Research

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Working papers

Good news about good news? The limited impacts of informing Americans about recent success in climate change mitigation (with Olivia Chiancone and 14 other students), Sep 8, 2023. Abstract
Slowing the process of global warming will require sustained reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions over decades, which in turn depends on public support for decarbonization. We are beginning to see evidence of success in cutting emissions. Does giving people this "good news" make them more or less motivated to take further action? In contrast to previous research showing a demotivating effect of good news about climate mitigation, our pre-registered survey experiment finds no average impact of factual reports of climate progress on Americans' worries about climate change, perception of efficacy in fighting climate change, willingness to pay additional taxes, support for green industrial policy, or willingness to donate to a climate NGO, and no evidence of heterogeneous effects across relevant subgroups. Given the importance of sustained public support for decarbonization, these null results can be seen as good news for mitigation policy, though further work with stronger treatments is necessary.
Wealth, Fundraising, and Voting in the U.S. Congress (with Marko Klasnja), Apr 10, 2019. Abstract
Does it matter that members of the U.S. House of Representatives are far wealthier than the people they represent? We use a new dataset on wealth in Congress over three decades to assess whether wealthier members differ from other members in voting ideology and campaign fundraising. In contrast to previous studies that offer inconclusive results on the basis of more limited data, we find that wealthier members of both parties vote more conservatively across a range of issue areas and raise more money. The significance of wealth has also changed over time: most notably, the link between wealth and conservative voting has disappeared for Democrats while possibly slightly increasing for Republicans. The results suggest that reform efforts aimed at electing less wealthy members of Congress could shift policy outcomes leftward and reduce the average spending advantage of incumbents.

Published and forthcoming papers

Comparing strategic voting incentives in plurality and instant-runoff elections (with Tobias Nowacki), Journal of Politics (2023). Abstract
Reformers and researchers often speculate that some voting systems induce less strategic voting than others, but existing research is mostly unhelpful in assessing these conjectures because it is based on unrealistic assumptions about preferences, beliefs, or both. We propose a general approach to assessing strategic voting incentives given realistic preferences and beliefs and we use it to compare strategic voting incentives in three-candidate plurality and instant-runoff (IRV) elections. Drawing on preference data from 160 electoral surveys, we estimate that the average voter's gain in expected utility from being strategic (rather than always voting sincerely) is between 5 and 35 times higher in plurality than in IRV, depending on assumptions about the prevalence of strategic behavior. In IRV, the benefit of voting strategically in response to a poll is smaller on average when one expects other voters to do so, while the reverse is true in plurality. This previously unexplored negative feedback constrains the prevalence and magnitude of strategic voting incentives in IRV.
Placebo tests for causal inference (with Guadalupe Tunon and Allan Dafoe), American Journal of Political Science (2023). Abstract
Placebo tests are increasingly common in applied social science research, but the methodological literature has not previously offered a comprehensive account of what we learn from them. We define placebo tests as tools for assessing the plausibility of the assumptions underlying a research design relative to some departure from those assumptions. We offer a typology of tests defined by the aspect of the research design that is altered to produce it (outcome, treatment, or population) and the type of assumption that is tested (identification or estimation). Our formal framework clarifies the extra assumptions necessary for informative placebo tests; these assumptions can be strong, and in some cases similar assumptions would justify a different procedure allowing the researcher to relax the research design's assumptions rather than test them. Properly designed and interpreted, placebo tests can be an important device for assessing the credibility of empirical research designs.
Electoral Systems and Geographic Representation (with Leonardo Carella), British Journal of Political Science (2023). Abstract
Who gets represented in legislatures, and how does this depend on electoral institutions? Others have asked this question from the perspective of gender, race, and class; we focus on space, asking whether MPs disproportionately come from some places rather than others and how this depends on electoral rules. Using data on over 13,000 legislators in 62 democracies, we develop a new measure of the extent to which the spatial distribution of MP birthplaces matches the spatial distribution of the citizens they represent. Contrary to received wisdom, we find that single-member district systems do not have more geographically representative parliaments than multi-member district systems, while mixed-member systems perform significantly better than both. We attribute the higher spatial representativeness of mixed-member systems to contamination effects in their single-member tier, and we present evidence for this explanation from within-country analysis of elections from Italy, the UK and Germany.
Rallying in fear? Estimating the effect of the UK COVID 19 lockdown with a natural experiment (with Robin Harding), European Journal of Political Research (2021). Abstract
We use a natural experiment to study how the announcement of the UK COVID-19 lockdown affected citizens� attitudes towards the pandemic and the government�s response to it. On the day of the lockdown announcement, YouGov ran a survey that captured responses before and after the announcement. Comparison of these responses suggests that the lockdown announcement made people more supportive of the government�s response to the crisis but also (perhaps surprisingly) more concerned about the pandemic. Analysis of heterogeneous treatment effects suggests that the announcement narrowed gaps in perceptions of the crisis, increasing support for the government�s response especially among those who had been least supportive and increasing concern about the pandemic especially among those who had been least concerned. Overall, the findings highlight a tension inherent in governing during times of crisis: actions that increase people�s confidence in government and induce compliance with government directives may also tend to increase anxiety among the population.
Who Votes More Strategically: Evidence from Canada (with Dan Rubenson and Peter Loewen), Journal of Politics (2021). Abstract
Do some types of voters vote more strategically than others? We examine this question using a large survey in Canada that offers unusually detailed information about voters' preferences. We find that better educated voters and richer voters vote more strategically, as do older voters and women (though the latter two differences are smaller and less robust). Together with recent evidence from the UK, these results suggest that (at least in multi-candidate first-past-the-post elections) the same types of voters who are more likely to turn out are also more likely to make their votes count. % vote at all are also more likely to use their votes strategically.
The economic impact of recession announcements' (with Martin Ellison and Sang Seok Lee), Journal of Monetary Economics (2021). Abstract
The convention in the news media is to announce a recession if a country experiences two consecutive quarters of negative growth. We exploit the arbitrary threshold implied by this practice to identify the economic impact of recession announcements through a Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD). Estimation results show that news of a recession leads to a discontinuous fall in consumer confidence, consumption growth and final estimates of GDP growth in a panel of countries. The effect is large, robust and statistically significant.
No evidence for systematic voter fraud: A guide to statistical claims about the 2020 election (with Justin Grimmer and Haritz Garro), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2021). Abstract
After the 2020 US presidential election Donald Trump refused to concede, alleging widespread and unparalleled voter fraud. Trump�s supporters deployed several statistical arguments in an attempt to cast doubt on the result. Reviewing the most prominent of these statistical claims, we conclude that none of them is even remotely convincing. The common logic behind these claims is that, if the election were fairly conducted, some feature of the observed 2020 election result would be unlikely or impossible. In each case, we find that the purportedly anomalous fact is either not a fact or not anomalous.
A diagram for analyzing ordinal voting systems, Social Choice and Welfare (2021). Abstract
I introduce a diagram for describing and analyzing single-winner elections in which voters rank the candidates -- a class of voting systems including positional methods (e.g. plurality, Borda count, anti-plurality), Condorcet methods, and instant-runoff voting (i.e. ranked-choice voting or the alternative vote). The diagram shows how the outcome of an election depends on each candidate's share of top rankings as a function of the voting system and the pattern of lower rankings. Using as examples a Brexit poll, a mayoral election in San Francisco, and the US's first instant-runoff congressional election (all from 2018), I show how the diagram can concisely present preferences and results under different voting systems, identify Condorcet cycles, highlight system properties such as join-inconsistency and the no-show paradox, and illuminate strategic voting incentives.
Who Votes More Strategically? (with Nick Vivyan), American Political Science Review (2020). Abstract
Strategic voting is an important explanation for aggregate political phenomena, but we know little about how strategic voting varies across types of voters. Are richer voters more strategic than poorer voters? Does strategic behavior vary with age, education, gender or political leaning? The answers may be important for assessing how well an electoral system represents different preferences in society. We introduce a new approach to measuring and comparing strategic voting across voters that can be broadly applied given appropriate survey data. In recent British elections, we find no difference in strategic voting by education level, but we do find that older voters are more strategic than younger voters, richer voters are more strategic than poorer voters, and left-leaning voters are more strategic than right-leaning voters. In the case of age and income, the difference in strategic voting exacerbates known inequalities in political participation.
Corruption, accountability and gender: do female politicians face higher standards in public life? (with Nick Vivyan and Markus Wagner), Journal of Politics, Vol. 80, No. 1 (January 2018), pp. 321-326. Abstract
Previous research suggests that female politicians face higher standards in public life, perhaps in part because female voters expect more from female politicians than from male politicians. Most of this research is based on observational evidence. We assess the relationship between accountability and gender using a novel survey vignette experiment fielded in the UK in which voters choose between a hypothetical incumbent (who could be male or female, corrupt or uncorrupt) and another candidate. We do not find that female politicians face significantly greater punishment for misconduct. However, the effect of politician gender on punishment varies by voter gender, with female voters in particular more likely to punish female politicians for misconduct. Our findings have implications for research on how descriptive representation affects electoral accountability and on why corruption tends to correlate negatively with women's representation.
Regression Discontinuity Designs Based on Population Thresholds: Pitfalls and Solutions (with Ronny Freier, Tommaso Nannicini, and Veronica Grembi), American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 62, No. 1 (January 2018), pp. 210-229.
Incumbency Effects and the Strength of Party Preferences: Evidence from Multiparty Elections in the United Kingdom (with Arthur Spirling), Journal of Politics, Vol. 79, No. 3 (July 2017), pp. 903-920.
Open/Closed List and Party Choice: Experimental Evidence from the U.K (with Jack Blumenau, Dominik Hangartner, and Simon Hix), British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 47, No. 4 (October 2017), pp. 809-827.
Quality-Based Explanations of Incumbency Effects, Journal of Politics, Vol. 79, No. 4 (October 2017), pp. 1315-1328. (Appendix)
Party Cohesion in Westminster Systems: Inducements, Replacement and Discipline in the House of Commons, 1836-1910 (with Arthur Spirling), British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 46, No. 3 (July 2016), pp. 567-589.
Simulating Counterfactual Representation (with Benjamin Lauderdale), Political Analysis, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Spring 2016), pp. 281-290.
The Shadow Cabinet in Westminster Systems: Modeling Opposition Agenda Setting in the House of Commons, 1832-1915 (with Arthur Spirling), British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 46, No. 3 (July 2016), pp. 567-589.
On The Validity Of The Regression Discontinuity Design For Estimating Electoral Effects: New Evidence From Over 40,000 Close Races (with Anthony Fowler, Jens Hainmueller, Andrew Hall, and Jim Snyder), American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 59, No. 1 (January 2015), pp. 259-274.
Proportionality and Turnout: Evidence from French Municipalities, Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 48, No. 2 (February 2015), pp. 135-167.
Ministerial Responsiveness in Westminster Systems: Institutional Choices and House of Commons Debate, 1832-1915 (with Arthur Spirling), American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 58, No. 4 (October 2014), pp. 873-887.
Guarding the Guardians: Partisanship, Corruption and Delegation in Victorian Britain (with Arthur Spirling), Quarterly Journal of Political Science, Vol. 9, No. 3 (2014), pp. 337-370.
Political Capital: Corporate Connections and Stock Investments in the U.S. Congress, 2004-2008 (with Jens Hainmueller), Quarterly Journal of Political Science, Vol. 9, No. 2 (2014), pp. 169-202.
Partisanship and Electoral Accountability: Evidence from the UK Expenses Scandal, Quarterly Journal of Political Science, Vol. 9, No. 4 (2014), pp. 441-482.
Electoral Security as a Determinant of Legislator Activity, 1832-1918 (with Arthur Spirling), Legislative Studies Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 4 (November 2014), pp. 593-620.
Representation and District Magnitude in Plurality Systems (with Alexander Fouirnaies), Electoral Studies, Vol. 33 (2014), pp. 267-277.
Capitol Losses: The Mediocre Performance of Congressional Stock Portfolios (with Jens Hainmueller), Journal of Politics, Vol. 75, No. 2 (April 2013), pp. 535-551.
MPs For Sale: Returns to Office in Post-War British Politics (with Jens Hainmueller), American Political Science Review, Vol. 103, No. 4 (November 2009), pp. 1-21.
The Role of Output Composition in the Stabilization of US Output Growth (with Yannis Ioannides), Journal of Macroeconomics, Vol. 28 (2006), pp. 585-595.