5700 Haven Hall
505 South State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1045
Education
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Doctoral Candidate, Political Science. Ph.D. expected Winter 2015
Fields: Comparative Politics (Major), World Politics, Methods, Economics (cognate)
University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA
Bachelor of Arts Cum Laude, June 2005
Political Science (Departmental High Honors), Economics (Minor)
Honors Thesis, Political Science: Defending the Union: Member State Defense Policy Preferences in Terms of Domestic Politics
Essex Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis and Collection, Colchester, UK
Computer Assisted Text Analysis
Summer 2012
Universita di Roma, Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy
European Integration Summer School
Summer 2005
Lunds Universitet, Lund, Sweden
2003-2004
Employment
Hertie School of Governance, Berlin, Germany
Pre-Doctoral Fellow and Research Associate in Political Economy with the Centre for Fiscal Governance
2011-2013
Honors
2011-2013 Pre-Doctoral Fellow in Political Economy at the Hertie School of Governance
2011 NSF IDEAS IGERT Fellowship
2010 Jean Monnet Graduate Fellowship
2009 Roy Pierce Summer Research Fellowship
2008 Organski Summer Research Fellowship
2006 University of Michigan Fellowship
2005 Tor Vergata Summer Scholarship
2001-2005 Provost’s Honors
Dissertation
Endogenous Economic Voting: How Politicians Use Institutions to Shape the Magnitude of the Economic Vote
The literature on the institutional constraints on economic voting has emphasized how voters hold politicians less accountable for economic outcomes when those politicians have less control over them (e.g., Duch & Stevenson, 2008; Powell & Whitten, 1993). This literature, however, is based on the highly problematic assumptions that 1) elections are fixed events that the affected politicians have no capacity to manipulate and 2) voters have a strong sense of the constraints politicians face in implementing their policies. This dissertation considers how our empirical expectations of accountability relationships change when these assumptions are loosened. While the literature on election timing has typically considered early elections to be the purview of opportunistic prime ministers, data collected in this project find that nearly 20% of early elections are initiated by opposition parties. The dissertation presents a theory of economic voting that is based on strategic politicians calling elections at opportune moments in anticipation of predictable voter response to economic performance. The dissertation explains that different types of elections result from variation in economic performance, the value of the current government, the expected value of a new parliament, and the capacity of both the prime minister and the opposition to call elections at will. Because the institutions that constrain or empower different actors in parliament to bring about elections covary with those typically used in clarity of responsibility arguments, the weak direct effects found in previous studies between institutions, economics, and election outcomes are better explained by the consideration of strategic politicians opportunistically timing elections. I show that the type of election mediates the effect of the economy on the retention of the prime minister in 19 parliamentary countries for elections between 1967 and 2010. The implications of the economic vote for democratic accountability are thrown into question, as the economy’s primary effect on election outcomes is through the incentive for strategic politicians to call elections.
Peer Reviewed Publications
Christopher Gandrud and Cassandra Grafström. “Inflated Expectations: How government partisanship shapes monetary policy bureaucrats’ inflation forecasts.” Forthcoming at the Political Science Research and Methods.
Arthur Lupia, Yanna Krupnikov, Adam Seth Levine, Cassandra Grafstrom, Erin McGovern, and William D. MacMillan. 2011. “How ‘Point Blindness’ Dilutes the Value of Stock Market Reports.” Political Communication, 28(1): 1-18.
Working Papers
“Does Election Timing Work? Election Type as Moderating or Mediating Variable in Election Outcomes”
“A Theory of Election Types”
“Moments of Clarity: Election Campaigns, Clarity of Responsibility, and Economic Voting” (with Rob Salmond)
“Double Jeopardy: The Luxury Vote and Asymmetries of Partisan Accountability” (with Mark Andreas Kayser)
“Conceptions of State Responsibility in Central and Eastern Europe” (with Jennifer Miller-Gonzalez)
Selected Conference Presentations
“Economics and Election Type” paper presented at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association in Chicago, Illinois.
“Double Jeopardy: How the Left Loses from Asymmetry of Partisan Accountability” paper presented at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association in Chicago, Illinois and the European Political Science Association in Barcelona, Spain. Co-authored with Mark A. Kayser.
“Do Elections Affect Fed Forecasts?” paper presented at the 2012 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana. Co-authored with Christopher Gandrud.
“Endogenous Elections and the Economic Vote: Does Choosing Election Timing Actually Bolster Incumbent Electoral Support?” paper presented at the 2012 Annual Conference of the European Political Science Association, Berlin, Germany, and the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana.
“Moments of Clarity: Election Campaigns, Clarity of Responsibility, and Economic Voting,” paper presented at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association. Co-authored with Rob Salmond.
“Accounting for Institutions: How the Existence of Independent Central Banks Affects Democratic Accountability,” paper presented at the 2009 American Political Science Association Meeting, Toronto, Ontario.
“How ‘Point Blindness’ Dilutes the Value of Stock Market Reports,” paper prepared for the 2008 American Political Science Association Meeting, Boston, Massachusetts. Co-authored with Arthur Lupia, Yanna Krupnikov, Adam Seth Levine, William D. MacMillan, and Erin McGovern. (Previously presented as “Loonies Under Your Bed: Misdirected Attention and the Diluted Value of Stock Market Reports” at the 2008 Midwest Political Science Association Meeting, Chicago, Illinois and the 2007Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois.)
“Reactions to European Union Expansion: Russian Elite Perspectives on the Changing Face of the Neighborhood,” paper prepared for presentation at the 2008 Midwest Political Science Association Meeting, Chicago, Illinois.
“Conceptions of State Responsibility in Central and Eastern Europe,” paper prepared for presentation at the 2008 Midwest Political Science Association Meeting, Chicago, Illinois. Co-authored with Jennifer Miller.
“Defending the Union: Member State Defense Policy Preferences in Terms of Domestic Politics,” prepared for presentation at 2005 Annual Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union, Claremont, California. Best Paper Award.
Research Experience
2011-2013 Mark Hallerberg & Mark Kayser, Hertie School of Governance
2010 George Tsebelis, Department of Political Science, University of Michigan
Rob Salmond, Department of Political Science, University of Michigan
2009 Elisabeth Gerber, Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan (EITM Summer Institute Coordinator)
George Tsebelis, Department of Political Science, University of Michigan
Rob Salmond, Department of Political Science, University of Michigan
2008 William Zimmerman, Department of Political Science, University of Michigan
2007 Arthur Lupia, Department of Political Science, University of Michigan
Teaching Experience
Spring 2014 PS 389: Contemporary European Politics, Department of Political Science, University of Michigan (Primary Instructor)
Winter 2014 PS 315: Media and Public Opinion, Department of Political Science, University of Michigan (Primary Instructor: Ted Brader)
Fall 2013 CICS 301: Development, Program in International and Comparative Studies, University of Michigan (Primary Instructor: Anne Pitcher)
Spring 2013 U2: Introduction to Statistics, Hertie School of Governance (Primary Instructor: Mark A. Kayer)
Fall 2010 PS 387: Comparative Analysis of Government Institutions, Department of Political Science, University of Michigan (Primary Instructor: George Tsebelis)
Winter 2009 PS 389: Comparative Institutions and Behavior, Department of Political Science, University of Michigan. ULWR (Primary Instructor: Rob Salmond)
Fall 2007-08 PS 160: Introduction to World Politics, Department of Political Science, University of Michigan (Primary Instructor: James Morrow)
Fall 2008 Administrative Assistant, Introduction to World Politics.
Service
2012-present AJPS Reviewer
2012-13 Editorial Board for the APSA Comparative Politics Section Newsletter
2010 Politics of Finance Search Committee Member
2007-08 Women’s Caucus, President
Affiliations
American Political Science Association
European Political Science Association
European Union Center at the University of Michigan
Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Michigan
Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan
Midwest Political Science Association
Center for International and Comparative Studies
Languages
English Native
Swedish/Norwegian Good
Spanish Elementary
German Elementary
Skills
Knowledgeable in Stata, LaTex, Python, Excel, Word, and R.
References
William Roberts Clark, Professor
Dissertation Committee Co-Chair
Texas A&M University
Robert Franzese, Professor
Dissertation Committee Co-Chair
University of Michigan
Jenna Bednar, Associate Professor
University of Michigan
Arthur Lupia, Hal R. Varian Collegiate Professor
University of Michigan