mass production by lean production as the dominant paradigm of production organization.Lean production and the globalized production social structure of accumulation involve a transformation in the relationship between firms, workers, and the state. The changing circumstances and economic conditions which these transformations have produced, and the failure of labor unions to understand, appreciate, and effectively respond to them, have been responsible for the rapid and sustained decline in the membership, power, and efficacy of organized labor in the United States. Through case studies on the automobile and clothing industries, I show how the way in which these transformations have materialized in the specific contexts of two industries with different competitive conditions, organizational structures, and levels of capital-intensity have produced very disparate and dissimilar outcomes for the workers in these indust ries.

The principal analytical objective of this dissertation is the assessment of changes in the political economy of food production during the transition from socialism to capitalism in Russia and China. The dissertation is equally interested in the consequences of this transition for human welfare resulting from changes in the availability of food. As a conditio sine qua non for human survival, food serves as an objective yardstick for human welfare. By studying changes in the political economy of food production it is therefore possible to draw general inferences regarding the welfare implications of the transition to capitalism in Russia and China. This dissertation uses a combination of classical political economy and comparative institutional analysis: The three empirical chapters show how changes in state objectives result in the formulation of economic policies that in turn shape the organization of food production - with momentous consequences for the Russian and Chinese people. Both countries achieved a significant increase in the output and variety of food, yet new problems concerning the availability, quality, and safety of food products have resulted from the introduction of markets. These problems are not externalities, but rather constitute a necessary consequence of the establishment of a market economy in which profit-oriented actors engage in competitive exchange without regard for human welfare. As a result, both countries are compelled to balance their desire for economic growth with the provision of sufficient and adequate food to their populations. An in-depth comparison of the development trajectories of two agro-industrial sectors (wheat and pig production) moreover reveals a convergence in government policy and economic institutions, indicating that Russia and China no longer represent alternative transition models. Following the reassertion of state authority during the first Putin presidency, the Russian government adopted an extensive agricultural modernization program, which strongly resembled China's existing state-guided reform strategy. Recently, both governments have taken active steps towards increasing the global competitiveness of their food economies, while intervening in markets as needed to ensure domestic food security. This demonstrates the centrality of the state in establishing and administering a capitalist economy. / Sociology

Chapter 1 studies the electoral response to the Ghost Buildings program, a nationwide anti tax evasion policy in Italy which used innovative monitoring technologies to target buildings hidden from tax authorities. The difference-in-differences identification strategy exploits both variation across towns in the ex ante program scope to increase enforcement as well as administrative data on actual building registrations. Local incumbents experience an increase in their reelection likelihood as a consequence of the policy. In addition, these political returns are higher in areas with higher speed of public good provision and with lower tax evasion tolerance, implying complementarity among enforcement policies, government efficiency, and the underlying tax culture. Chapter 2 uses a road-level regression discontinuity design in Sierra Leone to study the impact of improvements in rural road infrastructure on agricultural markets. We show that the improved roads reduced the market prices of local crops. These price effects are stronger in markets that are further from major urban centers and in less productive areas. We also find that these price effects are reversed in areas with better cell phone penetration. We show that our empirical findings are consistent with a search cost framework a la Mortensen, but inconsistent with other models, such as Bertrand competition, bilateral bargaining, and Cournot oligopsony. Chapter 3 present results from a randomized controlled experiment designed to study the multiple margins through which value is passed from traders to agricultural producers in the presence of interlinked transactions. Consistent with other studies, we find limited price pass-through in response to an increase in the trader resale price. However, there is a large response in credit provision. We develop a model of interlinked transactions that highlights the substitutability of price and credit pass-through across markets, and verify its predictions empirically. Calibration suggests that to ignore margins of pass-through other than price has substantial implications for welfare analysis. / Economics

Chapter 1 evaluates the effect of relaxing fiscal rules on policy outcomes applying a quasi-experimental research design. We implement a "difference-in-discontinuities" design by combining the before/after with the discontinuous policy variation generated by the implementation of the Domestic Stability Pact on Italian municipalities between 1999 and 2004. Our estimates show that relaxing fiscal rules triggers a substantial deficit bias, captured by a shift from a balanced budget to a deficit that amounts to 2 percent of the total budget. The deficit comes primarily from reduced revenues as unconstrained municipalities have lower real estate and income tax rates. The impact is larger if the mayor can run for reelection, the number of political parties seated in the city council is higher, voters are older, the performance of the mayor in providing public good is lower, and cities are characterized by historical deficit, consistently with models on the political economy of fiscal adjustment. Chapter 2 studies the electoral response to the Ghost Buildings program, a nationwide anti tax evasion policy in Italy, which used innovative monitoring technologies to target buildings hidden from tax authorities. The difference-in-differences identification strategy exploits both variation across towns in the ex ante program scope to increase enforcement as well as administrative data on actual building registrations. After the policy, local incumbents experience an increase in their reelection likelihood. These political returns are higher in areas with higher speed of public good provision and with lower tax evasion tolerance, implying complementarity among enforcement policies, government efficiency, and the underlying tax culture. Chapter 3 examines reasons for cross-country variation in maternity leave provision. We show that the less tolerant a society is of gender-based discrimination, the longer the maternity leave it will optimally mandate. We collected new data on the number of gender-differentiated personal pronouns across languages to capture societies' attitudes toward gender-based discrimination. We first confirm, using within-country language variation, that our linguistic measure is correlated with attitudes toward gender-based discrimination. Then, using cross-country data on length of maternity leave we find a strong correlation between our measure of attitudes and the length of maternity leave. / Economics

The dissertation is made up of three papers on the political economy of corruption and rent-seeking. Two of the papers make use of the historical experience of Britain to illustrate the theoretical points being made. The first paper shows that eighteenth-century Britain displayed patterns of corruption similar to those of developing countries today. To explain anti-corruption reforms, the paper develops a model in which the political elite is split between government officials and asset-owners. Government officials can act in one of two regimes: a corrupt one in which they are free to maximize their income from the provision of government goods, and one in which a regulated system leaves no room for individual profit maximization. Faced with a change in the level of demand for government goods, officials become able to extract rents at a level that leads to other members of the elite voting to enact reforms. The logic of the model is tested using a new dataset of members of the House of Commons and its main implications are validated. The second paper develops a model of how the British political class came to give up its power to extract rents from the economy between the 1810s and the 1850s. The key of the explanation lies in understanding the bargaining process between economic agents who seek permission to engage in economic activity and a legislature that can grant such permissions. The third paper analyzes the distributive effects of corrupt interactions between government officials and citizens. Corruption is modeled as a solution to an allocation problem for a generic government good G. Beyond a transfer from citizens to the government, corruption redistributes welfare towards "insiders" who share some natural connection to the government and to other insiders. Corruption also redistributes welfare towards those who are skilled in imposing negative externalities, and encourages the imposition of such negative externalities. / Government

The three essays of this thesis cover two sets of topics: search in auction platforms in the first two papers, and political campaigning in the last. In platform settings, search cost reductions are often regarded as beneficial because they improve match quality. But is this in fact true? And if it is true in an aggregate sense, what are the consequences to individual platform participants? Do individual buyers and sellers win or lose? The first paper develops a novel model of search in platforms and applies it to auction platforms to test the popular hypothesis that lower search costs are always beneficial to sellers. Under certain assumptions, we find that while lower search costs is welfare improving, its distributional consequences are less predictable. In general, lower search costs intesify buyer-side competition. On the one hand, this tends to improve seller revenues due to better matches; on the other hand, this may also thin out markets for certain sellers, since lower search costs make it easier for buyers to search out of certain markets. Generally, some sellers gain and some lose; most surprisingly, however, we find that overall seller revenue can decrease with lower search costs. Our second paper extends the model to endogenize buyer participation - so some buyers may leave the platform completely - and considers optimal platform search policy in such settings. Under stricter assumptions, we find that a platform that taxes the seller side generally benefits from lower search costs; a platform that charges buyers, however, may maximize search costs, since the gains from easier search are unevenly distributed among buyers, and may be inefficiently extracted with a fee. The final essay provides a novel model of political campaigning as argumentation, which brings together two different strands of the campaign spending literature: spending has direct effects on electoral outcomes, but also provide a "signal" of candidate quality. The model parsimoniously resolves many pre-existing campaign spending "paradoxes" while delivering new results on the effects and desirability of spending caps. / Economics