National Science Foundation

For many years, the field of international relations neglected the study of war termination relative to studies of the causes or onset of war. Recently, gaps in our knowledge about how, when, and why wars have begun to be filled by new scholarship. Yet virtually all of this scholarship assumes that war termination is a relatively static phenomenon. The conventional wisdom is that wars end, and that the causes and consequences of war termination are constant across time as well as space.

It is widely believed that poor and unemployed young men are more likely to fight, riot and rebel. In poor countries like Liberia, governments are especially fearful of the young, urban poor, who may be especially vulnerable to armed recruitment, rioting, or election violence. In addition to increased security, the most common policy recommendation is cash transfer and employment programs. This study uses a field experiment with high-risk young men in Liberia to answer four questions. First, is there a causal relationship between poverty and violence?

Under the supervision of Prof. Pamela Smith, Ph.D student Pierre-Etienne Stockland will explore the development of etymological science with a focus on how the results of biological research on invasive insect populations have enhanced the state's capacity to respond to agricultural disasters.

This research project will develop techniques for using national survey data to estimate dynamic measures of public opinion across a variety of types of subnational units such as states, congressional districts, and state legislative districts. These techniques will allow researchers to generate accurate estimates of public opinion over time by fine-grained demographic-geographic-temporal subgroups. National surveys are designed to give good estimates of national public opinion at a particular point in time.