Working Papers

It is widely understood that business is powerful in American politics, and a prominent view among political scientists is that business influence pushes policy to the right, in favor of smaller government. As vast as the literature on business power is, however, it has so far neglected an important part of American government: its tens of thousands of local governments. Furthermore, there has been a surge in U.S. local politics research in recent years, but it has not yet examined business positions on local government policies. This essay begins to bridge these gaps. I propose that business may often support well-funded local government, in alignment with unions, because of the kinds of policies local governments make and their relatively smaller scale. In a descriptive analysis of campaign contributions to local tax ballot measures in California, I find that the overwhelming majority of union and business contributions are made in support of tax increases. In a second analysis of local chambers of commerce positions on local tax and bond ballot measures, I find chambers endorsed passage in 70%. These findings underscore the need for more research on a host of important questions about American politics, comparative politics, and business preferences.

With the passage of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the American labor movement cemented the right to form unions and engage in collective bargaining.  However, the NLRA explicitly excluded the public sector.  Government employees did not achieve similar legal protections until decades later, and even then, the laws varied considerably by state.  Because of this, scholarly accounts of the development of public-sector unions usually start in the 1960s and emphasize how public- and private-sector unions developed along separate paths.  In this paper, we analyze a new dataset and show that hundreds of cities had organized workers during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, including firefighters, police, and other public-sector workers (like those in the sanitation and roads departments).  By the 1950s, numerous employee unions had engaged in strikes and had achieved written agreements with their city employers.  We also present evidence that the timing and location of public-sector organization during this period were closely linked to those of the private sector, and we theorize that similar inspiration and energy likely animated both movements.  Thus, despite very different legal contexts before 1960, we show that the early development of public- and private-sector unions followed parallel paths, and that the building of the American labor movement was not as disjointed as is often claimed.  

Good governance and effective problem solving are important goals for American government, and one branch of political science that focuses on them is research on the politics of public policy. This brief summarizes important insights from that literature and illustrates their relevance to two problems: housing unaffordability and public pension underfunding. With housing unaffordability, problem-solving politics is currently activated, whereas with pension underfunding, it is not. To understand why, it is important to consider the features of the policy, the organization of interests, and the politics of problem creation. In the problem-creation stage, the two cases share much in common: they feature lopsided interest structures buttressed by longstanding institutions. But for the activation of problem-solving politics and what problem solving looks like, there are meaningful differences between the two. One difference relates to how the problems are experienced by the broader public. The other is that in one of the cases, the side with vested interest in the status quo is a well-organized interest group. In both cases, problem-solvers tend to emerge from political offices with broader constituencies: state-level offices for housing, and executives (governors and mayors) for pensions.

This paper describes the large and growing interdependence of public pensions and private equity—and the unusual politics that drives it. By any definition, public pension funds represent government money: they are funded through contributions of government employers and employees for the purpose of providing retirement benefits to public-sector workers. Public-sector unions play important roles at virtually every stage of public pension management, from representing the beneficiaries in state and local politics to serving in fiduciary roles on pension governing boards. In a descriptive analysis, we show that public pensions have allocated increasing amounts of capital to private equity in the last two decades, regardless of the party in control of the state legislature, and even in states with strong public-sector unions. To explain this departure from the conventional left-right structure of American politics, we offer an account of the economic incentives that underpin public pensions’ increasing reliance on private equity—and how these developments stand to have enormous consequences for the American political economy. Here, we find entities with acrimonious relationships in public, partnering on over a trillion dollars of private investments. We see signs that public employee unions attempt to influence the practices of private equity-owned companies that employ an increasing share of the American workforce. We also detail how the retirements of millions of state and local government employees and the fiscal health of thousands of American governments are increasingly commingled with the fates of the private equity industry.

Adolescents in Sub-Saharan Africa have some of the highest rates of intimate partner violence across the globe. This paper evaluates the impact of a randomized controlled trial that offers females a goal setting activity to improve their sexual and reproductive health outcomes and offers their male partners a soccer intervention, which educates and inspires young men to make better sexual and reproductive health choices. Both interventions reduce female reports of intimate partner violence. Impacts are larger among females who were already sexually active at baseline. We develop a model to understand the mechanisms at play. The soccer intervention improves male attitudes around violence and risky sexual behaviors. Females in the goal setting arm take more control of their sexual and reproductive health by exiting violent relationships. Both of these mechanisms drive reductions in IPV.

Approximately 75% of children aged 2 to 4 worldwide are regularly subjected to violent discipline across the globe. We study the impact of a virtually-delivered intervention on positive parenting practices in Jamaica. We find the intervention improves caregiver knowledge (0.52 SD) and attitudes around violence (0.2 SD) and leads to meaningful changes in caregiver disciplining behaviors, with a 0.12 SD reduction in violence against children. Treatment children also experience fewer emotional problems (0.17 SD). When we return nine months later, we also find reductions in caregiver depression (0.12 SD), anxiety (0.16 SD), and parental stress (0.16 SD) for treatment caregivers. The virtual delivery has important scalable policy implications which could help decrease violence against children across the globe.

Bias among health care providers can lead to poor-quality care and poor health outcomes, and it can exacerbate disparities. We use a randomized controlled trial to evaluate an intervention to reduce family planning provider bias towards young women in 227 clinics in Tanzania, Burkina Faso, and Pakistan. The intervention educated providers about bias towards young women, facilitated communication about bias with other providers, and offered non-financial public awards to clinics with the least biased care. After 12 months, the intervention led to less-biased attitudes and beliefs among providers and more comprehensive counseling. Clients also perceived better treatment at intervention clinics compared to control clinics. Despite reductions in reported bias, we find mixed evidence regarding changes in method dispensing