College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
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Item TRANSFORMING VACANT LOTS: INVESTIGATING AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO REDUCING FEAR OF CRIME(2015) De Biasi, Alaina Marie; McGloin, Jean; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Vacant lots deserve criminological attention insofar as their disorderly conditions create opportunities for a host of negative outcomes including “fear of crime.” The present study considers whether incorporating fundamental standards of Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED) into traditional urban greening practices of vacant lots provides added value with regard to fear of crime above and beyond the traditional endeavor. This study conducted an experiment (N=523) from a sample of undergraduate students. Research participants were asked to report their level of fear of crime in regards to one of three randomly assigned computer-adjusted images: 1) A disorderly lot; 2) A traditional greened lot; and 3) A CPTED lot. This study found that on average participants who viewed a CPTED lot had lower levels of fear of crime than all other participants. This study discusses the implications of this finding for future research.Item VOTING FOR CORRUPTION: WHEN DO VOTERS SUPPORT CORRUPT POLITICIANS?(2015) McNally, Darragh Charles; Calvo, Ernesto; Uslaner, Eric; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation explores the determinants of when voters are willing to support corrupt politicians. The first paper presents a unique survey experiment that asks respondents to choose between pairs of politicians who have different ideological positions, and are accused of corruption. The survey goes some way toward recreating the tradeoffs one makes when voting in the real world. Results show that voters are more likely to choose corrupt politicians who agree with their position on an issue when issue salience is high. Results also show that institutional trust decreases the likelihood of choosing a corrupt politician, while perceptions of corruption increase the likelihood. Institutional trust and perceptions of corruption also have a modifying effect on issue salience. The second paper uses several datasets to test the effects of several mechanisms on the likelihood of a person voting for Silvio Berlusconi. Taking Berlusconi as the archetypal corrupt yet electorally successful politician I show that social norms that justify corruption in one’s peer group extend to voting and increase the likelihood of supporting Berlusconi. I find that perceptions of political corruption have an effect on the likelihood of supporting Berlusconi, and that this effect is not constant over time. I also find that trust in the judiciary has no effect on the likelihood of supporting Berlusconi – contrary to Berlusconi’s claims of persecution by the judiciary – and that trusting the institution of television has a strong effect on the likelihood of voting for Berlusconi. The third paper uses a unique survey experiment to measure changes in the support of voters for corrupt politicians. Results show that context matters, with voters’ sensitivity to corruption being shaped by the type of political post held by politicians and the overall corruption in the political system. Experimental results show that voters are more forgiving of acts of corruption among higher ranked politicians in executive politicians, when corruption is common. Overall, I provide evidence showing that voters are often willing to support corrupt politicians, and that transparency alone will have a limited effect in increasing the likelihood that corrupt politicians will be punished electorally.Item Design of Discrete Auction(2010) Sujarittanonta, Pacharasut; Cramton, Peter; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Chapter 1: Efficient Design of an Auction with Discrete Bid Levels This paper studies one of auction design issues: the choice of bid levels. Full efficiency is generally unachievable with a discrete auction. Since there may be more than one bidder who submits the same bid, the auction cannot completely sort bidders by valuation. In effort to maximize efficiency, the social planner tries to choose the partition rule-a rule dictating how type space is partitioned to group bidders who submit the same bid together-to maximize efficiency. With the efficient partition rule, we implement bid levels with sealed-bid and clock auctions. We find that the efficient bid levels in the sealed-bid second-price auction may be non-unique and efficient bid increments in a clock auction with highest-rejected bid may be decreasing. We also show that revealing demand is efficiency-enhancing even in the independent private valuation setting where price discovery is not important. Chapter 2: Pricing Rule in a Clock Auction We analyze a discrete clock auction with lowest-accepted bid (LAB) pricing and provisional winners, as adopted by India for its 3G spectrum auction. In a perfect Bayesian equilibrium, the provisional winner shades her bid while provisional losers do not. Such differential shading leads to inefficiency. An auction with highest-rejected bid (HRB) pricing and exit bids is strategically simple, has no bid shading, and is fully efficient. In addition, it has higher revenues than the LAB auction, assuming profit maximizing bidders. The bid shading in the LAB auction exposes a bidder to the possibility of losing the auction at a price below the bidder's value. Thus, a fear of losing at profitable prices may cause bidders in the LAB auction to bid more aggressively than predicted assuming profit-maximizing bidders. We extend the model by adding an anticipated loser's regret to the payoff function. Revenue from the LAB auction yields higher expected revenue than the HRB auction when bidders' fear of losing at profitable prices is sufficiently strong. This would provide one explanation why India, with an expressed objective of revenue maximization, adopted the LAB auction for its upcoming 3G spectrum auction, rather than the seemingly superior HRB auction. Chapter 3: Discrete Clock Auctions: An Experimental Study We analyze the implications of different pricing rules in discrete clock auctions. The two most common pricing rules are highest-rejected bid (HRB) and lowest-accepted bid (LAB). Under HRB, the winners pay the lowest price that clears the market; under LAB, the winners pay the highest price that clears the market. Both the HRB and LAB auctions maximize revenues and are fully efficient in our setting. Our experimental results indicate that the LAB auction achieves higher revenues. This also is the case in a version of the clock auction with provisional winners. This revenue result may explain the frequent use of LAB pricing. On the other hand, HRB is successful in eliciting true values of the bidders both theoretically and experimentally.Item An Experimental Evaluation of After School Program Participation on Problem Behavior Outcomes: Does Pre-Existing Risk Moderate the Effects of Program Participation?(2009) Cross, Amanda Brown; Gottfredson, Denise C; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Background: Some prevention programs negatively affect participants. Previous research indicates that peers can cause these negative effects. However, little is known about which students may be most vulnerable to negative peer effects in prevention interventions. Purpose: This study tests the effect of participation in an after-school program (ASP) on student outcomes of peer delinquency, problem behavior and antisocial attitudes and beliefs for students of differing pre-test levels of risk for those outcomes. Drawing on social learning theory, this study examines whether low- and moderate- risk students in the intervention are more likely to acquire delinquent behaviors and beliefs in the ASP than their already-delinquent counterparts. Participants: 447 middle school students attending underperforming schools in Baltimore County, Maryland. Intervention: The data are drawn from an experimental evaluation of an after school program which operated in five middle schools in Baltimore County during the 2006-2007 academic year. The overall evaluation of the program found null effects on the wide range of measured outcomes (including academic achievement and delinquency). I explore whether the lack of beneficial program effects is partially attributable to negative effects among low and moderate risk participants who absorbed negative beliefs and behaviors from high-risk peers in the ASP. Research Design: Randomized, controlled field trial. Findings: Results indicate that low- and moderate- risk youth are not more likely to experience negative outcomes than high-risk youths. On the contrary, low-risk participants are less likely to experience negative effects than high-risk participants. Students who began the program with elevated negative peer influences grew in this characteristic if they often participated in the ASP but declined in negative peer influences if they less often attended the program. Implications for universal prevention are discussed.