Job Market Paper, now published in Electoral Studies

The Unswayed Voter: How a Polarized Electorate Responds to Economic Growth (published here, and PDF here)

It is well known that higher economic growth benefits incumbents in elections. However, in the last thirty years, US politics has been marked by substantial increases in political polarization and a decline in the number of swing voters. Accordingly, we would expect that the effect of economic growth on incumbent vote share has declined. Indeed, using a Bartik-type instrument, I present new evidence that state economic growth has a positive effect on incumbent vote share, and that this effect is smaller under conditions of polarization. Using separate state-level and individual-level data sets, I find that the effect of state economic growth on incumbent vote share is smaller when state-level polarization, or individual partisanship, is stronger. Using a swing voting propensity score, I show that swing voting propensity is strongly associated with economic voting. (JEL D72, H70, N42)

Other Publications and R&R Papers

Industrial Designs and Canadian Firm Performance, with Elias Collette and Diego Santilli, now published in Economics of Innovation and New Technology (link)

Industrial designs (IDs) are a specialized type of intellectual property that protects a product's form and presentational features, giving it uniqueness that differentiates it from other products. This paper estimates the effect on firm revenue and profitability of holding IDs. Using a unique data set linking Canadian ID holdings with Canadian publicly traded firms over the years 1990-2014, the authors use two methods to identify a positive association between holding IDs and firm revenue per employee and net income per employee. We contribute to the literature on IDs by introducing controls for patenting, R&D spending, and time-varying sector effects. To determine the marginal effect of each additional ID held, we use a fixed effects regression and find that a 1% increase in the stock of IDs increases revenue per employee by 0.19%. With a nearest-neighbour matching approach, we find a 10% total premium in revenue per employee and a 20% premium in net income per employee among firms holding at least one ID, compared to those with none.

Revealing Values: Applying the Inverse-Optimum Method to US State Tax Data, now published in the National Tax Journal (link)

Tax rates vary across jurisdictions, reflecting different preferences about redistribution. The inverse-optimum income tax method considers both tax systems and income distributions, and quantifies preferences by assigning weights to all income groups. However, existing work examines only national-level income taxes, does not include sales and property taxes, and does not examine single and joint filers separately. In this paper, I extend the theory underlying the inverse-optimum method to include sales and property taxes. Using IRS tax data, I calculate effective marginal income tax and commodity tax rates for each state and income level. I calculate the implied weights on each filer type in each income group in every US state, finding non-monotonically decreasing weights and varying differences between single and joint filers. I observe substantial differences in revealed social preferences across states.

New Voters and Old Voters: Understanding Volatility in Quebecers’ Federal Election Votes between 2008 and 2019, with Daniel Westlake, now published in the Canadian Journal of Political Science (link)

Canadian federal elections between 2008 and 2019 saw a great of volatility in Quebec, with important consequences for election outcomes. The surge in New Democratic Party (NDP) support in Quebec led the party to official opposition, while Liberal gains in 2011 led the party to a majority government, and Bloc Québécois gains in 2019 helped to reduce the Liberals to a minority. To what extent was this volatility driven by voters switching parties and to what degree was it driven by voters entering and exiting the electorate? This article uses ecological inference based on riding-level data to examine the dynamics of party competition in Quebec from 2008 to 2019. We show that while voter mobilization mattered to volatility, vote switching was the important driver of changing party fortunes during this period.

Symbolic Powers of Monomial Ideals, with S.M. Cooper, H. Tai Hà and Andrew Hoefel, published in Proceedings of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society (2016) , pp. 1–17. doi: 10.1017/S0013091516000110 (link)

We investigate symbolic and regular powers of monomial ideals. We prove a new containment for powers of a square-free monomial ideal. This captures two conjectures: one of Harbourne-Huneke and one of Bocci-Cooper-Harbourne. We also introduce the symbolic polyhedron of a monomial ideal and use this to explore symbolic powers of non-square-free monomial ideals

Working Papers

Patent Applications and EPO Membership: How Big Is The Drop? (link)

The number of domestic patent applications is dramatically affected by membership in the European Patent Organization (EPO). Other work in the field does not consider the effect of EPO membership, and does not use all available exogenous variables as regressors. Using three different methods - the Pooled Mean Group Estimator, fixed effects, and nearest-neighbour matching, this paper estimates the decline in national-office patent applications as the result of membership in the EPO. The predicted drop is found to be 78% using PMG, 59% using fixed effects, and 80% using nearest-neighbour matching. Effects on patenting from changes in R\&D spending, real GDP, and manufacturing output are also estimated.

Manufacturing and Patent Applications: Empirical Evidence For Advanced and Middle-Income Economies (link)

Past work on the number of domestic patent applications typically relies only on research and development spending and does not consider manufacturing capacity as an explanatory variable. This paper considers the impact of manufacturing on the number of domestic patent applications, utilizing the Pooled Mean Group estimator to isolate the long run effects. Using panel data from 9 advanced economies, I find a 0.17% increase in patent applications for a 1% increase in the share of GDP from manufacturing. Using panel data from 9 middle-income countries in the OECD, I find a much larger effect, a 1.14% increase in patenting for a 1% increase in the share of GDP from manufacturing. The effect sizes of changes in real GDP per capita and in the share of GDP spent on R&D are also considered.