I am a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics and Political Science. I hold a PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley and was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.
I use quantitative methods and formal theory to understand American political institutions, with emphasis on the unilateral presidency. My job market paper, "Lobbying for Orders: Supply of and Demand for Presidential Unilateralism," identifies a previously ignored channel of influence on executive orders: lobbying. In the paper, I study the empirical links among interest groups' policy demands, lobbying of the president, and the production of executive orders. I show that an exogenous policy shock leads firms to increase their lobbying of the president and that higher aggregate lobbying is associated with increased issuance of orders. I also present evidence that lobbying precedes orders, rather than the other way around, and that the effect of public salience is insignificant when considering lobbying. These results highlight a substantively important channel of influence on a key policymaking tool, pointing out new pitfalls of unilateral governance that threaten democratic accountability.
My dissertation uses formal theory to understand executive action. The first chapter, which presents an alternative to the first-mover view of unilateralism, appeared in The Journal of Politics. The second chapter, which examines the role of elite messaging and group power in conditioning political backlash, appeared in The Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy. The third chapter (with Joseph Warren), which examines the establishment of the federal bureaucracy as a device to mitigate policy feedback effects and enable a coalition of populists and classical liberals, is forthcoming at The Journal of Politics.
I also have an interest in the politics of local public/private goods, especially housing. The first paper of this agenda, coauthored with fellow Berkeley PhD student Joseph Warren, appeared in The Journal of Theoretical Politics. More recently, our proposal on homelessness has been accepted for a special issue of The Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy.
Before starting my PhD, I studied economics and government at Hamilton College, graduating summa cum laude in 2010; I then consulted in New York and Washington, DC on securities and antitrust litigation.
I use quantitative methods and formal theory to understand American political institutions, with emphasis on the unilateral presidency. My job market paper, "Lobbying for Orders: Supply of and Demand for Presidential Unilateralism," identifies a previously ignored channel of influence on executive orders: lobbying. In the paper, I study the empirical links among interest groups' policy demands, lobbying of the president, and the production of executive orders. I show that an exogenous policy shock leads firms to increase their lobbying of the president and that higher aggregate lobbying is associated with increased issuance of orders. I also present evidence that lobbying precedes orders, rather than the other way around, and that the effect of public salience is insignificant when considering lobbying. These results highlight a substantively important channel of influence on a key policymaking tool, pointing out new pitfalls of unilateral governance that threaten democratic accountability.
My dissertation uses formal theory to understand executive action. The first chapter, which presents an alternative to the first-mover view of unilateralism, appeared in The Journal of Politics. The second chapter, which examines the role of elite messaging and group power in conditioning political backlash, appeared in The Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy. The third chapter (with Joseph Warren), which examines the establishment of the federal bureaucracy as a device to mitigate policy feedback effects and enable a coalition of populists and classical liberals, is forthcoming at The Journal of Politics.
I also have an interest in the politics of local public/private goods, especially housing. The first paper of this agenda, coauthored with fellow Berkeley PhD student Joseph Warren, appeared in The Journal of Theoretical Politics. More recently, our proposal on homelessness has been accepted for a special issue of The Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy.
Before starting my PhD, I studied economics and government at Hamilton College, graduating summa cum laude in 2010; I then consulted in New York and Washington, DC on securities and antitrust litigation.