Academic Publications
“Community interventions in the administration of justice,” with Carlo Horz. 2025. American Journal of Political Science. 69(3): 1047-1063.
”Guilt and Guilty Pleas,” with Andrew Little. 2025. American Political Science Review, 119(2): 1003-1017.
“Access to Justice in Revenue-Seeking Legal Institutions.” 2023. Journal of Theoretical Politics, 35(2): 75-99.
- (co)winner, Elinor Ostrom Prize for the “Best Article Published in the Journal of Theoretical Politics 2022-23.”
“Political Interventions in the Administration of Justice,” with Carlo Horz. 2023. Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 18(1):5-38.
“Justice for Sale: Political Crises and Legal Development.” 2021. Political Science Research and Methods, 7(4): 779-799.
“Causes, Theories, and the Past in Political Science,” with Sanford Gordon. 2020. Public Choice, 185(3): 315-333.
“The Birth of Pork: Local appropriations in America’s first century,” with Sanford Gordon. 2018. American Political Science Review. 112(3): 564-579.
“Veto Players, Policy Change, and Institutional Design," with Tiberiu Dragu. 2017. Research and Politics. 4(3): 1-6.
“Cognitive Responses by U.S. Presidents to Foreign Policy Crises,” with B. Gregory Marfleet, in Rethinking Foreign Policy Analysis: States, Leaders, and the Micro-foundations of Behavioral International Relations. Stephen G. Walker, Akan Malici, and Mark Schafer, Eds. London: Routledge, 2010.
Working Papers
“Do Felon Voting Rules Affect Criminal Prosecution?” with Sidak Yntiso. Appendix. Currently R&R.
“The Political Origins of Unequal Protection: Women and the State in Medieval England.”
“Who do states protect? The political economy of market exchange and justice provision,” with Catherine Hafer.
What determines a state’s ability to protect citizens’ rights and foster economic growth? We show that, even if all citizens have equal access to resources, a state can only fully protect its citizens if it can independently, immediately, and perfectly detect and remedy rights violations. Otherwise, its ability to protect citizens varies crucially with economic characteristics of the citizens themselves. Moreover, some citizens—particularly unskilled individuals, or skilled production generalists in possession of significant production economies of scale— may engage in predatory litigation.
“Learning and Incompetence in Government,” with Carlo Horz.
To remain in office, political leaders need policy successes. Competent subordinates, who have superior information or are more effective managers, therefore seem natural choices for hiring to office-seeking leaders. Why do administrations often seem to be beset by incompetence and mediocrity? We present and analyze game-theoretic models of policy-making to offer two new informational explanations. First, leaders who are uncertain of their inner circle's ideological loyalty may wish to motivate unaligned members to reveal their true ideological preferences by appointing them to policy-making posts. In this case, leaders may want to insure themselves against the success of an ideologically distant policy by appointing only moderately incompetent members. Second, leaders who have promoted policies which are unlikely to succeed may appoint incompetent subordinates in order to obfuscate the reasons for failure---and competent subordinates who are loyal to the leader may sometimes pool with incompetent subordinates to assist such obfuscation.
Work in Progress
“Fiscal Prosecution,” with Sidak Yntiso.
The funding of local criminal justice offices by the state often depends on rates of crime in the area. Because rates of crime are measured through arrests and convictions, they are endogenously determined by local criminal justice actors. Using data on funding allocations and convictions in Virginia, we show that local conviction counts show significant bunching around funding cutoffs, suggesting that local actors may be manipulating prosecution in order to maximize office funding.
“Judicial Competence and Extreme Decisions.”
Why do judges write extreme decisions when these are likely to be overturned? I consider this question in the context of judicial nominations for higher court positions. Because judicial ideology is private information, when nomination depends on ideological extremism or purity, extremist lower court judges must find a way to reveal their views to nominators --- and ideologically moderate judges may be willing to mimic extreme opinions to achieve nomination. Depending on the benefit to nomination, this can motivate extreme judges to write decisions which are much more extreme than they are, in order to separate from moderates. The judicial hierarchy can affect these interactions in counterintuitive ways. Because the likelihood of reversal increases with extremeness, extreme judges are more willing than moderate judges to write somewhat extreme opinions, but moderate judges are sometimes more willing than true extremists to write very extreme opinions, because moderates suffer a smaller policy loss from reversal and reversion to the (more moderate) status quo. If judges vary in competence as well, the incentives of incompetent moderates often determine equilibrium opinion extremeness and whether extreme judges are able to separate. Sometimes, incompetent moderates will ``pool'' with extremists on the same extreme opinion, increasing the probability that an incompetent judge is nominated for promotion.
“How the Catholic Church Engages in Politics in the Digital Age,” with Alexandra Siegel.