Welcome! I am a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Michigan.
Dissertation
In my dissertation I explain why people make political donations and when requests for these donations are persuasive. In the first part I show that mentioning issues people care about can decrease their willingness to donate if these issues remind them about their personal financial struggles. Examples of such issues include unemployment, inflation, the cost of health care, and the cost of education. Second, I build upon the results in the first part to derive new hypotheses about who should be contacted for money. I show that there exist conditions under which political organizations have an incentive to target people who are not their core supporters rather than those that are.
To derive and test my hypotheses I use game theory, experiments, and econometrics. Funding for this project was made possible by a National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant and a Time-Sharing Experiments in the Social Sciences (TESS) grant. Please view the “Dissertation” page to read more.
Other Research Projects
In addition to my dissertation, I am currently engaged in four other research projects. The first project proposes an improved method for survey-based measures of people’s willingness to engage in political action. This research has been supported by a Time-Sharing Experiments in the Social Sciences (TESS) grant. The second project constructs an institutional theory to explain why states differ in their treatment of same-sex couples. The third project examines how people’s decisions to spend money are affected by those around them. The fourth project analyzes the conditions under which men and women differ in their willingness to donate money.
