The author argues that the Great Migration changed how Democratic Party elites interacted with Black communities in northern cities. In particular the author argues that (1) Black Americans moved out of the South into the North, (2) that this migration changed Black citizens ability to participate in politics, and (3) this change in participation led Democratic Party leaders to conclude that Black Americans could help the Democratic Party achieve their electoral goals.

Campaign finance laws aim to limit an individual’s influence over the political process.We show that corporate ownership may be an important mechanism by which institutional investors circumvent such constraints and amplify their influence.  Using data on the political giving and ownership of all 13-F investors between 1980 and 2016, we show that the probability that a firm’s Political Action Committee (PAC) donates to a politician supported by an investor’s PAC nearly doubles after the investor acquires a large stake,  and that it in-creases five-fold when the investor obtains a board seat.  This increase in similarity of political giving coincides with the election cycle the acquisition takes place in, and is not driven by selection into specific politically strategic acquisitions, as convergence in political behavior is observed even for exogenously determined acquisitions caused by stock index inclusions.  The relationship is stronger for private funds, and those with high partisanship, suggesting the relationship is driven by investor preferences rather than strategic concerns.  Finally, we show that portfolio firms’ PAC expenditure experiences a relatively large shift at the acquisition date relative to past giving, whereas no such pattern is observed for institutional investors.We argue that these findings are best explained by investors influencing portfolio firm giving,suggesting that PAC giving may be another means by which influential shareholders impact corporate decision-making, in a manner that amplifies investors’ political voice.

My research considers the potential for power in information. I integrate psychology and political science in order to identify points at which new information can have the most profound effect on the way people form political opinions, make political choices and, ultimately, take political actions.

Our project aims to establish whether targeted provision of constituents’ preferences increases the responsiveness of delegates to the Vietnamese National Assembly (VNA). Utilizing a randomized control trial (RCT), we assign legislators to one of three groups: (1) those briefed on the opinions of their provincial citizenry; (2) those presented with the preferences of local firms; and (3) those receiving no informational treatment what- soever. We also used a saturation design, applying the treatments to differing shares of delegates across provinces. After the summer 2018 session, we collected behavioral data on delegates from the legislative session, including answers to a VNA Library survey about debate preparation; the identity of speakers in group caucuses, query sessions, and floor debates; and the textual content of those speeches. We find consistent evi- dence that citizen-treated delegates were more responsive, via debate preparation and the decision to speak; evidence from speech content is more mixed. More speculatively, we find little evidence of spillover from treated to untreated delegates, but substantial evidence of treatment reinforcement. Citizen-treated delegates grew more responsive as more of their peers possessed identical information.

Sharp, short-lived increases in rule enforcement are common in hierarchical organizations facing multiple objectives. Using data from China that links quasi-random variation in the intensity of environmental policing to high-frequency air pollution data, we show that crackdowns in over short (one-month) periods result in a sharp (approximately 30%) reduction in sulfur dioxide pollution around coal power plants. Pollution reverts to prior levels after crackdowns end. The pace of reversion is faster for firms that outrank the city government, suggesting that hierarchical ties to China’s central authorities attenuate a firm’s accountability to the local environmental protection bureau. Engaging citizen informants deters a subset of egregious polluters during crackdowns, but has no lasting effect, especially among outranking firms. Our results document empirically the limits of a highly centralized approach to improving environmental governance through short-lived enforcement crackdowns.