About
I am a PhD candidate in the Deparment of Political Science at Texas A&M University. I have been trained primarily in comparative politics, public policy, and statistical methodology. My current substantive research revolves around the role of mass preferences in financial markets. My methodological expertise includes time-series econometrics, spatial econometrics, machine learning, and natural language processing.
In my doctoral dissertation, I examine the connection between non-electoral sources of political risk (such as popular approval of the chief executive) and financial market outcomes. I also propose and test a new time-series strategy to deal with the methodological challenges I find on the way.
Other work I have done encompasses the connection between trade globalization and income inequality, the role of media freedom and internet access on human rights, and, finally, modeling strategies to deal with dynamic compositional variables. My work has appeared in Political Science Research and Methods, Social Science Quarterly, and The Stata Journal.
I have served as a teaching assistant for the following graduate courses: Essentials of Applied Data Analysis, Advanced Quantitative Political Analysis, Advanced Quantitative Methods for Public Policy, and Spatial Dependence in Theory and Practice. In the Fall of 2020 I will teach an upper-level undergraduate course—Government and the Economy—at Texas A&M University.
Research
Peer-Reviewed Publications
A Program to Estimate and Interpret Models of Dynamic Compositional Dependent Variables: New Features for Dynsimpie. Forthcoming
We present an update to Philips, Rutherford, and Whitten's (2016) Stata command dynsimpie to model compositional dependent variables. We also introduce three complementary commands: cfbplot, effectsplot, and dynsimpiecoef.
Yoo Sun Jung, Flávio D. S. Souza, Andrew Q Philips, Amanda Rutherford, Guy D. Whitten
Globalization and Comparative Compositional Inequality. 2020
We argue that trade globalization has substantial (and divergent) effects across income strata, and that these effects differ across nations based on relative factor endowments.
Andrew Q Philips, Flávio D. S. Souza, Guy D. Whitten
Are Media at Work in Your Neighborhood? The Effects of Media Freedom, Internet Access and Information Spillover on Workers’ Rights. 2017
We argue that the ability of workers to secure and exercise their rights to collective bargaining and freedom of association depends on their awareness of labor conditions at home and in neighboring countries.
Christopher McKallagat, Flávio D. S. Souza, Jenifer Whitten-Woodring, Cameron Wimpy
Current Working Papers
The Steady-Hand Story: The Role of Mass Preference-Induced Policy Risk in Sovereign Debt Markets.
I argue that popular approval of the chief executive, moderated by institutional context, continuously informs investors about the risk of policy change—affecting interest rates on government securities.
Flávio D. S. Souza
Multiplicative Interactions in Error Correction Models
I suggest and evaluate a modeling strategy to account for the case where the cointegrating relationship between a pair of variables is conditional on values of a third variable.
Flávio D. S. Souza
Should We Tweet About it
We argue that increased internet access is not sufficient to overcome the effects of democratic backsliding on human rights.
Flávio D. S. Souza and Jenifer Whitten-Woodring
Contact
Office Location:
2935 Research Parkway, 4348 TAMU
College Station, TX 77843-4348
Email:
fsouza [at] tamu [dot] edu