| Students Working on their PhD | Students with their PhD | |
| Andreas Beger | Ronny Lindström (1996) | |
| Jacqueline H.R. DeMeritt | Andrew G. Long (2004) | |
| Daniel Hill | Stephen M. Shellman (2003) | |
| Sunhee Park | Kürşad Turan (2005) | |
| Robert Parrillo | John A. Tures (2000) | |
| Courtenay Ryals | Joseph K. Young (2008) | |
| Jeffrey Weber | ||
| Click links above for details |
In the 20th century, nearly 66% of the countries in the world experienced at least one episode of the government killing unarmed civilians. Over 262,000,000 human beings perished as a result. Existing research tends to explain the government's decision to kill by focusing on the conditions and incentives that surround these events. Yet even when conditions and incentives to kill are similar, civilian body counts vary widely. Rubin leverages the puzzle of variance in civilian death tolls by shifting the focus away from the decision to kill. Instead, she conceptualizes killing as the outcome of a process of strategic interaction between the government that sends the killing order and the perpetrators who implement that order. A game-theoretic model reveals that under changing conditions, perpetrators may kill as many civilians as they are asked to kill, or they may kill any other number, including zero. The solution to the puzzle is this: Civilian death tolls may vary even when conditions and incentives to kill are similar, because the actors care not only about the killing that results from their interaction but also about the consequences of that killing for their own lives and liberties.
I am also serving as a committee member on the following students' dissertations:
