PUBLISHED ARTICLES:

Rising Inequality as a Threat to the Liberal International Order , International Organization (2021)

(with Ronald Rogowski).

Enduring the Great Recession: Economic Integration in the European Union , The Review of International Organizations (2021)

(with Lauren Peritz, Ryan Weldzius, and Ronald Rogowski).

Global capital markets, housing prices, and partisan fiscal policies , Economics & Politics (2018) 

(with Ben W. Ansell and J. Lawrence Broz).

WORKING PAPERS:

An Economic Geography Model of Tariff Attitudes: Evidence from the Mexico Peso Shock (2023), SSRN Working Paper  (submitted). 

Abstract: This paper develops an economic geography model of individual tariff policy preferences. In contrast to the standard models that emphasize class or industry conflict, I predict geographic political cleavages.  When imports harm local manufacturing, self-interest induces nearby residents with heterogeneous industries and skills to support tariff protections. I test this with an original dataset of an exogenous trade shock from Mexico following the 1994 Peso Crisis. Contrary to existing models, US employment losses and financial pain spread from manufacturing to non-manufacturing industries, and from low to high skill voters, within local economies. These economic spillovers created geographic divisions in trade policy attitudes and persistent support for the anti-trade populist Ross Perot between the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections. Geographic cleavages cut across pre-existing divisions based on industry, class, gender, race, and partisanship. This significantly advances knowledge of trade policy’s (local) economic roots as well as American opposition to Mexican imports.  

Micro-Spatial Inequality and Redistribution: Evidence from the California Millionaires Tax Propositions  (2022) Working Paper.

Abstract: Why democracies fail to redistribute income in response to rising inequality remains a significant puzzle in political economy. I argue that voters' demand for redistribution responds chiefly to locally visible changes in housing wealth inequality. In contrast to the national income distribution, changes in housing wealth within local economies are both highly visible and relevant to voters' pocketbooks. To measure ``locally visible inequality,'' I create a new dataset of Gini indices---of both housing value and income inequality---at different levels of geographic aggregation starting from neighborhood Census tracts up to small metropolitan areas. To address endogeneity concerns, I pair this measure with an analysis of changes in Census tract vote shares for California's ``Millionaires Tax,'' a ballot initiative that was approved by voters in 2012 and 2016. The resulting differences-in-differences analysis reveals that within-tract increases in housing wealth inequality (but not in income inequality) caused pro-redistribution vote shares to increase over time. Additionally, this effect decays as the source of inequality occurs farther away. These results suggest that the local economy significantly constrains public support for redistribution.

SELECTED WORKS IN PROGRESS:

How Populism Persists: Internal Migration and the Geography of Discontent.

Abstract: Why does populism persist across time and space? I argue that economic shocks generate lasting political pressures favoring populists, but only where residents face high barriers to emigration. In contrast, depressed regions with greater mobility recover economically and politically. I introduce original measures of internal migration using address changes in IRS tax returns and regional variation in housing relocation costs. Exploiting the 1994 Peso Crisis as an exogenous trade shock to U.S. local economies, I show that trade exposure persistently increased populist vote shares from 1996 to 2016—but only in low-emigration regions. Limited mobility due to housing affordability was especially linked to enduring populism, while mobile areas saw faster unemployment recovery and a short-lived backlash. Placebo tests rule out compositional effects of emigration. These findings identify migration barriers as a key moderator of globalization’s political effects and help explain the durable geographic roots of populist movements.

Protectionism for Him, Welfare for Her: The Trade Origins of Gendered Political Cleavages 

(co-authored with Soohyun Cho, Bowdoin College)

Abstract: What explains gendered political cleavages over globalization? Although earlier work suggests that women support trade barriers more than men, recent populist movements reveal the opposite. We develop a theory that incorporates family economic structures into the specific factors model of trade preferences, showing how traditional gender roles reshape the distributional effects of economic policies: male family members benefit more from protectionism while female members benefit more from welfare compensation. We test this by tracking how exogenous trade shocks propagate through families to affect survey respondents’ policy preferences. When respondents’ family members suffer increased import competition, males significantly turn to trade and migration restrictions while females turn to family-oriented welfare policies. These indirect family effects also shape electoral behavior, fueling male support for populists and decreasing female participation in elections. The findings underscore the importance of moving beyond individual voter characteristics to understand fully gendered political cleavages over economic policy.

Commerce and Campaigns: The Local Roots of Anti-Globalization Rhetoric in U.S. Presidential Elections 

(co-authored with Duy Trinh, Princeton)

Abstract: How responsive are anti-globalization campaigns to voters’ experiences? While recent work emphasizes how localized trade and migrant shocks affect vote shares, the role of campaign messaging remains unclear. This paper introduces an original dataset covering the universe of campaign speeches by U.S. presidential candidates from 1980 to 2024, which we geo-code and apply text analysis to quantify topic proportions on trade and immigration. The findings reveal that globalization messaging is highly constrained by voters’ local conditions: Regions with large migration increases receive campaign speeches with significantly higher migration content; Regions struck by import competition receive significantly more anti-trade campaign speeches. These geographic patterns are not Trump-specific---well before 2016, candidates from across the ideological spectrum used anti-trade messages to appeal to voters in exposed regions. We find little evidence that candidates use anti-globalization rhetoric to persuade voters in unexposed regions. These results underscore how local economic conditions constrain campaign strategies over globalization.