Essays on politics and education

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Political Science, 2019

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Cox Alcaíno, María Loreto.
Other Authors: F. Daniel Hidalgo.
Format: Thesis
Language:eng
Published: Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2020
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/124277
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author Cox Alcaíno, María Loreto.
author2 F. Daniel Hidalgo.
author_facet F. Daniel Hidalgo.
Cox Alcaíno, María Loreto.
author_sort Cox Alcaíno, María Loreto.
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spelling mit-1721.1/1242772020-03-25T03:28:12Z Essays on politics and education Cox Alcaíno, María Loreto. F. Daniel Hidalgo. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science Political Science. Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Political Science, 2019 Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. Includes bibliographical references. This thesis comprises two projects on politics and education. The first one studies the consequences of unmet expectations after higher education in political behavior. It uses a larges ample panel that I designed and implemented in Chile, which follows students in their incorporation to the labor market (14,233 higher education students around graduation time in 2016, and 3,948 of them one year later). I use two different empirical methods. First, a survey experiment (Paper 1): after revealing their labor expectations for one year later, and before answering questions on political behavior, respondents randomly received information on average labor outcomes of past graduates from their same degree and institution. Second, panel methods (Paper 2): I calculate the gap between expected and actual outcomes of higher education at the individual level and estimate the relation between gaps and changes in political behavior. Both methods robustly show that unmet expectations move individuals toward more pro-equality / pro government ideology. I interpret these results as coming from undermined perceptions of social mobility, induced by unmet expectations, in the lines of Picketty (1995) and Alesina and Giuliano (2011). Regarding political position, respondents with unmet expectations, despite moving to the left in ideology, punish the left-wing incumbent government for their misfortune, as in retrospective voting theory. The second project (Paper 3), coauthored with Eyzaguirre, Gallego, and Garcia, studies the electoral effects of providing information on the service provision of incumbent mayors through a randomized intervention in the 2016 local elections in Chile. We sent letters to 128,033 voters informing about performance of local public schools (levels and changes), and we vary the yardstick in each letter (average and maximum performance). Results are different for old electoral booths, where people are older and have a longer electoral history, and new booths, where people are younger and have usually voted in a couple of elections, at most. In old booths, bad relative performance reduces turnout, which translates almost entirely in less support for the incumbent and produces spillovers to the election of local councilors. Results are concentrated in the outcomes in levels and with average performance as the yardstick. by Loreto Cox. Paper 1: Great Expectations: The Effect of the Gap between Expected and Actual Outcomes of Higher Education on Political Behavior. A Survey Experiment -- Paper 2: Great Expectations: The Effect of the Gap between Expected and Actual Outcomes of Higher Education on Political Behavior. A Panel Analysis -- Paper 3: Provision of Information and Voting Behavior: Experimental Evidence from Education and Local Governments. Ph. D. Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Political Science 2020-03-24T15:37:37Z 2020-03-24T15:37:37Z 2019 2019 Thesis https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/124277 1145016003 eng MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582 209 pages application/pdf Massachusetts Institute of Technology
spellingShingle Political Science.
Cox Alcaíno, María Loreto.
Essays on politics and education
title Essays on politics and education
title_full Essays on politics and education
title_fullStr Essays on politics and education
title_full_unstemmed Essays on politics and education
title_short Essays on politics and education
title_sort essays on politics and education
topic Political Science.
url https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/124277
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