Welcome

Beginning on July 1, 2013, I am assistant professor of political science at Washington University in St. Louis. I have previously held research fellowships at the Hoover Institution at Stanford and at the Center for the Study of American Politics within the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University.

My work has appeared in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Politics, among other outlets. I received my Ph.D. in 2008 from the Department of Government at Harvard where I was an associate of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science.

I study the political accountability between voters and their elected officials. My primary research agenda examines the particularistic nature of the U.S. president in his dealings with an electorate that increasingly holds him accountable for local phenomenon. I've examined how presidents are held accountable for local outcomes like natural disasters and federal spending. Indeed, even perceptions of the national economy are strongly influenced by local experiences.

I argue that presidents respond to these incentives as well as those created by the electoral college by targeting resources. These resources include campaign resources and also federal dollars. This research suggests that presidents are hardly a universalistic counterbalance to the particularistic desires of the U.S. Congress.

Here, you can find information on my research, my cv, courses I teach, and my contact information. In addition, you can find replication materials for my published research at my dataverse.