Human capital and collective political events

This dissertation explores the relationship between human capital, employment, and political activity. The first chapter studies the subject from a theoretical point of view, describing how underemployment of educated agents can lead to inefficient economic policies and political conflict due to increasing political instability. The second chapter presents empirical evidence of the positive relationship between human capital and the number of political mass events. The analysis is performed using a new dataset that covers the first-level administrative subdivision of several African countries and includes data on political activity, employment status, political and economic perceptions and expectations, and economic performance from sources such as ACLED, Afrobarometer, PRIO-grid project, Penn-Tables, and ILO. The identification strategy uses national level shocks to address endogeneity issues at the regional level. The last chapter investigates the relationship between higher education and political violence, focusing on the intensity of civil conflicts and the number and effectiveness of terrorist groups at the country level. The statistical analysis supports the hypothesis that, everything else equal, countries with larger stocks of human capital suffer from more intense civil conflicts and the presence of more numerous and effective terrorist groups.