UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
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Item PREDICTING POLICY: EXAMINING PERCEPTIONS OF ECONOMIC INEQUALITY, COLOR-EVASIVE RACIAL ATTITUDES, AND BELIEFS ABOUT CAPITALISM(2022) Sharma, Rajni; Kivlighan, Dennis; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study examines how beliefs about capitalism, color-evasive racial attitudes, and perceptions about wealth distribution predict redistributive economic policy preferences. I hypothesized that beliefs about capitalism, perceptions of wealth distribution, and color-evasiveness predict policy preferences when controlling for Satisfaction With Life (SWLS) and that critical consciousness action (CA) will moderate this relationship. Approximately 510 individuals completed the Costs of United States Corporate Capitalism (CCC) scale, Colorblind Racial Attitudes Scale (COBRAS), the Critical Action subscale of the Critical Consciousness Scale, ratings of wealth distribution, and questions about their policy preferences through an online survey distributed through MTurk. Results indicated that the CCC and COBRAS subscales predicted policy preferences, over and above demographic variables. Findings from this project may inform how individuals make decisions about policy preferences and on a broader scale, inform solutions for decreasing inequity in the U.S. Implications for research and clinical practice are discussed.Item Essays on inequality, social mobility and redistributive preferences in Transition Economies(2012) Cojocaru, Alexandru; Graham, Carol; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this dissertation I rely on attitudinal and subjective well-being data from Transition Economies to examine several aspects of the relationship between inequality, social mobility and citizens' preferences for government involvement in redistributive policies. In the second chapter I suggest that if aversion to inequality is driven by social mobility considerations or by differences in status between self and relevant others, then aggregate statistical indices of inequality will be unable to capture in a meaningful way changes in status implicit in inequality dynamics. An alternative test of inequality aversion that derives from the experimental literature is adopted, that is better able to capture status driven aversion to inequality. The third chapter investigates empirically the link between the prospects of upward mobility (POUM) and preferences for redistribution. The POUM hypothesis is tested while directly accounting for other factors affecting preferences for redistribution such as risk aversion, beliefs regarding effort and luck as determinants of success, past economic mobility, or religious preferences. The chapter then looks at what shapes individuals' beliefs vis-a-vis future economic mobility. In particular, I examine the role of perceived inequality of opportunity, conceptualized in the spirit of John Rawls. The fourth chapter is concerned with the body of literature that suggests that relative status is an important determinant of well-being by looking at the effect of one's income relative to some reference group on self-reported life satisfaction. In most of these studies the data come from developed countries, while the reference group of the individual is unknown, and thus imposed by the researcher. This essay looks instead at self-reported relative deprivation based on data from six countries from different parts of Eastern Europe and Former Soviet Union and which are at different levels of economic development. The relative salience of several reference groups is examined. Given the cross-sectional nature of the data, an instrumental variable strategy is employed to establish a causal link between relative deprivation and the level of satisfaction with the household's standard of living.Item INEQUALITY, INSTITUTIONS AND REDISTRIBUTION(2005-07-29) Aysan, Ahmet Faruk; Betancourt, Roger; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation explores the role of efficiency of redistributive institutions (ERI) on redistribution. The first substantive essay proposes a theoretical model to explain the lack of strong empirical evidence in favor of a positive relationship between income inequality and redistribution. This chapter first shows that even exogenously given ERI affects the relationship between income inequality and redistribution. Then, it introduces three specifications to endogenize ERI. In these various specifications, increasing inequality reduces the ERI when (1) ERI is an increasing function of average income or (2) political influence on ERI is positively associated with income or (3) the median voter has some prospect of upward mobility. There is one common element in these various specifications. While income inequality increases the pressure for redistribution it also increases the incentive to reduce the efficiency of redistribution in order to constrain aggregate redistribution. Hence, the main conclusion is that one needs consider these conflicting effects in order to account for the puzzling lack of strong empirical evidence for a positive relationship between income inequality and redistribution. The second substantive essay empirically analyzes the role of efficiency of redistributive institutions on redistribution in the form of social security and welfare spending. When measures of ERI are incorporated into the existing empirical specifications of income inequality and redistribution, cross-sectional and panel data regressions show that the ERI significantly increases redistribution. However, we find weaker evidence for the role of income inequality on redistribution. Income inequality does not appear to be strongly significant in various specifications of the redistribution equation. Based on this evidence, this chapter concludes that ERI plays an important role in redistribution but this effect does not resolve the fiscal policy puzzle that is emphasized in the theoretical chapter. Moreover, this chapter also explores the determinants of ERI. Our empirical results confirm the theoretical model that an increase in GDP per capita and democracy increases ERI. However, there is less convincing evidence for the negative role of income inequality on the ERI. Among the other determinants of ERI, freedom of the press and trade openness improve ERI considerably.