As polarization and gridlock continues to grip national politics, Americans are increasingly
looking to states to remedy the nation's most significant challenges. But this was not always …

Do politicians tend to adopt unpopular policies when the media and the public are distracted
by other events? We examine this question by analyzing the timing of executive orders …

Objective Voter purges can protect election integrity by ensuring deceased or moved
individuals are removed from election rolls. But they have been used to diminish voting …

Scholarly attention on executive policy making has largely focused on presidents and the
federal bureaucracy. Yet, state policy making is just as important given its immediate …

This dissertation studies three questions on the political economy of mass media. The first
chapter examines the effects of media slant on public policy views, exploiting an experiment …

As polarization and gridlock continues to grip national politics, Americans are increasingly
looking to states to remedy the nation's most significant challenges. The burden has fallen to …