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Designated a Doody's Core Title!. What constitutes "informed consent"?. What can I do if the patient lacks the capacity to make decisions?. How should I respond to a patient who requests my help in dying?. What is the rationale for giving a patient medication (chemical restraints) against his or her will?. What exactly are "patient's rights" and how does one advocate for one's patients?. Applied Ethics in Nursing provides an easily understandable guide to the kind of ethical dilemmas you face in practice. Using a question-and-answer format along with numerous case studies

This dissertation consists of three chapters in the field of applied microeconomics with a focus on labor economics and behavioral economics. It covers various topics and methods. A common theme is the importance of decisions. Our economy is the result of innumerable decisions made by individual and institutional agents. The decisions are constraint by resources and differ in complexity and impact. All three chapters contain empirical analyzes of such decisions reaching from binary decisions in the stylized context of the prisoners dilemma, over individual training and employment choices and consequences in late-careers, to the impact of the political choice of the minimum-wage introduction on income inequality and poverty. In the first chapter we study how individuals make decisions in the stylized context of the repeated prisoners' dilemma. In a meta-study we reanalyze 12 experiments on the repeated prisoner's dilemma (PD) and identify three distinct types of players: defectors, cautious cooperators and strong cooperators. The defectors defect with a high probability in every round. Both cooperating types play semi-grim behavior strategies. This simple three-type mixture fits significantly better than any model consisting of combinations of (generalized) pure strategies from the literature, which we fitted at the treatment level (considering 1051 pure-strategy mixtures), even when we use constant specifications of the three types across all experiments. The three best fitting strategies vary slightly across experiments, however. Structurally analyzing these strategies, we find that subjects have limited foresight and subjectively assign utility values to the four states (cc,cd,dc,dd) of the supergame, which relate to the original stage-game payoffs in a manner compatible with inequity aversion. This subjectively transforms the prisoners dilemma game into a coordination game and can reliably explain the strategies used across all 32 treatments. In the second chapter I study how individual decisions interplay ...

This chapter examines the development of applied anthropology in China through the political twists and turns of history and politics during the last eight decades. Chinese anthropology has always had a strong applied emphasis. It began with a mandate to study the political‐economy of ethnic groups in frontier/border regions in the 1920's and 1930's for national security reasons, and it continues today with the objective of cultural preservation and comprehensive development to raise living standards and bring these groups more fully into the national economy. After taking over in 1949, the communist government sent anthropologists throughout the country to provide the ethnographic evidence for conferring official minority status, determining political representation and establishing autonomous regions, counties and districts for ethnic groups. Soon thereafter anthropologists began a nationwide investigation of the history and social organization of already identified ethnic groups as preparation for implementing massive social and economic transformations planned by the government. The Anti‐Rightist Campaign in 1957 ended these investigations, pushed Marxian social philosophy to the forefront, and sidelined anthropology until its post‐Cultural Revolution revival in 1978. In the 1980's and 1990's Chinese anthropologists began to interact with their Western counterparts, adopting multiple theoretical perspectives (not just Marxian), turning to a variety of empirical methods, conducting ethnographic research, and building anthropology as a policy science.

Defence date: 29 January 2021 ; Examining board: Professor Andrea Ichino (European University Insitute); Professor Matteo Cervellati (University of Bologna); Professor Dominik Sachs (University of Munich); Professor Roope Uusitalo (University of Helsinki) ; This thesis consists of three articles in applied economics. In the first essay, I consider the extent to which informational frictions between workers and jobs can be alleviated with short-term contracts in the early career. I leverage a program at a Finnish university which gave out randomly selected students an internship subsidy for a three-month paid internship. I match these students to administrative data to track their transition to labor markets in the years around the program and find evidence that the program significantly improved early labor market success. In the second essay, I study the effect of social sorting on family formation and inequality across households. I leverage the institutional features of Finnish high-school assignments to evaluate how exposure to high- skilled, high-socioeconomic -status peers affect the quality of social ties individuals form. I find that while high schools are an important meeting place for future spouses, but that exposure to higher quality peers will not affect the eventual partner characteristics. This suggests that policies aiming to mix individuals from various backgrounds may not always work anticipated. In the third essay, I study with two co-authors the causes and consequences of broadly defined inequality and democratization using Finland as a natural experiment. We find evidence that the 19th famine affected inequality and labour coercion and thus the balance of political power. On the other hand, we find that these developments were critical in explaining both the increasing threat of revolution and participation in the Finnish civil war in the early 20th century and a subsequent shift to democratization. Areas that initially experienced higher growth in inequality, also experienced the most significant shift to redistribution in the aftermath of the war. ; -- Part 1. Abstract -- Part 2. Internships and the Allocation of Talent -- Part 3. Social Sorting, Family Formation and Inequality -- Part 4. The Violent Origins of Finnish Equality

This dissertation is composed of three papers on distinct topics, each using a different method from applied microeconomics. In chapter 1, I study how candidates' election results affect the future contribution behavior of their donors using a regression discontinuity design. I find that contributors to narrowly-winning House candidates are much more likely to contribute in the following cycle than contributors to narrow-losers. Much of this effect is driven by future giving to the same candidate, contrary to a "reinforcement learning" hypothesis. This has broader implications, as incumbents can rely more on contributions from past donors than can new challengers. I estimate that candidates from narrowly-winning parties receive $130K more in individual contributions than those from narrowly-losing parties in the following cycle, almost all of this coming from these repeat donors.In chapter 2, we study the role of self- and social-image in social comparisons. Wepropose and test a theory that casts peer effects as the result of a signal extraction. The theory posits that individuals receive signals of their own attributes through completion of costly actions. Signal extraction is improved through social comparisons with other's actions. In experiments, we find that subjects choose to complete more real-effort tasks in exchange for charitable donations if they anticipate learning how their decisions compare to the choices of others. Further, differentiated responses to noisy or refined social information adhere to the dynamics of signal extraction.In chapter 3, we characterize how municipal governments respond to economic fluctua- tions, using employment shocks as a proxy. We specifically study the role Tax and Expenditure Limitations play in this response. We find that, following a positive employment shock of one percent, limited municipalities persistently lag behind their unconstrained counterparts in capital- intensive spending, with little differential effect on public safety and administrative expenditures. Our findings illuminate an unintended consequence of fiscal responsibility measures in U.S. cities: limits designed to restrain the size of government may instead alter the government's spending mix, inducing investment cuts that allow a government to maintain patterns of administrative and public safety spending.

"This book provides step-by-step instructions on how to analyze text generated from in-depth interviews and focus groups - i.e., transcripts. The book is primarily designed for research studies with an applied focus, but is also useful for theoretically oriented qualitative research. The book covers all aspects of the qualitative data analysis process including planning, data preparation, identification of themes, codebook development and code application, reliability and inter-coder agreement, data reduction techniques, comparative techniques, integration with quantitative data, and software considerations. The book describes what the authors call "applied thematic analysis", because it is the approach predominantly used in applied qualitative studies (and increasingly in academic contexts). The method employs a phenomenological approach to data analysis which has a primary aim of describing the experiences and perceptions of research participants. The approach presented is similar to Grounded Theory - in that it is inductive, content-driven, and searches for themes within textual data - and is complementary to Grounded Theory on many levels. However, within an applied context a phenomenological approach is primarily concerned with characterizing and summarizing perceptions and lived experiences and applying the results to a particular research problem, rather than building and assessing theoretical models."--

This dissertation combines research on three topics in applied empirical economics. The first paper, which is based on joint work with Patrick Johnston, examines the effect of development projects on civil conflict. The second paper estimates the effect of subsidized employment on the happiness of the unemployed. The third paper, based on joint work with Santiago Guerrero, analyzes the effect of restrictions to alcohol accessibility on Marijuana use.The first paper develops a theoretical model of bargaining and conflict in the context of development projects. The model predicts that development projects cause an increase in violent conflict if governments cannot (1) ensure the project's success in the face of insurgent opposition and (2) credibly commit to honoring agreements reached before the start of the project. The model is tested by estimating the causal effect of a large development program on conflict casualties in the Philippines. Identification is based on a regression discontinuity design that exploits an arbitrary poverty threshold used to assign eligibility for the program. Consistent with the model's predictions, we find that eligible municipalities suffered a substantial increase in casualties, which lasts only for the duration of the project and is split evenly between government troops and insurgents.The second paper estimates the causal effect of a type of subsidized employment projects - Germany's \emph{Arbeitsbeschaffungsmassnahmen} - on self-reported happiness. Results from matching and fixed effects estimators suggest that subsidized employment has a large and statistically significant positive effect on the happiness of individuals who would otherwise have been unemployed. Detailed panel data on pre- and post-project happiness suggests that this effect can neither be explained by self-selection of happier individuals into employment nor by the higher incomes of the employed. This suggests that subsidized employment programs are more effective at increasing the happiness of the unemployed than an increase in unemployment benefits. The third paper estimates the effect of the Minimum Legal Drinking Age of 21 years on Marijuana use. The casual effect of this law is estimated through a regression discontinuity design that compares Marijuana use among individuals just below and just above age 21. We find a significant drop in Marijuana use at age 21, which suggests that individuals substitute between alcohol and Marijuana. Policies that restrict alcohol accessibility are therefore likely to have the unintended consequence of increasing Marijuana use.

The current intellectual and political climate dictates a need for an empirically driven trajectory for the discipline of African American studies. An African-centered worldview in concert with a theoretical research framework to guide Africana studies scholars' use of social science research methods is what is presented in this work. In the 21st century, the unique interests of African-descended people are best served by the empirical approach, specifically when legislative bodies and social service providers require data-based solutions to social problems. Applied Africana Studies is a theoretical framework that guides the production of scholarship that is both centered and relevant to the needs and interests of people of African descent. In some quarters, the empirical method is dismissed because of its disproportionate use by non-African researchers and their politically driven agendas against the interests of African people. To address this, the training of African-centered empirical practitioners who hold the terminal degree in African American studies is an absolute imperative to advance African development on African terms in the 21st century.

This book shows the use of new econometric tools to analyse economic problems and shows possible ways to promote the theory of such new tools. Itis a collection of papers that were presented during two international workshops at the University of Munich. These papers report on new developments in applied econometrics. The book's first part collectscontributions that address new methodological developments, in particular inmicroeconometrics and in multi-equation systems: ordinal variables in microeconometric models, goodness of fit in qualitative choice models, causation in VAR models, and recursive models are the topics dealt with. Part two discusses economic applications of new econometric methods. The topics here are: search models for unemployment, pricing behavior of manufacturing firms, optimal adjustment behavior of firms, and real interest rates

Applied ethics is a growing, interdisciplinary field dealing with ethical problems in different areas of society. It includes for instance social and political ethics, computer ethics, medical ethics, bioethics, envi-ronmental ethics, business ethics, and it also relates to different forms of professional ethics. From the perspective of ethics, applied ethics is a specialisation in one area of ethics. From the perspective of social practice applying eth-ics is to focus on ethical aspects and implications of that particular practice. The Erasmus Mundus Masters Course in Applied Ethics is supported by the European Union. The programme is a collaboration between three European universities; Linköping University, The Centre for Ap-plied Ethics, (Sweden), Utrecht University, the Ethics Institute, (The Netherlands), and the Norwegian University of Science and Technol-ogy, Department of Philosophy, Programme for Applied Ethics (Nor-way). Each year, the programme starts with a common introduction for all students. During this introduction, the teachers present different per-spectives on applied ethics. In this volume the introductions are pub-lished. They give a broad view of different aspects on applied ethics. Göran Collste Programme coordinator ; Contributed authors in this publication are: Bo Petersson, May Thorseth, Marcel Verweij, Anders Nordgren and Rune Nydal.

This dissertation contains three essays in Applied Microeconomics. Chapter 1 provides the first causal estimates of the effect of children's access to computers and the internet on adult educational outcomes such as schooling and choice of major. I exploit cross-cohort variation in access to technology among primary and middle school students in Uruguay, the first country to implement a nationwide one-laptop-per-child program. Despite a notable increase in computer access, educational attainment has not increased. However, college students who had been exposed to the program as children, were more likely to select majors with good employment prospects. Chapter 2 provides the first empirical evidence of the historical effects of natural disasters on economic activity in the United States. Although the literature has focused on salient natural disasters, more than one hounded strike the country every year, causing extensive property destruction and loss of life. My coauthors and I construct an 80 year panel data set that includes the universe of natural disasters in the United States from 1930 to 2010 and study how these shocks affected migration rates, home prices and poverty rates at the county level. Severe disasters increased out-migration rates by 1.5 percentage points and lowered housing prices/rents by 2.5–5.0 percent, but milder disasters had little effect on economic outcomes. Chapter 3 exploits the 1962 publication of Silent Spring, the first successful environmental science book, to investigate whether public information can influence popular demand for environmental regulation. Protecting the environment is often plagued by collective-action problems, so it is important to understand what motivates politicians to act. Combining historical U.S. congressional roll-call votes and census data, I find that the propensity of politicians to vote in favor of pro-environmental regulation increased by 5 to 33 percentage points after the publication of the book. The response to the informational shock varies with the constituency's level of education, income, and exposure to pollution.

The Center for Homeland Defense and Security's unique academic environment brings together mid- and senior-level government officials with world-renowned faculty and experts in the diverse disciplines that comprise homeland security. The CHDS classroom is a place where participants think critically about homeland security issues and work collaboratively to develop strategic solutions. Master's degree participants research and write course papers along with a final thesis. These original works concentrate on proposing creative policies, strategies and approaches to the public safety challenges facing their agencies and the broader homeland security community.