http://hdl.handle.net/1957/4128 2013-05-25T11:59:03Z 2013-05-25T11:59:03Z Olson, Jarrod http://hdl.handle.net/1957/38612 2013-05-18T00:51:35Z 2013-05-04T00:00:00Z

Food Fight: The Effect of Food Availability on the Probability of Violent Conflict Onset Olson, Jarrod In the past decade, scholars have increasingly turned to quantitative analysis to understand the complex interplay of factors driving intrastate conflict. International agencies, nonprofits and governments have maintained that food insecurity is a significant driver of violent conflict. This paper tests this popular assumption with a model drawn from Azar’s Theory of Protracted Social Conflict and a fixed effects logistic regression and finds that food availability has no significant effect on the probability of violent civil conflict onset. However, other factors such as a country’s level of integration into the international system of states and economic growth are likely to be more effective at maintaining global stability. The policy implications are that efforts to promote peace can be more effective by focusing on integration into the world community and economic growth than by focusing exclusively on food availability. Graduation date: 2013

2013-05-04T00:00:00Z Johnston, Alison http://hdl.handle.net/1957/37705 2013-03-22T19:00:42Z 2012-09-01T00:00:00Z

European Economic and Monetary Union's Perverse Effects on Sectoral Wage Inflation: Negative Feedback Effects from Institutional Change? Johnston, Alison Public sector unions push for unmerited wage increases, exacerbating inflation and deficits. Despite this conventional wisdom, governments in several European countries successfully limited public sector wage growth during the 1980s and 1990s. It is argued in this paper that the recent rise in public sector wage inflation in the Euro-zone is an unintended consequence of the shift towards Economic and Monetary Union. I argue that monetary union’s predecessors, the European Monetary System and Maastricht, imposed an institutional constraint on governments, which enhanced their ability to impose moderation: national-level, inflation-averse central banks that could punish rent-seeking sectoral wage-setters via monetary contraction. Monetary union’s altercation of this constraint weakened governments’ capability to deny inflationary settlements. This is the author's peer-reviewed final manuscript, as accepted by the publisher. The published article is copyrighted by Sage Publications and can be found at: http://eup.sagepub.com/.

2012-09-01T00:00:00Z Johnston, Alison Kornelakis, Andreas d'Acri, Costanza Rodriguez http://hdl.handle.net/1957/37008 2013-02-19T23:42:35Z 2011-12-01T00:00:00Z

Social Partners and the Welfare State: Recalibration, Privatization or Collectivization of Social Risks? Johnston, Alison; Kornelakis, Andreas; d'Acri, Costanza Rodriguez The comparative political economy literature has been inconclusive in its assessment of the extent of welfare state retrenchment. One strand of research emphasised that welfare states have not undergone outright retrenchment, but recalibration. Another strand argued that there is a shift towards the privatization of risks and increased reliance on the market. While these assessments likely represent differences in magnitude, our paper seeks to contribute to these debates with an alternative argument: collectivization of social risks. We employ a method of contextualized comparisons, examining three cases of collectivization across diverse contexts: the financing of disability insurance in the Netherlands, training provision for employed and unemployed in Greece, and regulation of atypical contracts in Italy. The paper concludes by discussing the political dynamic that ensued and the wider relevance of the argument to debates in comparative political economy and comparative industrial relations. This is the author's peer-reviewed final manuscript, as accepted by the publisher. The published article is copyrighted by Sage Publications and can be found at: http://ejd.sagepub.com/.

2011-12-01T00:00:00Z Sorce, Evan C. http://hdl.handle.net/1957/36402 2013-02-17T22:16:16Z 2012-09-20T00:00:00Z

Looking at the Relationship between Household Electricity Consumption and Annual Household Income Using an Agent-Based Integrated Framework Sorce, Evan C. Electricity is a vital energy source for modern life, and is used in almost every aspect of daily life. United States electricity consumption totaled nearly 3,886,403 gigawatt hours in 2011. Residential electricity consumption accounts for 37 percent of total electricity consumption in the United States. Between 1990 and 2007, the total volume of electricity sold in the United States grew at an average annual rate of 1.9%. The growth rate in residential energy usage was even higher, growing at an annual rate of 2.4% The oil shocks of the 1970s and major blackouts in 1965, 1977, and 2003 raised energy supply and security concerns. This paper uses the United States Energy Information Agencies Residential Energy Consumption Survey from 1997, 2001, and 2005 and an integrated framework of residential energy consumption to examine the relationship between annual household income and household electricity consumption. Even when controlling for various aspects of household electricity consumption, household annual income is found to be a significant factor in determining residential electricity consumption. Graduation date: 2012

2012-09-20T00:00:00Z