Blog

Oct 19
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Edgar Franco-Vivanco

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Edgar Franco-Vivanco is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and a faculty associate at the Center for Political Studies. His research interests include Latin American politics, historical political economy, criminal violence, and indigenous politics.

Prof. Franco-Vivanco is interested in implementing machine learning tools to improve the analysis of historical data, in particular handwritten documents. He is also working in the application of text analysis to study indigenous languages. In a parallel research agenda, he explores how marginalized communities interact with criminal organizations and abusive policing in Latin America. As part of this research, he is using NLP tools to identify different types of criminal behavior.

Examples of the digitization process of handwritten documents from colonial Mexico.

May 01
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Yuri Zhukov

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My research focuses on the causes, dynamics and outcomes of conflict, at the international and local levels. My methodological areas of interest include spatial statistics, mathematical/computational modeling and text analysis.

Map/time-series/network plot, showing the flow of information across battles in World War II. Z axis is time, X and Y axes are longitude and latitude, polygons are locations of battles, red lines are network edges linking battles involving the same combatants. Source: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818318000358

Feb 25
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Christopher Fariss

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My core research focuses on the politics and measurement of human rights, discrimination, violence, and repression. I use computational methods to understand why governments around the world torture, maim, and kill individuals within their jurisdiction and the processes monitors use to observe and document these abuses. Other projects cover a broad array of themes but share a focus on computationally intensive methods and research design. These methodological tools, essential for analyzing data at massive scale, open up new insights into the micro-foundations of state repression and the politics of measurement.

People rely more on strong ties for job help in countries with greater inequality. Coefficients from 55 regressions of job transmission on tie strength are compared to measures of inequality (Gini coefficient), mean income per capita, and population, all measured in 2013. Gray lines indicate 95% confidence regions from 1000 simulated regressions that incorporate uncertainty in the country-level regressions (see below for more details). In each simulated regression we draw each country point from the distribution of regression coefficients implied by the estimate and standard error for that country and measure of tie strength. P values indicate the simulated probability that there is no relationship between tie strength and the other variable. Laura K. Gee, Jason J. Jones, Christopher J. Fariss, Moira Burke, and James H. Fowler. “The Paradox of Weak Ties in 55 Countries” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 133:362-372 (January 2017) DOI:10.1016/j.jebo.2016.12.004

Oct 19
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Yuki Shiraito

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Yuki Shiraito works primarily in the field of political methodology. His research interests center on the development and applications of Bayesian statistical models and large-scale computational algorithms for data analysis. He has applied these quantitative methods to political science research including a survey experiment on public support for conflicting parties in civil war, heterogeneous effects of indiscriminate state violence, and the detection of text diffusion among a large set of legislative bills.

After completing his undergraduate education at the University of Tokyo, Yuki received his Ph.D. in Politics (2017) from Princeton University. Before joining the University of Michigan as an Assistant Professor in September 2018, he served as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Program of Quantitative Social Science at Dartmouth College.

Jan 17
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Michael Traugott

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Michael Traugott, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of Communication Studies, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, Research Professor Emeritus, Center for Political Studies and Adjunct Research Professor, Center for Political Studies, Institute for Social Research.

Professor Traugott studies the mass media and their impact on American politics. This includes research on the use of the media by candidates in their campaigns and its impact on voters, as well as the ways that campaigns are covered and the impact of this coverage on candidates. He has a particular interest in the use of surveys and polls and the way news organizations employ them to cover campaigns and elections.

Nov 29
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Kevin Quinn

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Kevin Quinn, PhD, is Professor of Political Science in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Prior to joining the Michigan faculty, Professor Quinn was a Professor of Law at UC Berkeley. His research focuses on questions of empirical legal studies and statistical methodology. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and has appeared in leading journals in political science, statistics, and law. Professor Quinn is a former President of the Society for Political Methodology and his research has received multiple professional awards.

Oct 19
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Jowei Chen

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Jowei Chen, PhD, is Associate Professor of Political Science in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Prof. Chen holds a secondary appointment in the Center for Political Studies in the Institute for Social Research.

Prof. Chen’s research focuses on political geography and political institutions in the United States. His work on legislative districts examines how the geography of Democrat and Republican voters, as well as the political manipulation of district boundaries, affects voters’ political representation in legislatures. This work uses individual-level and precinct-level data about elections, combined with computer simulations of the district-drawing process. Other research projects analyze the political composition of the federal workforce by analyzing the campaign contributions and partisanship of bureaucratic employees, linking employee records with voter registration records and campaign finance data.

 

 

Oct 19
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Brian Min

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Brian Min, PhD, is Associate Professor of Political Science in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Prof. Min holds secondary appointments as Research Associate Professor in the Center for Political Studies and the Institute for Social Research.

Prof. Min studies the political economy of development with an emphasis on distributive politics, public goods provision, and energy politics. His research uses high-resolution satellite imagery to study the distribution of electricity across and within the developing world. He has collaborated closely with the World Bank using satellite technologies and statistical algorithms to monitor electricity access in India and Africa, including the creation of a web platform to visualize twenty years of change in light output for every village in India (http://nightlights.io).

 

min-nightlights

Mar 08
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Walter Mebane

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My primary project, election forensics, concerns using statistical analysis to try to determine whether election results are accurate.  Election forensics methods use data about voters and votes that are as highly disaggregated as possible.  Typically this means polling station (precinct) data, sometimes ballot box data.  Data can comprises hundreds of thousands or millions of observations.  Geographic information is used, with geographic structure being relevant.  Estimation involves complex statistical models.  Frontiers include:  distinguishing frauds from effects of strategic behavior;  estimating frauds probabilities for individual observations (e.g., polling stations);  adjoining nonvoting data such as from in-person election observations.

Mar 08
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Robert J. Franzese Jr.

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Exploring properties of spatial-econometric methods for valid estimation of interdependent processes, i.e., estimation of spatially & spatiotemporally dynamic responses, primarily in political science and political economy applications. Specific applications have included international tax-competition and national tax & other economic policies, U.S. inter-state policy diffusion, the (possibly contagious) spread of intra- and inter-state conflict.

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