JENNIFER DOLEAC, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Economics, used data from the National Incidence-Based Reporting System in a working paper to examine how the probability of getting caught when committing a crime, proxied by ambient daylight, impacts criminal activity. She found that robbery rates decrease by an average of 51% during the hour of sunset following the shift to DST in the spring. She also found large drops in cases of reported murder (48%) and rape (56%).
MOLLY LIPSCOMB, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Economics, co-organized an Environment and Development Conference with the Department of Economics, Center for International Studies, and Darden School of Business. The conference featured sessions on sanitation, regulation and environmental protection (cost-benefit), exposure, risks, and vulnerability, water quality, and conservation. The keynote address served as the annual Merrick Lecture, given by Michael Greenstone, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, on “Is Adaptation the Only Solution to Climate Change?”
CHRISTINE MAHONEY, Associate Professor of Public Policy and Politics, received tenure in May 2013. Mahoney’s research focuses on advocacy and activism; specifically she studies the framing, messaging and strategic decisions of civil society organizations seeking to change public policy. She is currently working on two large projects: The first looks at global advocacy on behalf of the displaced, and the second is an NSF-funded project using computer-automated content analysis to better understand what types of political frames are successful in shifting public policy debates.
ERIC PATASHNIK, Professor of Public Policy and Politics, co-organized a conference on “Congress and Policy Making in the 21st Century” with Jeff Jenkins, Associate Professor of Politics, as an outgrowth of their recent edited book, Living Legislation: Durability, Change, and the Politics of American Law Making. Panel sessions discussed Congress and economic policy, Congress and society, Congress and domestic policy dilemmas, and congressional policymaking in a polarized age.
SOPHIE TRAWALTER, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Psychology, published “The Invisible Man: Interpersonal Goals Moderate Inattentional Blindness to African Americans” in the Journal of Experimental Psychology with co-authors B. Keith Payne and Jazmin L. Brown-Iannuzzi, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Kelly M. Hoffman, University of Virginia. Their modification of the now famous “basketball” inattentional blindness experiment found that white women were less likely to notice an African American man walk through a video than a white man when focused on a psychologically close interpersonal goal.
CRAIG VOLDEN, Professor of Public Policy and Politics, published “The Diffusion of Policy Diffusion Research in Political Science” in the British Journal of Political Science with co-authors Erin Graham, Drexel University, and Charles Shipan, University of Michigan. The article suggests that studies of policy diffusion would benefit from paying more attention to developments in other subfields and from taking a more systematic approach to tackling the questions of when and how policy diffusion takes place.