CV

Contact Information
Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences
MC 228-77
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, CA 91125

E-mail: avhirsch@caltech.edu

• "Voter Attention and Electoral Accountability," with Saba Devdariani. Journal of Public Economics (2023) 224: 104918.
      Show Abstract     Online Appendix
  What sorts of policy decisions do voters pay attention to, and why? And how does rational voter attention affect the behavior of politicians in office? We extend the Canes-Wrone, Herron and Shotts (2001) model of electoral accountability to allow the voter to choose when to pay costly attention to learn the consequences of the incumbent's policy. We find that the voter will pay the most attention in close races, when the instrumental value of information about incumbent performance is greatest. When the voter's cost of attention is "intermediate," she will pay different levels of attention to different policies, and generally pay more attention to an unpopular policy than a popular one. This asymmetric attention can improve accountability by giving a moderately strong incumbent an opportunity to be "caught in the act of being good" after choosing an unpopular policy. However, it can also harm accountability by leading a moderately strong incumbent to categorically avoid the unpopular policy to evade voter scrutiny. This negative effect can be sufficiently strong to harm the voter's overall welfare, providing a novel rationale for why subsidizing information about government performance may unintentionally harm voters. Finally, we find that rational voter attention can never induce "fake leadership," i.e., a moderately weak incumbent choosing an unpopular policy precisely because it draws more scrutiny, hoping that the voter discovers an accidental policy success.

• "Lobbyists as Gatekeepers: Theory and Evidence," with B. Pablo Montagnes, Karam Kang, and Hye Young You. Journal of Politics (2023) 85 (2): 731-48.
      Show Abstract
  Lobbyists are omnipresent in the lobbying process, but the value that they bring to both clients and politicians remains poorly understood. We develop a model in which a lobbyist's value derives from his ability to selectively screen which clients he brings to a politician, thereby earning the politician's trust and preferential treatment for his clients. Lobbyists face a dilemma, as their ability to screen also increases their value to special interests, and the prices they can charge. A lobbyist's profit motive undermines his ability to solve this dilemma, but an interest in policy outcomes---due either to a political ideology or a personal connection---enhances it, which paradoxically increases his profits. Using a unique dataset from reports mandated by the Foreign Agents Registration Act, we find that lobbyists become more selective when they are more ideologically aligned with politicians, consistent with our prediction.

• "Polarization and Campaign Spending in Elections." Journal of Politics (2023), 85 (1): 240-49.
      Show Abstract
  We develop a Downsian model of electoral competition in which candidates with both policy and office-motivations use a mixture of platforms and campaign spending to gain the median voter's support. The unique equilibrium involves randomizing over both platforms and spending, and exhibits the following properties - (i) ex-ante uncertainty in platforms, spending, and the election winner, (ii) platform divergence, (iii) inefficiency in spending and outcomes, (iv) polarization, and (v) voter extremism. We also show that platform polarization and campaign spending move in tandem, since spending is used by candidates to gain support for extreme platforms. Factors that contribute to both phenomena include the candidates' desire for extreme platforms, and their ability to translate campaign spending into support for them. The latter insight generates new hypotheses about the potential causes of both rising polarization and spending.

• "A Theory of Policy Sabotage," with John Kastellec. Journal of Theoretical Politics (2022), 34 (2): 191-218.
      Show Abstract
  We develop a theory of policymaking that examines when policy sabotage---the deliberate choice by an opposition party to interfere with the implementation of a policy---can be an effective electoral strategy, even if rational voters can observe that it is happening. In our model, a potential saboteur chooses whether to sabotage an incumbent's policy by blocking its successful implementation. A voter then decides whether to retain the incumbent, who is of unknown ability, or to select a challenger. We find that the incentives for sabotage are broadly shaped by the underlying popularity of the incumbent---it is most attractive when an incumbent is somewhat unpopular. If so, sabotage may decrease the probability the incumbent is reelected, even though sabotage is observable to the voter. This is because while the saboteur knows that sabotage will improve the incumbent's reputation, he fears that absent sabotage a policy success will improve that reputation even more.

• "Policy-Development Monopolies: Adverse Consequences and Institutional Responses," with Kenneth W. Shotts. Journal of Politics (2018), 80 (4): 1339-54.
      Show Abstract
  We analyze a model of policymaking in which only one actor, e.g., a bureaucratic agency or a well-funded interest group, has the capacity to develop high-quality policy proposals. By virtue of her skills, this actor has an effective monopoly on policy development and thus can craft proposals that are good for herself but provide few benefits to decisionmakers who enact policies. We then examine institutional responses that decisionmakers can use to induce a policy-development monopolist to craft more-appealing proposals: (i) establishing in-house policy development capacity, (ii) delegating authority to an agent who counterbalances the monopolist?s preferences, and (iii) fostering competition by policy developers with different preferences. We apply our model to a diverse set of contexts, including lobbying in term-limited state legislatures, regulation of banking and financial services, and administrative procedures for rulemaking in U.S. federal bureaucracies.

• "Fear, Appeasement, and the Effectiveness of Deterrence," with Ron Gurantz. Journal of Politics (2017) 79 (3): 1041-56.
      Show Abstract
  Governments often fear the future intentions of their adversaries. In this paper we show how this fear can make deterrent threats credible under seemingly incredible circumstances. We consider a model in which a defender seeks to deter a transgression with both intrinsic and military value. We examine how the defender's fear of the challenger's future belligerence affects his willingness to respond to the transgression with war. We derive conditions under which even a very minor transgression effectively "tests" for the challenger's future belligerence, which makes the defender's deterrent threat credible even when the transgression is objectively minor and the challenger is ex-ante unlikely to be belligerent. We also show that fear can actually benefit the defender by allowing her to credibly deter. We apply the model to analyze a series of historical cases, and show the robustness of our results to a variety of extensions.

• "Experimentation and Persuasion in Political Organizations." American Political Science Review (2016), 110 (1): 52-67.
      Show Abstract     Supplemental Mathematica Code
  Different beliefs about how to achieve shared goals are common in political organizations like government agencies, campaigns, and NGOs. However, the consequences of such conflicts have not yet been explored. We develop a formal model in which a principal and an agent disagree about the right policy for achieving their shared goals. Disagreement creates a motivational problem, but we show how both observing policy outcomes and experimenting with policies can ameliorate it. We also show that the principal often defers to the agent in order to motivate him, thereby generating more informative policy outcomes and building future consensus. Most surprisingly, she sometimes allows the agent to implement his desired policy even when she is sure it is wrong to persuade him through failure that he is mistaken. Using the model we generate empirical implications about performance measurement and Presidential appointments in U.S. federal agencies.

• "Signaling and Counter-Signaling in the Judicial Hierarchy: An Empirical Analysis of En Banc Review," with Deborah Beim and John Kastellec. American Journal of Political Science (2016), 60 (2): 490-508.
      Show Abstract
  We leverage the institutional features of American courts to evaluate the importance of whistleblowers in hierarchical oversight. Drawing on a formal theory of signaling in the judicial hierarchy, we examine the role of whistleblowing dissents in triggering en banc review of three-judge panels by full circuits of the Courts of Appeals. The theory generates predictions about how dissent interacts with judicial preferences to influence circuits' review and reversal decisions, which we test using original and existing data. First, we show that judges who dissent counter to their preferences are more likely to see their dissents lead to review and reversal. Second, we show that dissents are most influential when the likelihood of non-compliance by a three-judge panel is highest. Our results underscore the importance of dissent in the judicial hierarchy and illustrate how judicial whistleblowers can help appellate courts target the most important cases for review.

• "Competitive Policy Development," with Kenneth W. Shotts. American Economic Review (2015) 105 (4): 1646-64.
      Show Abstract
  We present a model of policy development in which competing factions have different ideologies, yet agree on certain common objectives. Policy developers can appeal to a decisionmaker by making productive investments to improve the quality of their proposals. These investments are specific to a given proposal, which means that policy developers can potentially obtain informal agenda power. Competition undermines this agenda power, forcing policy developers to craft policies that are better for the decisionmaker. This beneficial effect is strongest if policy developers have divergent ideological preferences, because their intense desire to affect policy motivates them to develop higher-quality proposals.

• "Whistleblowing and Compliance in the Judicial Hierarchy," with Deborah Beim and John Kastellec. American Journal of Political Science (2014) 58 (4): 904-18.
      Show Abstract
  One way that principals can overcome the problem of informational asymmetries in hierarchical organizations is to enable whistleblowing. We evaluate how whistleblowing influences compliance in the judicial hierarchy. We present a formal model in which a potential whistleblower may, at some cost, signal non-compliance by a lower court to a higher court. A key insight of the model is that whistleblowing is most informative when it is rare. While the presence of a whistleblower can increase compliance by lower courts, beyond a certain point blowing the whistle is counterproductive and actually reduces compliance. Moreover, a whistleblower who is a ``perfect ally" of the higher court (in terms of preferences) blows the whistle too often. Our model shows an important connection between the frequency of whistleblowing and the effectiveness of whistleblowing as a threat to induce compliance in hierarchical organizations.

• "Policy-Specific Information and Informal Agenda Power," with Kenneth W. Shotts. American Journal of Political Science (2012) 56 (1): 67-83.
      Show Abstract
  In Gilligan and Krehbiel's (1987) model of procedural choice in legislatures, a committee exerts costly effort to acquire private information about an unknown state of the world, and partial delegation through a restrictive rule is shown to encourage specialization. We instead develop a model of committee specialization as the production of policy valence, i.e., a committee can invest to make a specific bill higher quality to all legislators regardless of their ideology. In contrast to the canonical result, we show that a restrictive rule always discourages specialization, because it gives free agenda power to a committee who would otherwise attempt to exercise informal agenda power by producing a higher quality bill. Our finding applies broadly to models of expertise and delegation in political institutions, which almost uniformly model specialization similarly to Gilligan and Krehbiel.

• "Common Agency Lobbying over Coalitions and Policy," with David P. Baron - Economic Theory (2012) 49 (3): 639-81.
      Show Abstract
  This paper presents a theory of common agency lobbying in which policy-interested lobbies can first influence the choice of a governing coalition, and then influence the legislative bargaining over policies. Equilibria can involve active lobbying at both stages of the governing process. Contributions can also be made to defeat a policy proposal, and although those contributions are never successful they can influence coalition choice. The equilibrium policy in the legislative bargaining stage is efficient given the coalition selected, but the equilibrium coalition need not be efficient. Lobbying can also lead to the preservation of the status quo and lobby-induced gridlock. An example is presented to identify the multiplicity of equilibria and provide a full characterization of an equilibrium.

• "Theory Driven Bias in Ideal Point Estimates - A Monte Carlo Study" - Political Analysis (2011) 19 (1): 87-102
      Show Abstract     Matlab Programs
  
  I analyze the use of ideal point estimates for testing pivot theories of lawmaking, such as Krehbiel's pivotal politics and Cox and McCubbins's party cartel model. Pivot theories predict a gridlock interval of the policy space within which no status quo policy can be dislodged. Clinton (2008) argues that one prediction of pivot theories is that the preferences of legislators located within gridlock intervals will be statistically indistinguishable. I show that Clinton's prediction only holds in small sample when voting is near perfect, and demonstrate with Monte Carlo simulations that the problem is unlikely to be consequential with US Congressional voting data. My analysis suggests that the distribution governing the underlying agenda is alone unlikely to significantly affect ideal points estimates, which is broadly encouraging for their use in theory testing.

• "Reviewing Fast or Slow: A Theory of Summary Reversal in the Judicial Hierarchy," with Jonathan Kastellec and Anthony Taboni. Revise and Resubmit at American Journal of Political Science.
      Show Abstract
  Appellate courts with discretionary dockets have multiple ways to review lower courts. We develop a formal model that evaluates the tradeoffs between "full review" - which features full briefing, oral arguments, and signed opinions - versus "quick review" where a higher court can summarily reverse a lower court. We show that having the option of costless summary reversal can increase compliance by lower courts, but also distort their behavior compared to relying only on costly full review. When the higher court is uncertain about the lower court's preferences, the threat of summary reversal can lead an aligned lower court to "pander'' and issue the opposite disposition to that preferred by the higher court. Access to summary reversal can therefore harm the higher court in some circumstances. Our analysis provides a theoretical foundation for growing concern over the U.S. Supreme Court's "shadow docket'' - of which summarily reversals are a component - which has been empirically focused to date.

• "Veto Players and Policy Development," with Kenneth W. Shotts. Revise and Resubmit at American Journal of Political Science.
      Show Abstract
  We analyze the effects of veto players when the set of available policies isn't exogenously fixed, but rather determined by policy developers who work to craft new high-quality proposals. If veto players are moderate then there is active competition between policy developers on both sides of the political spectrum. However, more extreme veto players induce asymmetric activity, as one side disengages from policy development. With highly-extreme veto players, policy development ceases and gridlock results. We also analyze effects on centrists' utility. Moderate veto players dampen productive policy development and extreme ones eliminate it entirely, either of which is bad for centrists. But some effects are surprisingly positive. In particular, somewhat-extreme veto players can induce policy developers who dislike the status quo to craft moderate, high-quality proposals. Our model accounts for changing patterns of policymaking in the U.S. Senate and predicts that if polarization continues centrists will become increasingly inclined to eliminate the filibuster.

• "Productive Policy Competition and Asymmetric Extremism" [Revised 11/25/2024]
  (A full history of previously-circulated versions of this manuscript is available here)
      Show Abstract
  Viable policies must be developed by individuals and groups with the expertise and willingness to do so. We study a model of costly policy development in which competing policy developers can differ in both their intrinsic ideological extremism and ability at crafting high quality policies. Equilibrium exhibits unequal participation, inefficiently unpredictable and extreme policies and outcomes, wasted effort, and an apparent advantage for extreme policies. While asymmetries between the developers always reduce observable competition, they can nevertheless benefit the decisionmaker. This contrasts starkly with the classic all-pay contest used to study lobbying and electoral competition, and is rooted in the fact the developers care about which policy they may lose to, rather than simply winning or losing. The model provides a novel rationale for why extreme actors may come to dominate policymaking rooted in the nature of policy development, and highlights the difficulty in assessing the normative implications of such dominance.

• "Implementing Information Escrows," with Joanna Huey
      Show Abstract
  We use a mechanism design approach to examine information escrows in a workplace setting in which a firm seeks to minimize future managerial misconduct. In the mechanism studied, reports of misconduct are kept secret until the set of filed reports satisfies a prespecified criteria and the manager is fired. When misconduct reports are costless for employees to file, a threshold mechanism -- in which the manager is fired if and only if the number of reports exceeds a preannounced threshold -- is optimal. Costly reporting, however, can have surprising effects -- the firm may need to commit to a threshold that exceeds its ideal to elicit truthful reporting, there may be no threshold mechanism that elicits truthful reporting, and a mechanism randomizing over distinct thresholds may dominate all threshold mechanisms. These effects are rooted in the complex way that the escrow mechanism interacts with an employee's personal experience to shape her expectations that filing a report will trigger the manager's termination.

• "An Experimental Study of Delegation," with Marina Agranov and Lindsey Gailmard
      Show Abstract
  The allocation of formal decision-making authority in organizations has a powerful effect on political and economic outcomes. We examine how individuals delegate decision-making authority to a better informed agent in an experimental setting, testing the key theoretical predictions of the canonical Holmstrom (1984) delegation model in the lab. While this model has been widely applied to study decision-making within firms and bureaucratic organizations, previous experimental investigations provide only limited insight into its applicability as a model of individual behavior. We develop an experimental interface that more closely approximates the information and choice environment in the model. This innovation allows a more faithful implementation of the model in the decision environment facing the subjects and, therefore, a more complete test of the model.

• Policy Contests
      Show Abstract
  In many political environments, individuals or groups compete to have their preferred spatial policies enacted by exerting costly up-front effort. Moreover, that effort may be both productive or unproductive; examples include valence competition in elections (e.g. Wiseman 2006, Meirowitz 2008, Ashworth and Bueno de Mesquita 2009), expenditures in lobbying contests (Meirowitz and Jordan 2012), and productive investments in quality (Lax and Cameron 2007, Hirsch and Shotts 2015). Such "policy contests'' have the distinctive feature that the participants care not only about whether their desired policy is chosen (e.g. Baye, Kovenock, and de Vries 1993), but also which policy is chosen if theirs is not. Because policy contests typically exhibit mixed strategy equilibria, previous analyses have gained tractability by assuming sequential movers (Wiseman 2006, Lax and Cameron 2007), a binary policy space (Meirowitz 2008), or sequentially separate choices of policy and effort (Ashworth and Bueno de Mesquita 2009). We provide a unified model for analyzing simultaneous-move all-pay policy contests with both productive or unproductive effort. We characterize equilibria, and analyze how both ideological extremism and the cost of effort affects equilibrium effort, spatial outcomes, and the pattern of competition. Our analysis also illustrates how considering the simultaneous choice of policy and effort actually simplifies the equilibrium analysis, and generates new insights about the endogenous relationship between effort and spatial policy outcomes.

• Introduction to Political Science (PS12), Undergraduate, 2024
  

• Political Theory (SS202a), Ph.D., 2014-2024
  

• Political Agency (SS231c, SS210a/c), Graduate, 2018, 2021-2024
  

• Formal Theories in Political Science (PS132), Undergraduate, 2023
  

• Analyzing Congress (PS121), Undergraduate, 2014-2018
  

• Congressional Politics (POL324), Undergraduate, Fall 2010, 2011, 2013
      Course Description, Syllabus
  This course introduces students to the US Congress with a focus on thinking analytically about the determinants of Congressional behavior. Among the factors examined will be the characteristics and incentives of legislators, rules governing the legislative process and internal organization, separation of powers, political parties, Congressional elections, and interest group influence. A background in analytical methods will be helpful but is not required.

• Money and Influence in Policymaking (WWS 594d, 403d), MPA Spring 2012, Undergraduate Fall 2013
      Course Description, WWS594a - Spring 2012 MPA, WWS403d - Fall 2013 Undergraduate
  This course examines the role of money and interest group influence in U.S. policymaking. We take the perspective that interest groups and policymakers are rational actors that pursue their aims through the political process, and seek to understand the determinants of interest group influence, the strategies interest groups employ, and the mediating role of institutions. The course is taught using a combination of case studies and theoretical frameworks. We focus in particular on three important mechanisms for interest group influence - campaign finance, direct lobbying, and "outside lobbying" directed toward the public.

• Advanced Political Institutions (POL581), Ph.D., Spring 2012, 2014
  

• Business Strategy in the Public Sphere (WWS528d), MPA/MPP, Spring 2011
      Course Description
  This course analyzes the behavior of private businesses when operating in the public sphere. We first study how businesses respond to non-governmental challenges to their market behavior such as pressure from private activists and negative media coverage. We then analyze the strategies that businesses pursue to actively influence the political institutions - legislatures, bureaucracies, and courts - that set the 'rules of the game' under which businesses compete. Course is taught using a combination of case studies and theoretical frameworks that examine how business managers approach nonmarket challenges.

• "Health Care Reform: 2009-2010," with Kenneth W. Shotts. Stanford GSB Case P74.
      Show Description
  Comprehensive health care insurance reform was a perennial goal of the Democratic Party. Although reform efforts had persistently ended in failure, proponents of reform saw a new window of opportunity after the 2008 Presidential election. Barack Obama had campaigned on the promise of reform and was elected by the largest margin of victory for any Democrat in decades. In Congress, Democrats held large majorities in the House (257 of 435 seats) and the Senate (58 of 100 seats, plus two independents who caucused with Democrats). Soon after his inauguration, President Obama held a forum assembling representatives from Congress, the health care industry, and unions to launch his pursuit of health care reform. This case reviews the public, legislative, and political battle that ensued. It follows the interest groups with a stake in health care policy, and the strategies that they, as well as politicians, used to promote their objectives within the context of U.S. policy making institutions.

• Not Another Politics Podcast: Ukraine, Putin and Credible Deterrence
  

• Modeling Politics: An Interview With Alexander Hirsch