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I study a two-period model of conflict with two combatants and a third party who is an ally of one of the combatants. The third party is fully informed about the type of her ally but not about the type of her ally's enemy. There is a signaling game between the third party and her ally's enemy where preferences do not satisfy the single-crossing condition. There exist perfect Bayesian equilibria in which the third party's intervention worsens the conflict by energizing her ally's enemy wherein he (i.e., the enemy) pretends to be stronger than he actually is in order to discourage the third-party from assisting her ally. This creates a dilemma for the third party which may be referred to as the indirect Samaritan's dilemma. I find that the expectation of a third-party's military assistance to an ally coupled with the third-party's limited information about the strength of her ally's enemy can be strategically exploited by the enemy through pronouncements that would not have been credible if the third party was fully informed about her ally's enemy. Remarkably, the third-party's ally, who is fully informed about the enemy, is unable to counteract this behavior by using credible signals to reveal his information to the third party. In some cases, the third party and her ally are strictly better off if the third-party's decision to withdraw from or stay in the conflict is based on her prior beliefs and not on the current conditions of the conflict even if observing the current conditions improves the third-party's information. Unlike the standard Samaritan's dilemma, a commitment by the third party to a given level of assistance may be welfare-improving.

Objectives. Previous work on trade, mostly from an economic perspective, assumes dyadic independence, and thus that trade can be explained by attributes of such dyads. We critique these contentions from the perspective of structural embeddedness, hypothesizing that sharing common third-party trading partners encourages dyadic trade. Methods. trade data of 78 countries in 1975 and 1996, using cross-sectional and longitudinal regression. Results. Regression analyses support our hypothesis. A BIC analysis suggests that the structural embeddedness variables significantly improve the model fit. Conclusion. other social interactions, is shaped and constrained by structurally determined opportunities. Thus, an explanation of economic behavior, including trade, is not complete without reference to the triads in which a dyad is embedded. Adapted from the source document.

The simplest social context for trust is an isolated dyad—two people away from others. The more usual context is two people surrounded by various close friends, foes, and acquaintances. We argue that third-party gossip amplifies both the positive and the negative in a relationship, making ego and alter more certain of their trust (or distrust) in one another. We draw three broad conclusions from an analysis of network data on a probability sample of diverse senior managers: (a) Trust is associated with relation strength, as expected in private games; (b) as predicted by the gossip argument for public games, trust is significantly amplified by third parties (third parties have a positive effect on trust within strong relations, and a negative effect on trust within weak relations); and (c) different forms of indirect connection are responsible for the third-party effects on trust.

In light of increasing numbers of women in politics, extant research has examined the role of women in the parliamentary party on agenda-setting. This paper complements that literature by exploring the effect of a gendered institution theorized to promote both numbers of women and awareness of women's interests: gender quota laws. I suggest that after a quota law, parties could have incentives to either reduce (backlash effect) or increase (salience effect) attention to women's policy concerns. Using matching and regression methods with a panel data set of parties in advanced democracies, I find that parties in countries that implement a quota law devote more attention to social justice issues in their manifestos than similar parties in countries without a quota. Furthermore, the paper shows that this effect is driven entirely by the law itself. Contrary to expectations, quota laws are not associated with increases in women in my (short-term) sample; it is thus no surprise that no evidence of an indirect effect through numbers of women is found. I interpret the findings as evidence of quota contagion, whereby quotas cue party leaders to compete on gender equality issues.

In light of increasing numbers of women in politics, extant research has examined the role of women in the parliamentary party on agenda-setting. This paper complements that literature by exploring the effect of a gendered institution theorized to promote both numbers of women and awareness of women's interests: gender quota laws. I suggest that after a quota law, parties could have incentives to either reduce ( backlash effect) or increase ( salience effect) attention to women's policy concerns. Using matching and regression methods with a panel data set of parties in advanced democracies, I find that parties in countries that implement a quota law devote more attention to social justice issues in their manifestos than similar parties in countries without a quota. Furthermore, the paper shows that this effect is driven entirely by the law itself. Contrary to expectations, quota laws are not associated with increases in women in my (short-term) sample; it is thus no surprise that no evidence of an indirect effect through numbers of women is found. I interpret the findings as evidence of quota contagion, whereby quotas cue party leaders to compete on gender equality issues.

This dissertation is concerned with "third-party" or "external" effects that pervade the economic dimension of human action. As an instance of these effects, actions in a specific market, the labor market, are isolated and studied. In the first part of the dissertation, the evolution of labor law in the United States is traced from the earliest recorded labor court case in 1806 through the present. In examining the dialogue surrounding changes in labor entitlements, it is found that the ubiquity of external effects in the labor relation has been historically recognized by lawmakers as they grappled with the design of optimal legal rules. The second part begins with an examination of economists' views of the labor relation. A survey of views indicates that economists have failed to approach labor actions in a manner that is both analytic and cognizant of the pervasive interdependence in labor. The concluding chapter of the dissertation attempts to integrate the disparate viewpoints of lawmakers and economists py viewing labor actions in a manner which highlights the external effects. Borrowing from the literature on "externalities," the chapter demonstrates that there exists a continuum of possible magnitudes of external effects in labor. ; Doctor of Philosophy

The indirect effect in path analysis has been defined as equal to the difference between the correlation coefficient and the path coefficient. This definition has led to ambiguous and inconsistent interpretations of indirect effects across various applications. This paper shows that what was earlier defined as the indirect effect may, in fact, be composed of three parts: (1) the indirect effect, (2) spurious association due to joint dependence on a prior variable, and (3) association due to the correlation between predetermined variables. We argue for a redefinition of the indirect effect so that only those paths which can be traced through intervening variables are included in the indirect effect term. Indirect effects can then be interpreted consistently across all applications as being indirect causal effects.