Hi, I’m Brian. This is my website. Welcome!

You can find links to my published articles below. Links to my CV, Google Scholar, and contact information to the left, below my mugshot.

As you’ll see, the work covers a number of different areas in US political economy. The major focus is regulation-making by executive agencies and attempts by stakeholders to influence this part of the policy process through lobbying. Mostly, this work addresses financial regulatory policy (focusing on the Federal Reserve in particular). Another area that I do a fair bit of work on is related to access to civil justice, and I’m also getting increasingly interested in the political behavior of trade associations.

If you’ve got questions, feel free to reach out.

Recent Working Papers

  1. Central Banks as Market Regulators: Plastic Payment Systems Policy in the United States and Australia.
  2. What Was the Persuasive Effect of Televised Campaign Advertising in the 2016 Presidential Election? (with Arne Holverscheid and Guillaume Pouliot).
  3. Group Talk (with Chris Li).
  4. Who Governs the Association (with Benjamin Egerod and Sebastian Thieme)
  5. How Does Childhood Environment Shape Political Participation? Evidence from Refugees (with Valentin Bolotnyy and Mayya Komisarchik)
  6. Inequality in Administrative Democracy: Large-Sample Evidence from American Financial Regulation (with Daniel Carpenter, Devin Judge-Lord, Chris Kenny, Steve Rashin, Jacob Waggoner, and Susan Webb Yackee). Winner, Herbert Kaufman Award for best paper presented at the 2021 APSA Annual Conference.

Peer-Reviewed Publications

  1. Linking Datasets on Organizations Using Half A Billion Open Collaborated Records (with Connor Jerzak). 2024. Political Science Research & Methods
  2. Lawyers as Lobbyists: Regulatory Advocacy in American Finance (with Daniel Carpenter). 2024. Perspectives on Politics.
  3. A comprehensive dataset of U.S. federal laws (1789–2022). 2024. Scientific Data.
  4. Optimal allocation of sample size for randomization1.based inference from 2^K factorial designs (with Arun Ravichandran, Nicole E. Pashley, and Tirthankar Dasgupta). 2024. Journal of Causal Inference.
  5. What Public Comments During Rulemaking Do (and Why) (with Steven Rashin). 2023. American Politics Research.
  6. Making Regulators Reasonable: Do Procedural Rationality Requirements Fix Cognitive Bias? (with Benjamin M. Chen). 2023. JPART.
  7. The Political Ideologies of Organized Interests & Amicus Curiae Briefs: Large1.Scale, Social Network Imputation of Ideal Points (with Sahar Abi1.Hassan, Janet Box-Steffensmeier, Dino Christenson, and Aaron Kaufman). 2023. Political Analysis.
  8. Identifying bureaus with substantial personnel change during the Trump administration: A Bayesian approach (with Mark Richardson). 2023. PLOS: ONE.
  9. Strategic Proposals, Endogenous Comments, and Bias In Rulemaking. 2020. Journal of Politics.
  10. Meetings, Comments, and the Distributive Politics of Rulemaking. 2020. Quarterly Journal of Political Science.
  11. Data and methods for analyzing special interest influence in rulemaking (with Daniel Carpenter, Devin Judge-Lord, and Steven Rashin). 2020. Interest Groups & Advocacy.

Other Publications

  1. Race and the Political Economy of Civil Justice. 2024. In Rethinking the Lawyer’s Monopoly: Access to Justice and the Future of Legal Services.
  2. Administrative Politics with Clear Stakes and Venues: Strategic Commenting upon Federal Reserve Debit Card Regulations, with Daniel Carpenter. 2023. In C. Cameron, B. Canes-Wrone, S. Gordon, & G. Huber (Eds.), Accountability Reconsidered: Voters, Interests, and Information in US Policymaking.
  3. Getting a Lawyer While Black: A Field Experiment. 2020. Lewis & Clark Law Review.
  4. Can the EU be a Constitutional System Without Universal Access to Judical Review. 2015. Michigan Journal of International Law.

Resting Papers

  1. Agency Failure and Individual Accountability. Center for the Study of the Administratiave State, Working Paper No. 20-03.


Teaching

Northwestern University

  • Public Policy. Spring 2024.
  • Access to Justice. Sprig 2024.
  • American Politics Field Seminar. Fall 2022.
  • R Workshop. Fall 2022 - Spring 2023.
  • Money in Politics. Fall 2022.

UC San Diego

  • Policy Analysis and Public Welfare: An Introduction to the Policymaking Process. Fall 2021.
  • Law and Administration. Spring 2021. Syllabus.
  • Bureaucratic Politics. Spring 2021. Syllabus
  • Interest Groups and the Policymaking Process. Winter 2021. Syllabus

Yale University

  • American Mass Media: Law, Politics, and Policy. Fall 2019. Syllabus
  • Money in Politics. Spring 2019. Syllabus

Harvard University

  • Formal Models of Domestic Politics. Spring 2017. (Teaching Assistant; Primary Instructor: Horacio Larreguy).
  • Bureaucratic Politics (Teaching Assistant; Primary Instructor: Daniel Carpenter)

MIT

  • Constitutional Law & Judicial Politics. Spring 2015. (Course Assistant; Primary Instructor: Christopher Warshaw).

University of Michigan

  • Mass Media and Election Politics. Fall 2013. (Graduate Student Instructor; Primary Instructor: Nicholas Valentino).