All Pardee RAND students complete a policy-relevant dissertation aimed at tackling the most pressing policy issues facing the world. Many Pardee RAND dissertations are partially- or fully-funded through endowed dissertation awards and other prizes.
Studies ways post-secondary institutions can better the diversity in their STEM disciplines by focusing on pre-college preparation and retention of historically underrepresented high school students by considering the case of a summer bridge program.
Presents three papers exploring the utility of Robust Decision Making for supporting health policy decisions.
Conducts an exploratory analysis of ways policy communication can be improved using policy comics.
Examines North Korea's military threat to China.
Explores the policies of weaker nations to counter Chinese coercion in the South China Sea disputes.
Explores the financial mechanisms available to individuals and governments after a disaster in developing countries, using Mexico as a case study.
Proposes a decision framework to help DoD decisionmakers determine whether an investment in nuclear energy technologies is worthwhile.
Examines the HIV-related health decisions and investments that are made by people living with HIV as well as the institutions that serve them, and it assesses their indirect effects.
Examines what is known about the therapeutic efficacy of cannabis products, the degree to which patients buy dispensary products in a manner that is consistent with clinical research, and what factors may be driving clinically inconsistent purchases.
Attempts to address the policy problems generated by age dependency problems using predictive analytic methods.
Explores program sustainability for public health in low- and middle-income countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Attempts to understand how gig workers, particularly Uber and Lyft drivers, find and perceive their employment, the money they make from it, and the things they spend it on.
Examines associations between hazards, outages, and health outcomes for California cities from 2008–2020.
Builds upon existing frameworks for how policymakers respond to innovations by considering the arrival and subsequent policy response to a recent iteration of the platform economy, shared electric scooters
Analyzes the current Vulnerabilities Equities Process through a mixed methods approach.
Describes, validates, and utilizes the Future Adult Model (FAM), a dynamic microsimulation model developed for policy analysis of health and health-related outcomes.
Addresses the issue of too much false information shared on social media by users during U.S. election seasons.
Provides military recruitment planners a more comprehensive understanding of how youth build and access their career and educational information networks in high school, as part of their decision-making process.
Investigates the unintended consequences of opioid policies, OxyContin reformulation and prescription drug monitoring programs on crime, labor supply, and child welfare.
Leverages a value-added model to identify changes to Air Force basing policy that could improve fighter pilot retention outcomes.
Explores the implications and applications of blockchain, the technology underpinning contentious cryptocurrencies.
Employs state-of-the-art machine learning models to collect the first dataset of vaccine misinformation from Twitter disseminated from January 2018 to April 2019 and proposes plausible actions.
Explores factors affecting the performance and scope of the veteran disability compensation program.
Documents recent changes in labor outcomes by education and offer insights into the role of digitalization and its effects on labor market disparities.
Explores how the United States Army has adapted to the Voluntary Transfer Incentive Program, which allows mid-career Army officers to volunteer to switch specialties to a functional area.
