Date of Award

Spring 5-2021

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Author's Department

Statistics

Degree Name

Master of Arts (AM/MA)

Degree Type

Thesis

Abstract

Identifying armed group presence is often helpful for conflict studies to examine patterns of conflict. Armed group presence is often used as the main variable of interest in several studies, and in some cases, this variable is ignored. Many of these studies use expert data or proxy variables to analyze armed group presence. This paper proposes Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) as a method to identify armed group presence. HMMs permit identifying armed group presence at a sub-national level and in long panel data sets. A HMM is used in this paper to identify paramilitary and FARC presence in Colombia. The armed groups' presence predictions are used to analyze the effect of economic shocks on violence. It shows that economic shocks can have differential effects depending on the level of armed group presence in the territory.

Language

English (en)

Chair and Committee

DR. NAN LIN

Committee Members

DR. TED ENAMORADO DR. JOSE FIGUEROA-LOPEZ

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