Policy Framing, Learning, and Change After Crisis: Lessons from the Texas blackout

Varun Rai and I wanted to understand how policy changed (and didn't) after Winter Storm Uri shut Texas down in February 2021. Here is the abstract for that paper, which we are preparing for submission to an energy policy-focused journal. As extreme weather events continue to cause policy crises, energy policy scholars have an opportunity …

Follow Which Leader? Mimetic Isomorphism Across Space

Willamette professor and fellow Rutgers awardee Colin Birkhead and I are curious about the question of why firms might choose to structure themselves as employee-owned. We decided to look specifically at U.S. breweries, many of which are employee-owned. Here is the first paragraph of the abstract for that paper, which we are preparing for submission …

Predicting Firm Creation in Rural Texas: A Multi-Model Machine Learning Approach to a Complex Policy Problem

Supported by a grant from the IC2 Institute, Varun Rai, Vivek Shastry and I conducted a study of the factors predicting new firm growth in rural Texas. It is under review for publication in PLOS ONE, and you can read a draft on SSRN. What factors predict firm creation in rural America? Policymakers asking this …

Policy Narrators During Crisis: A micro-level analysis of the sourcing, synthesizing, and sharing of policy narratives in rural Texas

Supported by a grant from the IC2 Institute, Varun Rai, Megan Morris and I spent the first summer of the Covid-19 pandemic tracking how rural leaders in Texas helped make sense of and respond to change. This paper is under review for publication in Policy Studies Journal. How do leaders respond to crises? The Narrative …