This dissertation is composed of three unrelated chapters. Chapter 1 estimates the causal effect of the increase and decrease in ambient light relative to the clock on homicides in Mexico. It does so by using the discontinuous nature of the start and end of daylight saving time (DST) in a regression discontinuity design. It finds no effect on homicides when DST starts in Spring, but finds that transitions out of DST in Fall cause homicides to increase by nearly 7.8% which equates to almost 4 homicides per year with a yearly social cost of 145.2 million Mexican pesos. Neither Spring, nor Fall DST transitions influence homicides involving organized crime.
To learn more about the long-term consequences of displacement on women, Chapter 2 examines the marriage market outcomes of forcibly displaced women. It uses data from representative surveys in 7 countries to document that women who are adolescents at the time of displacement are more likely to be married with no such pattern for displaced adolescent men. It provides more robust evidence by using the specific instance of displacement due to the partition of India in 1947. It employs difference-in-differences to find that women who were adolescents when they were displaced by partition were significantly more likely to marry earlier (in line with the cross country evidence), were less likely to continue their education, had more children overall, and do not appear to have married spouses with worse observable characteristics.
Finally, chapter 3 tries to estimate the effect of a large scale anti-poverty cash transfer program in Pakistan, Benazir Income Support Program (BISP), on voter turnout and electoral choice. Program eligibility is determined by a threshold on a proxy means test (PMT) score. However, manipulation of the PMT score around the threshold makes the use of traditional regression discontinuity design invalid. In the absence of conclusive causal evidence through bounding techniques, the chapter provides biased point estimates. These show that the correlation between program eligibility and voter turnout, and the correlation between program eligibility and the likelihood for voting for the incumbent party in the 2013 general elections is about 10% point.