Abstract of ESSAYS IN APPLIED MICROECONOMICS, by AURORA ALEJANDRA RAMÍREZ ÁLVAREZ, Ph.D., Brown University, May 2017 Essays in Applied Microeconomics contains two main chapters written between 2013 and 2017. Chapter 1 examines whether individuals' crime perceptions and crime avoidance behavior respond to changes in crime news coverage. I use data from Mexico, where major media groups agreed to reduce coverage of violence in March 2011. Using a unique dataset on national news content and machine learning techniques, I document that after the Agreement, crime news coverage on television, radio, and newspapers decreases relative to the national homicide rate. Using survey data, I find robust evidence that crime perceptions respond to this change in content. After the Agreement, individuals with higher media exposure are less likely to report that they feel insecure and that their country, state, or municipality is insecure, relative to individuals with lower media exposure. However, I show that these changes in crime perceptions are not accompanied by changes in crime avoidance behavior (i.e. no longer going out at night for fear of being a victim of crime), or at least that effects are much smaller. Chapter 2 studies the effect of land ownership reforms in the allocation of local public goods in rural Mexico. I estimate the effect of acquiring dominio pleno, the private ownership of communal areas of land known as ejidos, on the allocation of local public goods, such as piped water and electricity. Using a first-differences matching estimator to address selection concerns, I show that the percentage of households with access to water and electricity decreases in ejidos with dominio pleno. I suggest that these results can be explained by an increase in mobilization costs in privatized ejidos after the reform, which is consistent with lower turnout rates in municipal elections observed in these areas.
Ramírez Álvarez, Aurora Alejandra,
"Essays in Applied Microeconomics"
(2017).
Economics Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.7301/Z09K48QZ
