586 research outputs found
Replication Data for: Null Effects of Social Media Ads on Voter Registration: Three Digital Field Experiments
No full textReplication data for the article “Null Effects of Social Media Ads on Voter Registration: Three Digital Field Experiments” by Asli Unan, Peter John, Florian Foos and Vanessa Matsuno-Cheng, forthcoming in Research Politics. For questions about the replication material, please reach out to [email protected]
Pre-analysis plan: Silence Kills! Conformity to Patriarchy Norms and Violence Against Women
No full textThis paper examines the role of beliefs, social norms and coordination elements on gender-based violence. We conduct an online survey experiment in Turkey to test our hypotheses on a representative sample of 4,000 respondents in Turkey, a country with the highest female homicide rates among OECD members. We use randomized treatments to see if dynamic information about how others' respond to gender violence can affect or shift individuals' own behavior. We elicit all respondents’ gender-related attitudes and ask about their behavior in a hypothetical scenario of violence where they are hypothetical bystanders
Null effects of social media ads on voter registration: Three digital field experiments
Full text linkCivic organisations and progressive campaigns regard digital advertising as an essential method to register to vote low-participation groups, such as ethnic minorities, young voters and frequent home movers like private-sector tenants. Digital strategies appear to be promising in countries like the UK, where the registration process can be completed online, usually in less than 5 minutes, using a web link in the advert. But are typical digital campaigns effective in registering voters? To find out, we provide evidence from three randomised controlled trials: two conducted with advocacy organisations and the third run by the research team, carried out in two types of UK elections (general and local) and assigned either at the aggregate (Study 1 and Study 2) or individual (Study 3) level. Despite wide reach and relatively high rates of engagement, we find that the digital ad campaigns trialed across three studies did not affect under-registered groups’ voter registrations. These null findings raise questions about commonly-used digital advertising strategies to register marginalised groups. They are consistent with other studies that report either null or minimal effects of digital ads on other types of political behaviour
Do text messages increase voter registration? Evidence from RCTs with a local authority and an advocacy organisation in the UK
No full textIn the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, text messages have become an increasingly attractive tool of voter registration. At the same time, in countries without automated registration, advocacy organisations play a more prominent role in supplementing the efforts of official bodies in registering voters. However, most available, robust evidence on whether voter registration campaigns work is based on campaigns conducted by official bodies charged with electoral registration. We present the results of two RCTs that aimed to increase voter registration in the UK using SMS-text messages, relying mainly on behavioural messaging. One was conducted by a local authority, while the other was implemented by an issue advocacy organisation that had no prior involvement in voter registration. In line with previous findings, the local authority's text messages resulted in an increased registration rate of eight percentage-points, which translates into a three percentage-point increase in voter turnout. However, the advocacy organisation's text messages neither increased voter registration, nor turnout, no matter whether the text message offered a personal follow-up conversation, or not. Given that many voter registration campaigns are run by advocacy organisations and text messages are an increasingly important mobilisation tool, this raises questions about the scope conditions of existing findings.</p
Media exposure to highly skilled immigrants and attitudes toward immigration
No full textCan exposure to successful immigrants in the mass media affect perceptions of immigrants and alter attitudes toward immigration? To address this question, I study the case of Ozlem Tureci and Ugur Sahin, the co-developers of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, and children of Turkish immigrants in Germany. I first demonstrate that German media favorably highlighted the Turkish roots and migration history of vaccine developers. Leveraging the quasi-experimental setting with the announcement of the success of the vaccine, I then posit that the wide broadcasting of the vaccine's success and its developers' identity should have positive spillover effects on public attitudes towards immigration. Amongst those who were exposed to this announcement, compared to those who were not, I find a 4 percentage point increase in support of easing immigration opportunities. I suggest that this effect is driven by a change in perceptions of self-awareness on issues relating to immigration and integration. These findings imply that promoting successful immigrants in the media has the potential to diminish prejudice; however, it is crucial to address varying biases toward different immigrant groups
Pre-Analysis Plan: Labor-Market Cues in Public Attitudes toward Immigration
No full textThis study investigates how labor-market cues affect public support for immigration and related policy attitudes
The development of financial services and financial regulation in Angola
No full textThis dissertation examines developments in financial services in Angola, looking particularly at the role of the Banco Nacional de Angola (BNA) in achieving greater competence in the banking division, growth, and well organized financial regulation and corporate governance. The author considers the work of BNA, the government of Angola (GOA), and investors in providing more financial services and increased competence of the banking service, with reference to international models
Regulatory tradeoffs in designing concession contracts for infrastructure networks
Full text linkNetwork activities typically involve collecting a good or service (such as electric utilities, phone services, and rail transportation) from many producers or distributing them to many users. Producers and users are often widely scattered, geographically. Close financial integration of networks is justified on the basis of economies of scope and scale and the benefits from pooling and coordinating. In many countries, network operators are completely integrated publicly-owned firms (private firms being deemed insufficiently efficient or equitable). Challengers of this practice contend that the inefficiency resulting from lack of competition outweighs the gain from economic integration. With reform, some competitive mechanisms can be introduced even when monopoly seems the best option for delivering a service. But conflicts between policymakers'objectives -including efficiency, equity, speed, speed of reform, and signaling- influence the design of concession contracts for infrastructure network services (including communications and transportation services). Competition begins with the unbundling of various stages of delivery. Then competitive bidding is popular, with the public authority keeping property rights on productive assets but conceding their operation to a private firm. The winner gets the right to maximize profits, within limits (having to provide universal services, for example, and avoid price discrimination). In liberalizing the delivery of a service, policymakers must consider not only efficiency but also social and fiscal feasibility. The authors discuss how relevant information asymmetry is in contract design and the award and regulatory processes. They also discuss how to design pricing to accommodate the obligation to provide universal service. To illustrate, they describe Argentina's experiment in liberalization, which is increasingly viewed as a model for changing private sector and government involvement in infrastructure services. Beginning in 1989, Argentina began privatizing utilities and transport services, because the government had decided that it could no longer afford to subsidize those services or finance the investments needed for their effective operation. To introduce competition, the government unbundled services and introduced competitive bidding. It also created sector-specific regulatory agencies to protect consumers from private monopolies and to protect the private concessionaires from government micromanagement. Making concession-based reform and contracted-based regulation of private monopolists sustainable will require strengthening regulatory agencies, clarifying their terms of reference and accountability, and better separating the responsibilities of sector ministers and regulators.Health Economics&Finance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Labor Policies,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Economics&Finance,Education for the Knowledge Economy,Knowledge Economy,Economic Theory&Research
Order and disorder in proteins
No full textIn contrast to the general view that proteins should have a specific 3D structure in solution for their activity, there are many proteins which do not have a folded “native” structure for a big portion of their sequence. While these intrinsically disordered regions are essential for protein function, they cause problems in efforts for determining the 3D structures for the folded domains. It has been shown that the removal of the disordered domains improved the structure determination success both by X-ray crystallography and by NMR. As part of Northeast Structural Genomics (NESG) effort I worked on identifying the disordered and flexible parts of the protein using Hydrogen/Deuterium Exchange with Mass Spectroscopy (HDX-MS) analysis for construct optimization for high-throughput structure determination. Using this method I also studied human Smad3, which is an important part of the TGF-β-signaling pathway; and provided the first experimental data on structural features of the linker domain. During my training, I also studied human Deleted in Oral Cancer (DOC-1) protein, which was one of the proteins I studied by HDX-MS for construct optimization. We determined the solution structure of the folded region of DOC-1, which was shown to be important in cell-cycle regulation and cancer biology; and I also studied structure-function relations. Additionally, we studied the solution structure of Methionine Sulfoxide Reductase B from Bacillus subtilis, an important protein for reversing oxidative damage in cells, by NMR as a part of methods development studies for NMR for large proteins.Ph. D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Asli Erteki
- …
