WORKING PAPERS
Consolidation and Political Influence in the Auto Retail Industry (with Sarah Moshary) [Updated! 10/26] Revise and Resubmit at the Journal of Political Economy Abstract: This paper provides novel empirical evidence on how and why industry consolidation enhances political influence. Focusing on the auto retail industry, we show that large acquisitions lead to higher levels of lobbying, on the order of 30%. This increase in lobbying translates into more favorable legislation for the industry. Using a border identification strategy, we show that the increase is driven by acquisitions that reduce free-riding incentives in political investment. Our findings underscore the distinction between concentration and size in economic models of lobbying.
State Capacity and Infrastructure Costs (with Zachary Liscow and William Nober) Abstract: How much is a good bureaucrat worth? We study this question in the case of U.S. infrastructure construction; a setting where costs are high and rising. We find that higher-quality government engineers deliver observationally similar projects at significantly lower cost; going from the 25th to 75th percentile of engineer quality is associated with a 14% reduction in project-level costs. Further, losing expertise to retirement has substantial consequences: the cost increase arising from engineer departures is six times the size of their wages. Our results highlight the value of experience and human capital in public organizations. Survey with responses. Featured in: Bloomberg, Brookings, Construction Briefing, Noahpinion, Pew, Project Syndicate, The American Propsect.
Legislation, Regulation and Litigation: Demand for U.S. Legal Services in Historical Perspective (w. Ariell Reshef) [Updated! 9/26] Abstract: Between 1970 and 1990 the U.S. legal services industry underwent a dramatic demand shift. Its employment share more than doubled and the relative wages of lawyers rose by 60%, in contrast to stability before and after. We attribute this shift to three related changes in the legal environment: a wave of new legislation and regulation broadened the scope of the law, left its application uncertain, and enlisted private lawyers to enforce it through fee-shifting. Using over a century of data, we show that lawyers’ employment and compensation track all three changes. Event studies link specific statutes to increased litigation and demand for the affected fields of law. Other explanations, including lawyer quality, industrial composition, and technology, do not account for the demand shift. We estimate that legislative uncertainty accounts for roughly 13% of the demand shift—a cost of about $23 billion in 2024 alone. Featured in: EconPol Forum, City Journal.
PUBLICATIONS
The Political Economy of Subsidy-Giving Conditionally Accepted at the Journal of the European Economic Association
State and Local Procurement Forthcoming in the National Tax Journal (Forum on The Fiscal Dynamics of State and Local Financing)
Bidding for Firms: Subsidy Competition in the U.S. Journal of Political Economy 133(8) August 2025. Awards: National Tax Association Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation in Government Finance and Taxation, International Industrial Organization Conference Best Rising Star Paper, University of Virginia Outstanding Dissertation. Data: Dataverse. Data Appendix.
Corporate Political Spending and State Tax Policy: Evidence from Citizens United (with Alisa Tazhitdinova and Sarah Robinson) Journal of Public Economics 221 May 2023. Publisher’s Link. Featured in: Wall Street Journal, Harvard Law School Forum.
Evaluating State and Local Business Tax Incentives (with Owen Zidar) Journal of Economic Perspectives 34(2) Spring 2020. Slides. Featured in: Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Governing.
SELECTED Works in Progress
The Distributional Effects of Million Dollar Plants (with Ben Hyman, Moises Yi, and Owen Zidar)