Lily

Lily

PhD Candidate

 

Dissertation:

Abstract In my dissertation, I examine an understudied feature of civil wars: legal militias. These are armed groups that receive formal recognition from the state but remain separate from regular forces like the police or military. I argue that legalization encourages militia formation by lowering the costs of mobilization. This is most likely to occur in areas that combine three conditions: a high insurgent threat, which creates demand for protection; high land inequality, which gives local elites strong incentives to mobilize; and intermediate state capacity, where the state is strong enough to offer recognition but too weak to provide direct security. Once formed, legal militias reshape conflict dynamics by providing local intelligence and making the armed landscape more legible to the state.

Reviewed & In Review

Making, Updating, and Querying Causal Models with CausalQueries

with Till Tietz, Georgiy Syunyaev, and Macartan Humphreys

Abstract The `R` package `CausalQueries` can be used to make, update, and query causal models defined on binary nodes. Users provide a causal statement of the form `X -> M <- Y; M <- -> Y` which is interpreted as a structural causal model over a collection of binary nodes. Then `CausalQueries` allows users to (1) identify the set of principal strata—causal types—required to characterize all possible causal relations between nodes that are consistent with the causal statement; (2) determine a set of parameters needed to characterize distributions over these causal types; (3) update beliefs over distributions of causal types using a `stan` model plus data; and (4) pose a wide range of causal queries of the model, using either the prior distribution, the posterior distribution, or a user-specified candidate vector of parameters.

Submitted to Journal of Statistical Software

Citizen Attitudes Toward Traditional and State Authorities: Substitutes or Complements?

with Peter van der Windt, Macartan Humphreys, Jeffrey Timmons, and Marteen Voors

Abstract Do citizens view state and traditional authorities as substitutes or complements? Past work has been divided on this question. Some scholars point to competition between attitudes toward these entities, suggesting substitution, whereas others highlight positive correlations, suggesting complementarity. Addressing this question, however, is difficult, as it requires assessing the effects of exogenous changes in the latent valuation of one authority on an individual’s support for another. We show that this quantity—a type of elasticity—cannot be inferred from correlations between support for the two forms of authority. We employ a structural model to estimate this elasticity of substitution using data from 816 villages in the Democratic Republic of Congo and plausibly exogenous rainfall and conflict shocks. Despite prima facie evidence for substitution logics, our model’s outcomes are consistent with complementarity.

📄 Published Article
💻 Replication Code

(Class) Disparities in Policing

Abstract This paper proposes a game-theoretic model to explain class-based disparities in police violence, emphasizing how unequal access to judicial institutions shapes citizen-police interactions and the spatial distribution of officer behavior. Unlike existing accounts of taste-based or statistical discrimination, this model highlights how structural inequalities in complaint mechanisms lead to a self-reinforcing dynamic: poor citizens, facing higher costs and lower probabilities of success when reporting police misconduct, are less likely to denounce abuse. Anticipating minimal risk of punishment, aggressive officers gravitate toward these areas, while non-aggressive officers prefer wealthier neighborhoods where complaints are more credible. The model yields clear comparative statics and multiple equilibria, showing how institutional design and officer assignment policies can either exacerbate or mitigate these disparities.

Marching for Change: Quantifying the Effects of Women’s Rights Protests on Legislation and Femicide in Latin America

with Johanna Reyes

Abstract Do protests against violence toward women help reduce it, or do they exacerbate it? Over the past 20 years, mass demonstrations with feminist causes have dramatically increased across the region. These movements have advocated for critical legislative changes, including the legalization of abortion and the recognition of femicide as a distinct criminal offense. But how effective are these protests? We analyze their impact both on legislation and on (actual) violence against women. Using an instrumental variable, we provide the first cross-country evaluation of the effects of protest agenda-seeding on femicide and whether these protests directly influence legislation criminalizing violence against women.