VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Essays in Macroeconomics

In the introductory chapter of this dissertation, I motivate my use of disaggregate, cross-sectional variation for studying the effects of various policies on the aggregate economy. In particular, I argue that the topics empirically studied in this dissertation are historically unprecedented in nature and therefore necessitate a cross-sectional approach. I briefly review the anatomy of the linear least squares estimator to illustrate how standard cross-sectional designs can only recover the relative effects of policies. I then preview the theoretical tools I use in this dissertation to make the mapping between cross-sectional estimates and aggregate effects explicit./nIn the second chapter of my dissertation, I generalize a textbook currency union model to incorporate trade in intermediates among labor markets in order to study the local, spillover, and aggregate effects of government spending. This theory provides a theoretical framework for interpreting the empirical, cross-sectional moments estimated in the subsequent chapter. The spillover effects of government spending mediated by trade in intermediates represents a novel and understudied mechanism by which local fiscal multiplier estimates likely represent a lower bound on the aggregate, Zero Lower Bound (ZLB) fiscal multiplier. In my framework, there is both a local and a spillover (relative) multiplier of government spending. Theoretically, summing both multipliers together yields an approximate lower bound on the aggregate, ZLB fiscal multiplier./nIn the third chapter, I use geographic variation in government spending under the 2009 Recovery Act and import-export linkages between states from the 2007 Commodity Flow Survey to estimate a local relative multiplier of 1.46 and a spillover relative multiplier of 1.33. Adding both together yields an approximate lower bound on the aggregate, ZLB fiscal multiplier of 2.8, nearly doubling the lower bound implied by the local multiplier estimate alone. A sectoral decomposition of both estimated multipliers strongly corroborates the trade in intermediates spillover mechanism./nThe final chapter studies the relative and aggregate economic effects of a prominent policy intervention implemented around the world during the COVID-19 pandemic by similarly interpreting causally identified, cross-sectional estimates through the lens of a currency union model. In particular, the high-frequency, decentralized implementation of Stay-at-Home orders in the U.S. is used to disentangle the labor market effects of SAH orders from the general economic disruption wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis implies that each week of SAH exposure increased a state's weekly initial unemployment insurance (UI) claims by 1.9% of its employment level relative to other states. A back-of-the-envelope calculation implies that, of the 17 million UI claims between March 14 and April 4, only 4 million were attributable to SAH orders. A currency union model is developed to provide conditions for mapping this estimate to aggregate employment losses attributable to such orders.

Advisor: Gorodnichenko, Yuriy
Modes of Deliberation in Machine Ethics

This dissertation is about the purpose of artificial intelligence (AI) research. New learning algorithms, scales of computation, and modes of sensory input make it possible to better predict or simulate decision-making than ever before. But this does not tell us whether or how AI systems should be built. In fact there is much anxiety about how to build AI applications in ways that respect or enact the decision criteria of existing human institutions. But instead of how to better predict or protect how we decide things, my research question is: how can AI tools be used to reorganize the choices we make about how we want to live together? Answering this question requires investigating the conditions under which deliberation is possible about the systems being built—their models, their real-world performance, and their effects on human domains. These three modes of deliberation are philosophically outlined in the introduction and named as sociotechnical specification, normative cybernetics, and machine politics./nThe first chapter pursues sociotechnical specification in the context of routing algorithms for autonomous vehicle (AV) fleets. It asks what it would mean to relate this emerging transportation model to the other legacy systems adjacent to the travel domain. It sketches proxies in terms of “known unknown” features of the driving environment. These would need to be monitored and serve as targets for optimization in order for the performance of the AV fleet to be considered to be robustly good. The second chapter pursues a normative cybernetics of AVs in terms of a sustained internal critique of reinforcement learning (RL). This introduces new policy questions, whose answers would correspond to types of feedback between the behavior of AV firms and civil society or state organizations. The third chapter outlines the elements of machine politics in terms of concepts borrowed from contemporary analytic philosophy. Ruth Chang’s notion of parity is mobilized to demonstrate the possibility of domain deliberation at different stages of AI development. This comprises a critique of existing schools of thought, represented here in terms of epistemicism (the notion that the structure of human activities can be passively learned and observed) and ontic incomparabilism (the notion that human activities cannot be organically modeled or developed by means of AI). The three types of feedback that are produced through active developmental inquiry are presented in terms of featurization, optimization, and integration, all of which comprise the structural choices at stake in machine politics.

Advisor: Bates, David
Disorders and Dynamics of Reticular Materials Studied by Single-Crystal X-ray Diffraction

The work presented here focuses on understanding the complex structural phenomena inside metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs), and covalent organic frameworks (COFs) by single-crystal X-ray diffraction (SXRD). These materials feature high porosity inside crystal structures, making spaces for the displacements and motions of the framework that are rarely observed in conventional crystals formed by close packing of molecules. While most studies solely rely on SXRD to obtain the skeleton of the structures, recent advances in the crystallographic analyses of reticular materials highlight the importance of rigorous interpretation of the disorders and how the observed static disorders might be associated with dynamics. Chapters 2 and 3 describe a framework-assisted crystal structure determination method for complex small molecules, the coordinative alignment method. Guests were incorporated and covalently attached into MOF-520, providing a platform to understand the behaviors of the guests when residing in a void space. Chapter 2 analyzes the stereoselectivity of the method originated from asymmetric coordination bond, which explains why the method can prevent a primary source of disorder that often interferes structural determination of guests. The thorough look at the solvent-induced guest disorder in Chapter 3 provides an insight into solvent-guest interactions that generally exist in porous crystals, and additionally introduces a method for improving the quality of structural solutions by solvent removal. Chapter 4 reports a correction to a previously reported ZIF structure (ZIF-90) after considering merohedral twinning. Rigorous crystallographic studies revealed the origin of merohedral twinning and associated it with a displacive phase transition at elevated temperatures, introducing a new facet to the forms of disorders in ZIFs and an unprecedented cause of displacive phase transition among any other materials. Finally, Chapter 5 describes the design and synthesis of a woven COF, which by design will transfer to a structure of interlocking 2D rings upon post-synthetic demetallation. It aims at a material at the boundary of crystalline and non-crystalline and thus challenging the boundary of crystallographic characterizations.

Advisor: Yaghi, Omar M.
Bordering the Nation: Land, Life, and Law at the U.S.-Mexico Border and on O’odham Jeved (land)

Bordering the Nation: Land, Life, and Law at the U.S.-Mexico Border and on O’odham Jeved (land), theorizes the U.S.-Mexico borderlands from an Indigenous cultural, epistemological, and political standpoint. How, it asks, do legal, social, and ceremonial demarcations, claims, performances, and authorities in the borderlands shape, and how have they shaped, O’odham jeved (Indigenous land)? Analyzing geopolitical borders as they have been constituted, contested (or ignored), reified, and made permeable over more than a century (1900- 2020), I conclude that settler imaginaries and jurisdictions collaborate in the borderlands under the auspices of border security, conservation, and humanitarian aid to both materially and symbolically undermine and inhibit O’odham connections and claims to land. Following an Indigenous and Ethnic Studies methodology and ethic, my project draws from (1) government archives, records from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the National Park Service, U.S. district courts, and the Tucson City Council; (2) Indigenous and migrant literatures—poetry, court testimonies, and oral histories (3) and ethnographic fieldnotes, which I collected while working alongside O’odham communities between January 2019 and March of 2020. The study is presented in five chapters. Chapter One brings the reader into the Indigenous borderlands and introduces the reader to O’odham jeved. Chapter Two investigates how Bureau of Indian Affairs officials leveraged geopolitical incorporation in the early 1900’s to control Indigenous people and Indigenous land spanning the border. Shifting to the present, Chapter Three, studies the Tucson City Council as a point of contact for actors across O’odham jeved. Looking to city resolutions passed in response to the happenings at the U.S.-Mexico border, I discern the flexibility and rigidity of contemporary jurisdictional power in the borderlands. Chapter Four theorizes the connection between Indigenous land and criminal immigration law by exploring U.S. v. Scott Warren (2019), a case in which a white humanitarian aid worker stood trial for allegedly harboring two undocumented border crossers. Citing the inhospitable landscape, both the prosecution and the defense constructed the land as an agent of violence to be accounted for, defied, or relied upon. Finally, Chapter Five, analyzes the haṣañ̃ (saguaro cactus) as a symbol in Indigenous and migrant literatures through which they contest national jurisdictions and assert their relationships to land.

Advisor: Biolsi, Thomas
RETHINKING KUWAIT’S MANDATORY ACQUISITION REGIME: A PROPOSAL FOR IMPROVED FINANCIAL MARKET PARTICIPATION

The ongoing trend in the field of mandatory acquisitions is to consider issues from the perspective of minority shareholders rights. How can minority shareholder obtain a fair opportunity whenever a mandatory acquisition occurs in the corporation. In this noble pursuit for minority rights in the corporation arises the common mandatory bid rule (MBR), which offers minority shareholders the option to sell shares at a price equal to the controlling seller.Kuwait, as it began to develop its market, implemented the MBR to protect shareholders. Yet, it now appears that this adoption may not have the intended results on market growth in Kuwait. Adoption of the MBR in Kuwait raises many questions as to why, how, and for what purpose it was considered the mechanism to protect minority shareholders in Kuwait. In order for Kuwait to develop a more robust exchange, certain modifications need to be made to its market practices, specifically its MBR. This paper explores the history of the MBR in Kuwait and then examines how it has been used in Kuwait to protect shareholders but discourage acquisitions, resulting in stagnation that contrasts with the goals of the Kuwait Development Plan of 2035. A potential framework is provided that would retain minority protections while encouraging market growth, including increasing public listings on the exchange. Moreover, while a robust exchange is ideal, Kuwait also needs to implement long-term protections as it foresees its market capacity expanding, offering a national security mechanism to entice foreign shareholders while ensuring market transactions occur in Kuwait’s best interest.

Advisor: Gadinis, Stavros
Extracting fast subpopulations from fragmentary live cell single-particle trajectories

Stroboscopic photoactivated single particle tracking (spaSPT) relies on stochasticlabeling to isolate the paths of individual fluorophores, and can provide information about the behavior of biological macromolecules in their native cellular environment. Existing spaSPT modalities generate large numbers of short trajectories, each representing a fragment of an individual emitter's path. When interpreting this data through the lens of diffusion models, it is essential to account for the fragmentary nature of trajectories, experimental biases arising from the imaging geometry, and our ignorance about the correct underlying diffusion model. In this thesis, we describe several methods for interpretation of spaSPT data that provide estimates about the number and characteristics of mobility states in spaSPT data while accounting for known experimental artifacts. We explore the uses and limitations of these models on simulated and experimental datasets./nIn the final chapter, we apply these methods to study the competitive chromatin binding in the type II nuclear receptors (T2NRs). T2NRs are a class of ligand-activated transcription factors that require heterodimerization with a common factor, the retinoid X receptor (RXR), to bind chromatin and regulate target genes. Because all T2NRs must dimerize with a common pool of RXR, competition between individual T2NRs may limit access to the bound state. This mechanism has been proposed to underlie the oncogenic inactivation of wildtype retinoic acid receptor alpha (RARA), a prototypical T2NR, in the presence of RARA fusion proteins that occur in acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL). Such fusion proteins may compete RXR away from the wildtype RARA, impairing its ability to regulate target genes. Here, we use spaSPT to directly measure the effects of RARA fusion proteins on the chromatin binding of endogenously tagged RARA and RXR. Using the tools developed in the previous chapters, we find that RARA fusion proteins act as stronger competitors for dimerization with RXR than wildtype T2NRs, and are also seemingly exempt from a novel autoregulatory mechanism that controls the concentration of wildtype RARA. Together, these results provide new insights into the interdependence of T2NR gene regulation and the manner by which it is disrupted in disease.

Advisor: Darzacq, Xavier
Tjian, Robert T
The Ascension of Black Power Politics: A Regional Study of Migration from Louisiana to California, 1927-1975

Blacks from Louisiana and its surrounding areas constituted the majority of black migrants to California in the postwar era, but the scholarship on their historical experiences as well as their influence on California’s political economy is scanty at best. Their experiences with the Great Flood of 1927, the Huey Long and New Deal eras, white land monopolies, as well as their wealth-building strategies in Protestant denominations, masonic lodges, and farming collectives — all of which helped shape their Louisiana lives — were integral to their economic expectations and strategies in the West. With a keen sense of state and municipal operations building upon their Louisiana experiences, blacks in California mobilized government resources to improve land in the municipal and economic periphery at greater speeds than these neighborhoods’ previous residents. In their quest for economic independence, they caused $40 million in damage in the Watts Uprising of 1965, built educational and health institutions, modeled social democratic programs to deliver essential services to their community, and ultimately used their southern proletarian experiences to build economically cooperative communities. Grounded in an original microanalysis of black political economies in Louisiana, I argue, also originally, that black experiences in Louisiana from 1927 – 1945 were integral to black political organizing, cooperative economics, and government partnerships in California from 1945 – 1975.

Advisor: Martin, Jr., Waldo E.
Timing and Nucleation of Membrane Protein Condensation by Single Peptide-MHC:T Cell Receptor Complex Control Antigen Discrimination

An adaptive immune response begins with a T cell accurately identifying a pathogen-derived peptide loaded into MHC protein on the surface of an antigen presenting cell (APC). T cells engage pMHC with their T cell receptor (TCR) and must discriminate between agonist pMHC molecules, present on APC surfaces at extremely low copy numbers (e.g., tens of molecules), and hundreds to thousands of self pMHC. To be both highly sensitive and precise, T cells have evolved elaborate signaling systems to minimize error. Antigen discrimination is largely based on the binding duration kinetics (dwell time) of pMHC:TCR complexes with agonist pMHC exhibiting long dwell times. LAT is an integral membrane scaffold protein that is intrinsically disordered, and upon its phosphorylation by the kinase Zap70 at multiple tyrosine sites, LAT undergoes a condensation phase transition, being crosslinked by various adaptor and signaling proteins. LAT condensation is a critical feature of productive TCR signaling./nUsing single molecule imaging techniques, we observe that an individual LAT condensate is induced by a single pMHC:TCR complex and constitutes a unit of productive TCR signaling. Accumulation of a sufficient number of these condensates is correlated with whole cell activation. LAT condensates form abruptly after an extended delay from the onset of pMHC:TCR binding. Condensate lifetime and size carry no antigen information as they are completely uncorrelated with the dwell time of the originating pMHC:TCR complex. Instead, dwell time correlates with the probability of LAT condensate formation. Condensate delay time is shortened by accelerating the phosphorylation of a unique tyrosine site on LAT, Y136, that exclusively binds the PIP2 lipase PLCγ1. Perturbing delay time kinetics subsequently alters antigen specificity./nWe discover that PLCγ1 plays a novel structural role in nucleating LAT condensates while locked in its autoinhibited conformation by facilitating early crosslinking of LAT. PLCγ1 recruits to LAT coincident with condensate formation, and altering the cytosolic concentration of PLCγ1 modulates condensation delay time and probability, indicating that condensate nucleation is a major kinetic bottleneck step. Nucleation occurs when PLCγ1 binds LAT at Y136 and an unknown binding partner, through likely SLP-76, with its SH3 domain, suggesting that LAT must be tetravalent for in vivo condensates to form. Thus, PLCγ1 works cooperatively with LAT Y136 phosphorylation to control LAT condensation and antigen discrimination in T cells for accurate immune response.

Advisor: Groves, Jay T
Budding yeast gametogenesis: A natural paradigm of cellular quality control

Protein aggregation, DNA damage and organelle dysfunction are hallmarks of aging and age-related diseases in metazoans. However, given the multicellular complexity of metazoans, it remains challenging to distinguish which factors cause cellular aging, versus those that arise because of aging. Budding yeast, although unicellular, exhibit similar age-associated abnormalities as metazoans. During mitosis, budding yeast mother cells accumulate cellular damage, in the form of protein aggregates, ribosomal DNA (rDNA) circles and organelle abnormalities as they continue to produce daughter cells. While age-induced damage persists in mother cells throughout mitosis, these age-associated traits are eliminated during meiotic differentiation, the developmental program that generates gametes in sexually reproducing organisms. Furthermore, gametes derived from aged diploids reset their aging clock, suggesting that the elimination of age-induced damage leads to cellular rejuvenation. Our study reveals that protein aggregate and nucleolar abnormalities that accumulate in aged cells are excluded from the gametes and illustrate that their exclusion is coupled to nuclear pore complex (NPC) disposal and nuclear remodeling that occurs naturally as part of gametogenesis. We additionally found that the gamete-excluded cellular material is subsequently degraded by a programmed cell death pathway that depends on the expression of a gamete plasma membrane proton pump and vacuolar lysis of the mother cell. We conclude that nuclear remodeling and vacuolar lysis promote the elimination of age-induced damage during budding yeast gametogenesis. Our work demonstrates natural paradigms of quality control in a developmental program and may reveal therapeutic strategies to combat cellular aging in metazoans.

Advisor: Ünal, Elçin
Adaptive Multivariate Multiple Testing and Bayesian Nonparametric Clustering Analysis

In the modern era, statistics has evolved to embrace the emergence of large scale datasets, which brought both challenges and opportunities. We present in this dissertation two topics on this theme. In the rst chapter, we present an adaptive framework for multiple hypotheses testing where each of the hypothesis testing problems is multivariate or nonparametric. Our work gives a solution when the analyst lacks prior knowledge of an optimal test statistic, a scenario common in many scientic and engineering problems including large scale A/B testing, multi-phenotype genomewide association studies (GWAS), and response curve analysis in high-throughput toxicology experiments. In the second chapter, we study the problem of Bayesian nonparametric (BNP) clustering, a methodology known for its exibility and expressive power. We focus on the theoretical analysis of the clustering behavior of certain BNP models and show under a general setting how such methods behave in clustering, where we give quantitative lower bounds on the probability distribution of the number of clusters in the asymptotic regime.

Advisor: Jordan, Michael I.
Fithian, Will