Why do some American social movements enjoy Congressional attention while others do not? By contextualizing this question in existing social movement and policy elite preferences theory, this paper proposes a novel theory identifying social movement threat as a key causal mechanism underlying recognition from Congress. To operationalize this, “social movement threat” was measured by analyzing the size, frequency, and violence of protests organized under a corresponding social movement in a given year, while “Congressional attention” was measured by the amount of proposed legislation addressing a corresponding social movement in a given year. The project focuses on the actions of formal social movement organizations as a unit of analysis and hypothesizes that a continuous trend of threatening protest tactics is key to sparking Congressional attention. Preliminary multivariate regression analysis of three distinct social movements and over 300 protests in the 20th century indicates that more threatening social movements may have garnered greater Congressional attention in the form of proposed bills but did not necessarily enjoy a significantly higher amount of passed laws. Further, while Congressional attention did not increase with movement threat, it does appear that it increased over the lifespan of a social movement. The implication of these preliminary findings is that protests do little to influence Congressional decision-making, but that some other characteristic of an ongoing social movement may spark increased Congressional attention.

The dominant perspective within school governance scholarship is Iacconne and Lutz’s Dissatisfaction Theory, which posits that local school politics are democratic because representatives elected by the public. If a constituency is sufficiently dissatisfied with its elected officials, incumbent board members will be voted out, inducing administrative change in the district. Within this framework, most scholars have focused on the institutional response to incumbent defeat, with topics like superintendent turnover and policy reform. This study places theoretical emphasis upon the community as the foundation of democratic self-government and investigates underlying socioeconomic conditions which induce citizens to vote out their representatives. It is hypothesized that civic engagement affects the causal linkage between dissatisfaction and incumbent defeat as posited by Dissatisfaction Theory. This is tested by a multiple regression model, which incorporates 141 school districts using ACS and newspaper data. If this hypothesis holds, then a positive correlation between civic engagement and democratic outcomes is established. The underlying insight being that civic culture is an essential consideration for local democratic governance.

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected nearly every facet of life, most alarmingly that of food security. Scholars suggests that food security is one of the most important indicators of physical and financial wellbeing. Many governmental policies, both on the federal and state level, have been passed in order to alleviate some of the building pressure. Grassroot organizations, particularly food pantries, have also stepped up in order to meet the increased demand for food security. My study examines the success rate of various food pantries across Washington State in their addressing of local food insecurities. “Success” is measured by how many households each food bank served. In order to collect this data, I individually contacted food banks across Washington State requesting them for the number of households that their pantries served between January and August of 2020. As food pantries are community-based organizations, this study will specifically examine whether food pantry success has been influenced by community population size. A multivariate regression model is employed in order to examine whether locality population size (primarily measured by ZIP code) has a statistically significant relationship with the number of households served, controlling for other variables. It is expected that lower population size will lead to higher rates of food bank success because (1) smaller communities have stronger collective identities and (2) local information is more accessible in smaller communities. If the regression fails to reject the null hypothesis, the implications of this study would be that food bank operators may benefit their communities more by starting multiple smaller local food banks rather than upgrading existing ones. These findings may also be applicable to other grass-roots non-profit organizations wishing to expand their reach.

Unionization has been proven to give significant benefits for workers, specifically in terms of wages and employee benefits. However, in spite of these benefits, unionization has been on the decline in the United States since the 1960s. One of the main reasons for this decline is right-to-work (RTW) laws, which allow employees to opt out of paying union dues that contribute to the cost of union representation. This poses an interesting puzzle: why are RTW laws enacted in the United States, in spite of the negative economic effects towards workers? My research attempts to examine the relationship between a state’s ‘economy’ and RTW laws. I theorize that RTW laws, while hurting employees, provide a significant incentive to firms who are looking to relocate. Therefore, states with a lower gross state product (GSP) may be incentivized to institute a RTW law. I first look at GSP per capita to identify if there are cases where GSP stagnated, and then a RTW law was enacted. I then analyze the 8 most recent cases of RTW laws, using state data from 1965 to 2019 to look at the impacts of RTW laws on GSP, employment, median household income, and unionization. This is done using a multivariate regression analysis, to test the correlation between the passing of the RTW law and my dependent variables. Ultimately, this study hopes to both build on the existing body of evidence that asserts a negative relationship between both RTW states and unionization, and research additional effects of RTW laws beyond unionization by focusing on state economic development, and incentives around proposing a RTW law. 

This paper investigates the impacts that asymmetric information has on private pediatric health insurance coverage. In order to do so, I use the Rothschild and Stiglitz model of equilibria in perfectly competitive insurance markets and apply it to pediatric health insurance. It examines the shifts that occur in the model due to exogenous changes from asymmetric information between insurers and parents. These information problems occur in three forms; moral hazard, when people consume more care because they have health insurance; the principal-agent problem, when a task is delegated to an agent and the principal cannot directly observe the agent's actions; and adverse selection, when the consumer of health insurance has more information than the provider. These information asymmetries affect the behavior of both consumers and suppliers of pediatric health insurance, and so results in changes of supply and demand of insurance contracts. Ideally, in an equilibrium contract, consumers would recieve maximum utility, firms would make non-negative profits, and no other possible contracts would have the potential to make the firms greater non-negative profits. However, due to the changes in supply and demand from asymmetric information, this efficient outcome can become harder to obtain. By examining the changes that happen in the market with the modified Rothschild and Stiglitz model, I examine the the existence of equilibrium points, as well as the anticipated effects on health insurance coverage and health insurance prices. Because there are so many possible events that can occur, such as changes in parental income and risk, and the uncertainty of the magnitude of those events, no concrete conslusions can be made. It can however, be said that pediatric health insurance coverage may change in the presence of asymmetric information. 

The Chinese housing market is rising so fast compared to other countries, such as South Korea and the United States. In China, skewed sex ratios caused by the "One-Child" Policy increase the intensity of the marriage market, motivating men to purchase more and better houses in the favor of enhancing their attractiveness in the competitive marriage market. In this paper, we explore the implications of the "Two-Child" Policy on the intensity of the marriage market, represented by the sex ratios (number of boys per 100 girls), and the correlation between the sex ratios and growth rate of house prices. To test the effects of the “Two-Child” Policy, we regress the logarithmic form of house prices on the sex ratios, inflation rates, and other independent variables through building a fixed-effects regression model with two fixed-effects variables, City Fixed Effects for each province in China and Year Fixed Effects for each year from 2002-2019. The result indicates that a 1-unit increase in the sex ratio would increase house prices by 3%. Therefore, we are certain that skewed sex ratios have a negative impact on the growth rate of house prices. High housing costs in China make it harder for future generations to live. Through taking local sex ratios into consideration of implementing the optimal property tax, we could slow down the growth rate of house prices and increase the welfare of the citizens.