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Essays in Applied Economics
Travova, Ekaterina ; Menzel, Andreas (advisor) ; Cingl, Lubomír (referee) ; Ananyev, Maxim (referee)
The first chapter investigates the use of high-powered incentives for civil servants in the public sector by analyzing possible manipulations of drugs seized by Russian police. First, using a bunching estimator, I document a significant excess mass of heroin cases above the punishment threshold. Next, combining the bunching with an event study framework, I study the incentives for police officers to manipulate, and find evidence consistent with the motivation arising from officers' performance evaluations. Further negative consequences of inappropriate incentives are inequality in the enforcement of law and prolonged sentences for offenders. The second chapter investigates the influence of the Orthodox Church network in Post- Soviet Russia on individual political preferences and election results. I use the numbers of monks and nuns from Orthodox monasteries operated in the Russian Empire before the Revolution as historical religious markers to construct a Bartik-style instrument (1991). I find that a denser Church network increases the average local approval rating for the current president and the share of votes cast for the government candidate in presiden- tial elections. Further analysis of mechanisms shows that, today, the extending Church network is increasingly less able to attract people to attend...
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