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Social media and democratic deliberation
Get PDFThe internet continues to have a profound influence upon political communication. Have social media changed the language we use to talk about politics, made particular voices more prominent in online discussions, or even led people to turn away from democratic deliberation entirely? In three distinct papers, this thesis explores each of these questions in turn, making the following theoretical, methodological, and practical contributions. First, using a novel dataset of 4 million tweets, paper 1 shows how political elites in the United Kingdom have used increasingly emotive rhetoric over time on Twitter. I argue this changing rhetorical behaviour has been influenced by, and rewarded with, greater engagement. Paper 2 also employs new data, linking a nationally-representative survey of the UK population with Twitter accounts, to show that people who discuss politics on Twitter are more ideologically and affectively extreme than those who do not. These findings have important implications for understanding who we are most likely to hear in online political discussion, and for increasingly-polarised online political debate. Finally, in a pre-registered lab-in-the-field experiment on Facebook, I argue that people disengage from discussing contentious political issues in groups of people with contrasting opinions and beliefs. In conducting a real-world experiment which attempts to causally identify why people turn away from political discussion, this study represents a methodological advance on existing survey-based research, and understanding the key drivers of online self-censorship may help mitigate some of its most negative consequences. Overall, these findings contribute to our understanding of how social media is influencing the scope and tone of democratic debate
Resilience in refugee economies in practice – empirical evidence from the UK, Germany and Sweden
Get PDFRefugee employment outcomes vary widely across high-income economies. In some countries, refugees are able to access more and better jobs. Countries in which this is the case can be called resilient. Existing theories fail to account for variation in refugee employment outcomes and hence resilience. This thesis argues that cross-country differences in refugee employment and resilience are the result of different socio-economic models and the institutions associated with them. Hence, this thesis proposes an institutional account of resilience. Qualitative comparative case studies are used to explain three different patterns of labour market resilience, each of which is associated with a different socio-economic regime. The Liberal Model, represented by the UK, is associated with a relatively fast labour market integration and a high concentration of refugee entrepreneurs. A large low-skilled sector facilitates waged employment, while entrepreneurship can act as a vehicle for socio-economic integration in a labour market characterized by few regulations. The Conservative Continental Model, represented by Germany, is associated with slow, but steady labour market integration and a high concentration of refugees in medium-skilled jobs that require vocational qualifications. Finally, the Nordic Model, represented by Sweden, is associated with slow, but steady labour market integration and a high concentration of refugees in jobs that require post-secondary education. There are two important findings that follow from this study. Firstly, there is not a single pathway to enhance labour market resilience. Resilience is context-specific. Secondly, advanced market economies have the real capacity to integrate refugees into their labour markets successfully
Hybrid norms and the politics of integration: evolving linkages between global health security and universal health coverage
Get PDFThis thesis examines the evolving relationship between global health security (GHS) and universal health coverage (UHC), two dominant – yet historically fragmented – normative agendas shaping global health. While GHS prioritizes preparedness and response to acute health threats, UHC emphasizes equitable access and affordability of health services. Despite growing recognition of their interdependence, meaningful integration between GHS and UHC remains limited in policy and practice – potentially weakening coordination and undermining public health outcomes, especially during crises. The COVID-19 pandemic created an inflection point, accelerating discussions on their alignment and potential synergies. However, existing scholarship lacks a robust theoretical framework to explain how two established and influential norms can co-evolve without one subsuming the other. This thesis addresses this gap by introducing two related concepts, rooted in constructivist international relations and political science literature: ‘hybrid norms’ (a framework for tracing the construction, convergence, and coherence of previously-distinct norms and their associated regimes) and the ‘politics of integration’ (a lens for unpacking the strategic processes of framing, negotiation, and institutionalization that shape normative integration). The study unfolds through three empirical chapters, each interrogating GHS-UHC integration at successive stages of development, reflecting the hybrid norm framework. The first empirical chapter traces their historical (re)construction through major crises and international agreements, employing a discursive analysis of key policy texts to argue that both norms have been shaped through repeated interaction and contestation, rather than linear adoption. The second empirical chapter utilizes a multimethod qualitative analysis to examine recent diplomatic negotiations (WHO Pandemic Agreement and the 2023 UN Political Declaration on UHC), analyzing normative convergence between GHS and UHC through the co-promotion of complementary discourse and core functions – while also revealing how political contestations, institutional path dependencies, and operational trade-offs constrain deeper integration. The third empirical chapter uses thematic analysis of key informant interviews to explore how stakeholders across governments, global health organizations, donors, and civil society conceptualize and operationalize GHS-UHC coherence in practice. It finds that a hybrid norm linking GHS and UHC is emerging, which may help overcome geopolitical power asymmetries, foster strategic collaboration across diverging actor priorities, and enable more integrative forms of diplomacy to better address multiple overlapping crises. This project offers novel contributions to global health policy and governance, constructivist norm theories, and international relations and political science scholarship. Empirically, it traces the emergence of a hybrid norm linking GHS and UHC through diplomacy and institutional design – revealing how normative integration unfolds incrementally across geopolitical and operational contexts in response to longstanding fragmentation. Conceptually, it introduces a new framework that reorients integration from a technical fix to a dynamic, contested, and co-evolving normative process to improve cross-sector collaboration and coordination. Methodologically, it advances a real-time discursive analysis approach for studying norm development across overlapping regimes through global negotiations. Taken together, these contributions provide a new lens for understanding the politics of integration, and offer fresh insights and practical implications for building a more equitable, resilient, and sustainable global health architecture
Essays in finance
Get PDFThis thesis examines the strategic and market implications of open market repurchase (OMR) programs through three interconnected studies that advance our understanding of corporate payout policy and market dynamics. The first chapter provides causal evidence that firms significantly adjust repurchase activity in response to undervaluation. Using price pressure induced by mutual fund flows and leveraging the 2003 mutual fund trading scandal as a natural experiment, I establish that flow-induced valuation shocks causally drive repurchase decisions. Instrumental variable estimates reveal substantially stronger effects than standard regressions, suggesting that the non-fundamental component of fund flows is potent but rare, with its true impact typically masked in conventional analyses. Analysis of long-run stock performance reveals that the well-documented buyback anomaly is primarily driven by repurchase announcements following periods of negative fund flows, highlighting how flow-driven price distortions meaningfully impact corporate payout policy and create predictable patterns in subsequent stock performance. The second chapter examines the puzzling heterogeneity in completion rates of open market repurchase programs, where some announcing firms execute zero repurchases while others complete their programs rapidly. I propose that managers strategically balance duration-dependent costs of undervaluation against immediate costs of share repurchases, with completion decisions signaling expected timelines of information asymmetry resolution. Using hand-collected SEC filing data spanning 2004-2019, I find that low-completion firms significantly outperform analyst forecasts in years one and two post-announcement, while high-completion firms excel in years three and four, with corresponding patterns in market reactions and long-run returns. The third chapter examines how OMR programs affect firms’ exposure to systematic liquidity shocks. I find that repurchasing firms act as buyers of last resort, experiencing significant but temporary declines in liquidity commonality during programs. This reduction in liquidity commonality is accompanied by decreased liquidity risk, highlighting firms’ role in stabilizing against institutional demand and market maker supply variations
Essays in economic theory and AI
Get PDFThis thesis explores the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Economic Theory, focusing on two complementary directions. First, I examine how insights from economics, particularly social choice theory, can inform the development of AI systems. Large language models (LLMs) are trained using reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), a process designed to align them with human preferences. However, in pluralistic societies, human values are diverse and conflicting. This raises a fundamental question: what does it mean to align an AI system with heterogeneous human values? I argue that this question can be analyzed through the lens of social choice theory. Current RLHF pipelines rely on aggregation mechanisms that lack desirable theoretical properties established in the social choice literature. As an alternative, I propose multiple frameworks grounded in social choice theory and economic theory that offer more principled approaches to preference aggregation in AI alignment. Second, I address the reverse question: how can deep learning enhance econometric methods? While machine learning has revolutionized prediction tasks, its integration with causal analysis remains theoretically challenging. Standard deep learning techniques, optimized for predictive accuracy, can introduce biases when applied to causal questions. I examine several limitations of current approaches: the challenges posed by overparameterization, theoretical and experimental issues related to early stopping, the application of Double/Debiased Machine Learning (DML) methods, and the problematic presence of measurement error in learned embeddings. Through both theoretical analysis and empirical investigation, I demonstrate how these issues can compromise causal inference and propose solutions that better integrate machine learning tools. Together, these two lines of work establish a bidirectional exchange between AI and Economics. Economic theory provides rigorous analytical tools for resolving open questions in AI alignment. Conversely, deep learning contributes powerful new methodological tools to empirical economics, expanding the toolkit available for causal inference. This thesis aims to bridge both domains, offering new theoretical insights and practical solutions at their intersection. By drawing on the strengths of each field, this work contributes to both the development of more aligned AI systems and the advancement of empirical methods in economics
Fitting a square peg in a round hole? A mixed-methods study on research ethics and collaborative health and social care research involving ‘vulnerable’ groups
No full textBackground:
Current research ethics frameworks that oversee health and social care research, in the United Kingdom and internationally, originated in biomedical research, having positivist underpinnings and an orientation towards experimental research. Limitations of these frameworks have been extensively documented including with regard to health and social care research that adopts collaborative approaches. This article contributes to debates about how the research ethics system deals with collaborative research with groups labelled or potentially perceived as vulnerable, and identifies practical recommendations to ensure a better fit between principles and practices of research ethics and those of collaborative research.
Methods:
We conducted a two-round online Delphi study with 35 academic researchers with experience of collaborative research involving vulnerable groups and of seeking research ethics approval in England (United Kingdom), followed by a focus group with eight members of the Delphi panel. The Delphi questionnaire, organised in 12 themes, comprised 66 statements about how researchers experience research ethics review and how the research ethics system could be improved. The focus group discussed the results of the Delphi study to generate practical recommendations.
Results:
By the end of the second Delphi round, only one statement relating to the experience of the current research ethics system reached consensus, signalling heterogeneous experiences among researchers working in this field. A total of 32 statements on potential improvements reached consensus. The focus group discussed the 14 Delphi statements with the highest levels of consensus and generated 12 practical recommendations that we grouped into three clusters (1. Endorsing the ‘collaborative’ dimension of collaborative research; 2. Allowing flexibility; and 3. Strengthening the relational and ongoing nature of ethical research practice).
Conclusions:
This work provides further empirical evidence of how the research ethics system deals with collaborative research involving ‘vulnerable’ groups. It also offers practical recommendations to ensure that the collaborative dimension of such research receives proper ethical scrutiny, to introduce a degree of flexibility in research ethics processes and supporting documents, and to replace formal, one-off research ethics approvals with ongoing, situated, relational ethical processes and practices
Replication Data for: The Nature of Long-Term Unemployment: Predictability, Heterogeneity and Selection
No full textThis is the replication package for "The Nature of Long-Term Unemployment: Predictability, Heterogeneity and Selection," accepted in 2024 by the Journal of Political Economy
The mediation practices of Peruvian Amazonian indigenous organisations
No full textThis thesis examines the mediation practices of indigenous organisations in the Peruvian Amazon, combining social movement theory with a media and communication approach. While it started as an open examination of the power dynamics shaping indigenous organisations’ mediation practices, this thesis builds on the concept of the ‘mediation opportunity structure’ (Cammaerts, 2018), which offers a holistic framework to analyse the constraints and opportunities shaping social movements’ mediation practices. Aiming to contribute to the literature on mediation and social movements, and indigenous social movements, it reflects on the interplay between political opportunities and constraints and indigenous organisations’ mediation practices. I examine how, in the Peruvian political context, where indigenous peoples’ rights are recognised and yet continually neglected, Amazonian indigenous organisations have adopted a reformist approach to resistance and developed complex mediation logics in relation to the non-indigenous and indigenous publics they communicate with. Moreover, the study shows that the political opportunity structure of Peruvian Amazonian indigenous organisations strongly shapes their mediation practices, from their production of media content to their appropriations of media to diffuse their content, their interactions with journalists, and, finally, the reception of their content by state actors. Overall, studying indigenous organisations’ mediation practices reshapes the conceptual framework of the Circuit of Protest and the mediation opportunity structure (Cammaerts, 2018), pointing out, for example, the relational aspect of indigenous organisations’ network and the importance of their in-person communication practices, the presence of an audience opportunity structure at the level of their communication with their communities, or of an economic opportunity strongly structuring their practices. Empirically, this thesis draws on twenty-four interviews with indigenous organisations, journalists, NGO professionals, and experts, as well as a content analysis of 223 Facebook posts produced by three Peruvian indigenous organisations
Governing competition in electricity markets by independent regulatory agency and government: a comparative analysis on Britain and Türkiye
No full textThis thesis examines the immediate relationships between independent regulatory agencies (IRAs), and governments in the British and Turkish electricity sectors in the post-delegation regulatory process. It analyses the impact of these relationships on the capacity of the IRAs to promote competition, which is their primary regulatory objective, and the core reason for their establishment. Both IRAs implemented three main regulatory policies to promote competition: inducing new entry, reducing the market share of the incumbents, and revising the trading arrangements in the electricity market. While various studies have explored institutional and formal/informal factors influencing IRAs' formal/informal independence and regulatory capacity, this thesis focuses on the role of government. It investigates how government influence affects the IRAs' capacity to achieve their regulatory objectives and whether the presence or absence of government support plays a determining role. This research adopts a comparative case study method, analysing 12 (twelve) cases across Britain and Türkiye. It analyses four sets of three cases based on the three main regulatory policies followed by the IRAs in pairs, comparing them in terms of the presence and absence of the government support. The comparison is grounded in similarities between sectoral policies, regulatory objectives, institutional endowments, and initial bargains between IRAs and governments. The thesis’s findings indicate that IRAs’ capacity to achieve their regulatory objectives depends on government support after delegation. While the IRAs struggle to maintain their independence and capacity through institutional endowments and strategic adjustments through various conflictual/collaborative relationships with the governments, the governments continue to determine regulatory decision-making, and the IRAs’ capacity through formal/informal mechanisms, even without changing/breaking the initial formal/institutional designs and bargains established at delegation. The research highlights that regulation remains inherently political, and delegation to IRAs does not ensure political certainty/stability, predictability, reliability, or credible commitment. Political will continues to shape the post-delegation regulatory process
Poverty, climate change, and policy design: essays in environmental and development economics
No full textPoverty and climate change are not only two of the most pressing global challenges, but they are also interconnected in ways that can complicate attempts to alleviate either in isolation. Their relationship is evident across multiple dimensions. Climate change exacerbates poverty through rising temperatures and increasingly frequent and severe weather events, the effects of which are disproportionately felt by the world’s poorest communities. Conversely, efforts to alleviate poverty through economic development can contribute to higher emissions and environmental degradation. In the global fight to mitigate the worst effects of climate change, the burden of efforts to reduce emissions will be unevenly distributed, with transitions often disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations. Despite the pressing nature of climate change, the importance of alleviating poverty, and the ways these issues intersect, there remains a relatively small body of work that integrates these topics. This thesis seeks to contribute here, using micro-econometric methods and real-world policies to consider three key ways in which poverty and environmental policy are interconnected. After an introduction in Chapter 1, Chapters 2 and 3 examine how poverty influences the primary impacts of environmental policies, focusing on behavioral barriers and related solutions to facilitate the transition to energy-efficient technologies. Chapter 4 then considers the secondary effects of environmental policies—in particular, their possible impacts on poverty and inequality. Finally, Chapter 5 explores the role of policy in mitigating the adverse effects of climate change amongst the poorest and most vulnerable. Taken together, the findings in the thesis demonstrate some of the diverse ways that poverty and environmental policy can interact. Environmental policy will need to account for these interactions to achieve climate change mitigation, minimize adverse secondary impacts, and support communities vulnerable to climate change. A multifaceted approach, tailored to specific contexts, will be necessary for balancing mitigation, adaptation, and equity in the face of these interconnected challenges