School of Public Policy Theses and Dissertations
Original work in partial fulfillment of a graduate degree in the School of Public Policy.
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Recent Submissions
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Manifestations of the Positive Death Movement in America: Medical Aid In Dying, Voluntarily Stopping Eating & Drinking, and End-Of-Life Doulas
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2022-04-06)Western society is in an era of death awareness, its most recent salience: A Positive Death Movement. This dissertation examines manifestations of the movement, framing them as direct, indirect, and induced effects of ... -
The Weight of Administrative Burden: The Distributive Consequences of Federal Disaster Assistance on Recovery after Hurricane Harvey
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-03-30)Disasters have severe implications for life and property, often requiring large-scale collective action to facilitate recovery. One key determinant of recovery is access to resources that mitigate the losses and damages ... -
Explaining US Cybersecurity Policy Integration Through a National Regime Lens
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-12-14)This research uses the Policy Regime Framework to analyze which of two policy problems, US-China rivalry or IT/OT convergence, better explain degrees of coherence and integration in the US cybersecurity regime. It explains ... -
What Work? Quasi-Experiments in Cybersecurity Policy Interventions
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-07-30)Given the significance policymakers place on cybersecurity, how effective has a decade of policy interventions been at reducing social costs? This paper uses the limited regulations implemented by State and United States ... -
BEYOND CARBON MITIGATION: UNDERSTANDING THE CO-BENEFITS AND CO-COSTS OF GREENHOUSE GAS MITIGATION POLICIES IN BROADER CONTEXTS
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-05-01)The use of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is firmly entrenched in U.S. policy-making and other regulatory processes. The validity of CBA relies on the systematic and comprehensive understanding of the co-benefits and co-costs ... -
SYMPTOMS OF MATERNAL DEPRESSION: RESULTS FROM THE ALASKA PRAMS 2012-2014 AND ITS THREE-YEAR FOLLOW-UP SURVEY, CUBS 2015-1027, AND IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY DESIGN
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-04-13)This dissertation is an in-depth analysis of the prevalence and risk factors of maternal depression in Alaska. I study a cohort of women who gave birth in Alaska between 2012 and 2014, using statewide population-based ... -
Driving green: Employment effects, policy adoption, and public perceptions of electric vehicles
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020-06-03)Energy for usage in the transportation sector is primarily derived from petroleum products and accounts for 14% (EPA 2017a) of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide and 28% (EPA 2018b) of total emissions in the US. In the US. ... -
For the birds: Researching theory and practice in environmental conservation policy processes
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020-04-16)This dissertation explores how policy processes and decision-making structures influence environmental management in public agencies. It contributes to our understanding of how traditional bureaucratic systems of organization ... -
Path-dependencies faced by select policies toward solid-state lighting
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-12-18)The studies in this dissertation – concerning inter-firm R&D collaboration, patent production and sharing, and electric power infrastructure – will illustrate the influence of path-dependency on outcomes delivered by ... -
Three essays on the growth of the market for patents and its challenges to innovation policy
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-10-01)A sheer number of US patents have been transferred through market transactions and that the size of the market for patents has grown. In this dissertation, I conduct three complementary studies to examine how the market ... -
Electricity infrastructure threats and policy response
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-11-08)The overarching research question of this dissertation is how are policymakers responding to threats to the electricity grid? The database of attacks on the United States electricity system, created and analyzed in Chapter ... -
The co-construction of court-made patent policy and firm strategy
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-07-30)The need to accommodate new technologies at an increasingly fast pace has led the judicial branch to become a key source of changes in patent policy in the United States. This dissertation examines the co-construction of ... -
Innovation in government: The diffusion of policy and organizational change
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-07-22)Beginning in the late nineteenth century Woodrow Wilson (1887) proposed the idea that government can be divided into two broad functions: politics and administration. While the debate remains about the extent to which these ... -
Bridging the valley of death in biomedicine with translational research: Assessing the impact of National Institutes of Health’s Clinical and Translational Science Award
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-06-21)Despite large investment in biomedical research by government, foundations and private organizations around the world, we are not experiencing an increase in the new medicine reaching the market. Many studies point out ... -
The effects of distributed solar on utilities and their customers
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-04-01)This dissertation evaluates the impact increasing penetrations of distributed solar will have on the electricity industry. It reconciles an analysis of the effect of increasing DPV penetration at the system scale, with an ... -
U.S. state clean energy policy and impacts on innovative technology adoption and employment: Analyzing impacts of energy-based economic development
Nations, states, cities, and towns are increasingly concerned about resilient and sustainable development against climate change. Energy-based economic development (EBED) has become a growing field of practice and research ... -
Evaluating the impact of zero-rating services: An in-depth look at Facebook's free basics in emerging economies
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-05-11)Facebook has partnered with mobile carriers in multiple countries to launch its zero-rated service - Free Basics. Free Basics is a platform which hosts not only Facebook, but other select websites which are zero-rated as ... -
Green certification pathways: The roles of public goods, private goods, and certification schemes
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2017-08-02)This dissertation examines evidence on the effectiveness of voluntary certification programs in the built environment. Drawing on unique data from buildings certified under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design ... -
Evaluation of the effect of rail intra-urban transit stations on neighborhood change
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2017-06-26)Development of heavy rail intra-urban public transportation systems is an economically expensive policy tool for State and Local Governments that is often justified with the promise of economic development and neighborhood ... -
Growing an industrial cluster?: Movie production incentives and state film industries
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2017-06-19)After witnessing the success of Canadian strategies to attract U.S. film production in the 1990s, states and localities began offering financial incentives in an effort to lure film and video production away from their ...