The decline in voters' trust in government and the rise of populism are two concerning
features of contemporary politics. In this paper, we present a model of commitment politics …

We study how political culture affects a democracy's ability to pursue ambitious and risky
policy agendas. We conceptualize a democracy's political culture as voters' possibly …

We study a two-period model of electoral accountability between an incumbent politician
and a voter. The incumbent possesses two attributes: competency and experience …

This dissertation contains three chapters each of which addresses topics related to status
perceptions and survey experiments. The first chapter provides a new theory that clarifies …

This paper proposes a game theoretical model of technocratic government, ie cases where
a non political technocrat is put in charge by political parties. We find conditions for the …

A competent and motivated bureaucracy is vital for designing and implementing common
good policies. We show how electoral concerns may discourage politicians from appointing …