Research overview

My research focuses on three inter-related problems in political economy:

Links to published work and working papers are provided below. Comments are appreciated.

Dissertation

My dissertation asks why anyone has succeeded at doing anything at all to combat climate change. The combination of radical technological change, large costs, and distant and diffuse benefits, should make the politics of climate policy intractable. But we see a variety of activity–in Europe, in some U.S. states, and elsewhere.

I show that policymakers have succeeded by yoking support for climate change to tangible benefits created by transforming today’s fossil fuel-based energy systems. Renewable energy itself offers few obvious improvements over fossil fuels. But adopting it may require other changes–to the power grid, or energy markets, or industrial structure–that make us better off immediately. Delivering these benefits can help generate support for policy, and insulate it from attacks by those who’d prefer inaction. Hence successful climate policy won’t look like some “optimal” carbon price. Instead, we should expect messy, perhaps circuitous, but ultimately politically stable industrial policies to prevail.

Publications

Peer-reviewed Publications

  1. “Multi-cycle forecasting of Congressional elections with social media”, Workshop on Politics, Elections, and Data, CIKM 2013.
  2. “Testing the ownership society: ownership and voting in Britain”, Electoral Studies 30(4) 2011, pp 784-794.
  3. “Shock and Change in the German Venture Capital System, 1995:2005” German Politics and Society 24(3) 2006, pp 20-40.

Books

  1. Mark Huberty and John Zysman, eds. From Religion to Reality: green growth and sustainable prosperity. Under contract, Stanford University Press. Forthcoming 2013.

Book Chapters

  1. “Energy systems transformation: state choices at the intersection of sustainability and growth”, forthcoming in Dan Breznitz and John Zysman, eds, Can Wealthy Nations Stay Rich?. Oxford University Press.
  2. “The Dissolution of Sectors: do politics and sectors still go together?”, forthcoming in Dan Breznitz and John Zysman, eds, Can Wealthy Nations Stay Rich?. Oxford University Press.

Working Papers

  1. “I expected a Model T, but instead I got a loom: Awaiting the second big data revolution”. Prepared for the 2014 BRIE-ETLA conference on Chaos and Turbulence in Digital Ecosystems, Feb 7-8 2014.
  2. ”leghist: Automated legislative history analysis for R”. Code and working paper available at github. June 2012.
  3. “Varieties of low-emissions innovation”. Presented at the 2012 International Studies Association conference.
  4. “Voting with your Tweet: Forecasting elections with social media data”. NEW Real-time predictions for the 2012 election. Spring 2012 version. Poster, Society for Political Methodology Summer Meeting, July 2011.
  5. “Green growth as necessity and liability: The political economy of a low-carbon energy systems transformation in the European Union ”. BRIE Working Paper no. 200. May 2011.
  6. “Green exports and the global product space: prospects for EU industrial policy”, with Georg Zachmann. Bruegel Working Paper 2011/07. May 2011.
  7. “The demand for sea-coales in London: the Great Fire as a technology shock”. May 2010.
  8. “The Dissolution of Sectors: Do Politics and Sectors Still Go Together?”, BRIE Working Paper no. 189. May 2010.
  9. “Energy systems and climate policy: applying lessons from the adoption of coal to its elimination”, a BRIE-CITRIS Working Paper, September 2009.

Policy Publications

  1. Religion and reality in the search for green growth, with John Zysman. Intereconomics 47(3) 2012, pp140-146.
  2. Shaping the Green Growth Economy: A review of the public debate and the prospects for green growth, with Huan Gao and Juliana Mandell. Prepared for the Green Growth Leaders group, Copenhagen, Denmark. Presented at the Green Growth Leaders Council, 13 April 2011, Copenhagen, Denmark.
  3. “Governments, markets and clean growth: Energy systems transformation for sustainable prosperity”, with John Zysman. Presented at the Belgian Presidency of the European Union, September 2010.
  4. “An energy systems transformation: Framing research choices for the climate challenge”, with John Zysman. Research Policy 39(8) 2010, pp 1027-1029.

Reviews

  1. “Review of Maria Victoria Murillo, Political Competition, Partisanship, and Policymaking in Latin America (Cambridge University Press 2009)”, Comparative Political Studies 43(11), pp 1531-1535.