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Item Employment gains by minorities, women, in large city government, 1976-83(Monthly Labor Review, 1988-11) Moss, Philip I.Minorities and white women made significant gains in upper-level city government employment over the 1976-83 period; however, their salaries continued to lag those of white men.Item "Otro Mundo Es Posible": Women power in the VI Caracas World Social Forum and the Bolivarian revolution(Journal of International Women's Studies, 2007-04) Kasinsky, Renée G.This is an insider’s account of the participation of a Boston delegate at the World Social Forum in Caracas, Venezuela in January 2006. She relates the stories of women who attended the WSF and those women who through their leadership in their communities create a new world order based on the major themes of the WSF. The health and welfare missions created by the Bolivarian revolution of Hugo Chávez are testimony to the theme of the forum that through the process of participatory democracy “Otro Mundo Es Posible”.Item Watchdog or Lapdog? Media Freedom, Regime Type, and Government Respect for Human Rights(International Studies Quarterly, 2009) Whitten-Woodring, JeniferA main justification for press freedom is that free media will act as a watchdog over the government. While we would expect democracies to have free media and autocracies to have government-controlled media, some democracies have government-controlled media, and some autocracies have free media. How this mismatch between regime type and media system influences government behavior is a puzzle worth exploring. One of the most widely criticized government behaviors is the violation of physical integrity rights. The question posed here is, how does media freedom affect government respect for these rights? In this article, I theorize that the relationship between media freedom and government respect for human rights differs, depending on the presence of democratic institutions. The findings support my premise. Specifically, the influence of media freedom on government respect for human rights is negative for the most autocratic regimes and positive for only the most democratic regimes.Item Independent Component Analysis of the Effect of L-dopa on fMRI of Language Processing(PLoS ONE, 2010-08-17) Kim, Namhee; Goel, Prem K.; Tivarus, Madalina E.; Hillier, Ashleigh; Beversdorf, David Q.L-dopa, which is a precursor for dopamine, acts to amplify strong signals, and dampen weak signals as suggested by previous studies. The effect of L-dopa has been demonstrated in language studies, suggesting restriction of the semantic network. In this study, we aimed to examine the effect of L-dopa on language processing with fMRI using Independent Component Analysis (ICA). Two types of language tasks (phonological and semantic categorization tasks) were tested under two drug conditions (placebo and L-dopa) in 16 healthy subjects. Probabilistic ICA (PICA), part of FSL, was implemented to generate Independent Components (IC) for each subject for the four conditions and the ICs were classified into task-relevant source groups by a correlation threshold criterion. Our key findings include: (i) The highly task-relevant brain regions including the Left Inferior Frontal Gyrus (LIFG), Left Fusiform Gyrus (LFUS), Left Parietal lobe (LPAR) and Superior Temporal Gyrus (STG) were activated with both L-dopa and placebo for both tasks, and (ii) as compared to placebo, L-dopa was associated with increased activity in posterior regions, including the superior temporal area (BA 22), and decreased activity in the thalamus (pulvinar) and inferior frontal gyrus (BA 11/47) for both tasks. These results raise the possibility that L-dopa may exert an indirect effect on posterior regions mediated by the thalamus (pulvinar).Item “Rappelez-vous concitoyens”: The Poetry of Pierre-Aristide Desdunes, Civil War Soldier, Romantic Literary Artist, and Civil Rights Activist(Les Éditions Tintamarre, Centenary College of Louisiana, 2011) Bell, Caryn CosséItem Fourth Estate or Mouthpiece? A Formal Model of Media, Protest, and Government Repression(Routledge, 2012-04-26) Whitten-Woodring, Jenifer; James, PatrickNew media dramatically increase citizens’ access to information and decrease governments’ ability to control the flow of communication. Although human rights nongovernmental organizations have advocated that access to independent news media will improve government respect for human rights, recent empirical studies have shown this is not always the case. We posit that media independence and the presence or absence of democratic characteristics, in particular political competition, have substantial effects on government repression because these factors determine the degree to which the government is vulnerable to public pressures. The model developed here includes three equations that encompass the impact of interaction between and among the news media, citizens, and government. The first equation specifies the influences on the news media’s decision whether or not to perform a “watchdog” role regarding government repression. The second equation represents public reaction to the news media’s coverage of government repression (i.e., protest). Here access to news media via traditional and new media is an important factor. The third equation represents government repression. Solutions to the system of equations are derived for four scenarios (a) Democracy and media independence are both present, (b) democracy is present but media independence is absent, (c) democracy is absent (autocracy) and media independence is present, and (d) democracy is absent (autocracy) and media independence is absent. We then consider interesting properties of the anticipated behavior from the government, media, and general public through case illustrations for the Netherlands and Myanmar/Burma.Item Does prompting for revision influence subjects' offers in willingness to accept -- willingness to pay lab experiments?(Economics Bulletin, 2012-11-16) Kingsley, David C.; Brown, Thomas C.The willingness to accept – willingness to pay disparity raises questions about accepted economic theory. Plott and Zeiler (2005) have suggested that the disparity is the result of subject misconception about experimental procedures and, in an experiment designed to control for subject misconception, they show that the disparity can be turned on and off. This paper investigates a single feature of their experimental procedure—the prompt for subjects to consider revising their offers. Using the post-prompt and revision offers, we, like Plott and Zeiler, are unable to reject equality between WTA and WTP. However, using the pre-prompt and revision offers the disparity between WTP and WTA is shown to be significant. Results suggest that the prompt and revision opportunity systematically influences offers. Future research must determine whether the pre- or post-prompt offers more accurately reflect underlying preferences.Item The Role of Media in the Repression-Protest Nexus: A Game-theoretic Model(Sage, 2015) Kim, HeeMin; Whitten-Woodring, Jenifer; James, PatrickIdealized independent media function as ‘‘watchdogs.’’ Indeed, human rights nongovernmental organizations have argued that media freedom will improve human rights. This makes sense intuitively, yet recent formal and empirical studies show that the effect of independent media varies across regime types. We explore the relationship among media, government, and citizen protest movements and employ a game-theoretic model to investigate how the equilibria vary depending on regime type and media independence. In terms of equilibrium, we find that media watchdogging is most active in autocracies (and not in democracies), especially when the government’s perceived capability to repress public protest is declining. Uncertainty about the government’s ability to repress plays a central role in accounting for the manifestation of media watchdogging in conjunction with public protest. Illustrations from Tunisia and North Korea are provided to highlight equilibria derived from the formal model that vary as a product of perceptions about the government’s ability to repress.Item The Correlates of Media Freedom: An Introduction of the Global Media Freedom Dataset(Political Science Research and Methods, 2015-12-02) Whitten-Woodring, Jenifer; Van Belle, Douglas A.Media freedom has motivated substantial political activism, yet there are surprising gaps in the related academic literature, in part because of a lack of historic and consistent data. We introduce the newly expanded Global Media Freedom Dataset, which includes 196 countries from 1948 to 2012, and demonstrate how it can be used to test previous hypotheses and assumptions about the correlates of media freedom.Item When the Fourth Estate Becomes a Fifth Column: The Effect of Media Freedom and Social Intolerance on Civil Conflict(The International Journal of Press/Politics, 2016) Hutchison, Marc L.; Schiano, Salvatore; Whitten-Woodring, JeniferMedia freedom is typically viewed as crucial to democracy and development. The idea is that independent news media will facilitate free and fair elections and shine a spotlight on corruption—thereby serving as a fourth estate. Yet political leaders often justify restricting media freedom on the grounds that irresponsible news coverage will incite political violence—potentially undermining government and in effect acting as a fifth column. So is media freedom a force for democracy or a source of civil conflict? We hypothesize that the effect of media freedom on civil conflict is conditioned by a country’s level of intolerance. Specifically, we predict when social intolerance is low, media freedom will discourage domestic conflict because the tone of the news coverage will reflect the level of tolerance and ameliorate any inflammatory coverage. In contrast, we predict that high levels of social intolerance will fuel and be fueled by inflammatory news coverage if the media are free, thereby promoting civil conflict. We test our hypotheses across countries and over time drawing from World Values and European Values Surveys and the Global Media Freedom Dataset and find that the combination of media freedom and high social intolerance is associated with increased civil conflict.Item News about her: The effects of media freedom and internet access on women's rights(Routledge, 2016-09-08) Whitten-Woodring, JeniferHuman rights organizations have long heralded media freedom as critical to holding government accountable and thereby improving a wide range of human rights. Similarly the Internet and social media are assumed to empower citizens by enabling them to document repression and thereby discourage future abuse. So what does this mean for women’s rights? I propose that, when it comes to women’s rights, the combination of media freedom and Internet access will make a difference and that the effect of media freedom will depend on Internet access. I test my hypotheses across countries and over time and find that the interaction of Internet access and media freedom has positive effects on women’s rights regardless of regime type.Item "Norm Enforcement with Incomplete Information"(Working Paper, 2019-11) De Geest, Lawrence R.; Kingsley, David C.We study the emergence of norms and their enforcement in a public goods game with private information about endowments. Subjects were randomly assigned a Low or High endowment and across treatments endowments were either Observed or Unobserved. We estimate contribution norms and then estimate the expected costs of noncompliance. We find that incomplete information does not affect norms, but rather their enforcement. In both Observed and Unobserved we see a “contribute-your-endowment” norm emerge. Enforcement in Observed is close to theoretic predictions. However, enforcement in Unobserved depended on how well subjects could map contributions to endowments in a given round. When at least one High type pooled with Low types (by contributing less than or equal to the Low endowment), punishment was used to protect Low rather than attack High: contributions equal to the Low endowment were not punished (in case they came from a cooperative Low type) while contributions of zero were punished as if they were from a High type. This kept cooperation from unraveling, but it also enabled High types to hide behind small endowments. Our results dovetail with results from bargaining games and suggest that in settings with incomplete information, norms emerge to attenuate rather than eliminate non-cooperative behavior.Item "Inequality and Peer Punishment in a Common-pool Resource Experiment"(Working Paper, 2020-03) De Geest, Lawrence R.; Kingsley, David C.We test the effect of inequality on peer punishment in a common-pool resource (CPR) experiment with equal endowments (Equal) or unequal endowments (Unequal). Peer punishment reduces extractions in both treatments, but it is more effective in Unequal. Subjects with lower endowments coordinated around an Equal Earnings norm, subjects with higher endowments matched, and peer punishment tightened this coordinate-and-match dynamic. By contrast, there was less coordination in Equal, and as a result, more peer punishment and lower payoffs.Item "A Tale of Two Gravities"(Working Papers, 2020-06) Bowman, Jason H.; Chen, Xiaoping; Li, Ben G.Item "What Drives Trends in Employment and Hours Worked per Worker? A Cross Country Analysis."(Workin Paper, 2021-04-02) Ramnath, Shanthi; Mukherjee, Rahul; Finkelstein Shapiro, Alan; Epstein, BrendanHours worked are fundamentally important for aggregate economic activity, and their long run trends diverge considerably in Europe versus the United States. Yet, canonical macroeconomic models even tax-inclusive ones fail at replicating these di¤ering trend behaviors. We develop a simple extension of the canonical macroeconomic model that decomposes trend hours into exten- sive and intensive margins via household-side employment-attainment costs and rm-side employment adjustment costs. Predictions of a tax-inclusive version of this model track very well the trend behavior of hours and its two underlying margins in both the United States and a host of European countries. The model shows that taxes and, in particular, capital taxes, impact the two margins of labor quite di¤erently. Therefore, if these margins are not disentangled the full impact of taxes on work hours does not come through. The model has im- plications related to the relative rigidity of labor markets across countries and also to international risk sharing that are in line with the data and, therefore, validate its structure. The model s success in tracking work hours in a range of countries suggests that it can be used as a laboratory to study a broad set of issues regarding the trend behavior of labor markets.