The following articles which I have co-authored have been accepted for publication at scholarly journals:
Do Foreign Occupations Cause Suicide Attacks? Journal of Conflict Resolution, Volume 58, Number 4. June 2014. With Simon Collard-Wexler and Costantino Pischedda. The phenomenon of suicide attacks has dramatically expanded over the last twenty years, rising from no events in 1980 to a total of 1,398 events by 2008. A prominent theory has argued that suicide attacks are a coercive strategy aimed at ending foreign military occupation by democracies. Yet, these conclusions are based on a research design that is affected by selection bias and that fails to distinguish foreign occupations from cases of groups seeking independence or autonomy, which we term domestic occupations. Analyzing an original data set that distinguishes the different types of occupation, we find that only foreign occupations have a strong and consistent effect on the incidence of suicide attacks. The reason, we argue, is that suicide attacks only become cost effective when targets are both hardened and accessible, a strategic environment that is more common to civil wars and foreign occupations than to domestic occupations.
Why Has Public R&D on Alternatives to Fossil Fuels Decreased in Industrialized Countries? Environmental Science & Policy, Volume 25, January 2013. Pages 127-137. With Johannes Urpelainen. Why has public investment in R&D on alternatives to fossil fuels decreased in industrialized countries? The conventional wisdom holds that the culprit is electricity deregulation. We test this hypothesis against data on public energy R&D in industrialized countries, 1980 to 2007. The data show some weak support for it. However, the data show a stronger association between decreasing public energy R&D and the declining economic importance of heavy industry. These findings suggest that policy initiatives aimed to correct deregulation's ills are only partially helpful.
The Effect of Feed-In Tariffs on Renewable Electricity Generation: An Instrumental Variables Approach Environmental and Resource Economics Volume 57, Number 3, March 2014. Pages 367-392. With Johannes Urpelainen. While carbon taxes and other market-based instruments are widely regarded as optimal for climate mitigation, political constraints have prevented governments from using them. Instead, narrower instruments, including the feed-in tariff (FIT) for renewable electricity generation, have become popular. However, their causal effect on renewable electricity generation remains subject to uncertainty. We use instrumental variables to estimate the causal effect of FITs on renewable electricity generation in 26 industrialized countries, 1979-2005. We find that increasing the FIT by one U.S. cent (2000 constant prices) per kilowatt hour increases the percentage change in renewable electricity's share of the total by 0.11 percentage points. All else constant, if a country implemented for a decade the sample mean FIT of three U.S. cents, the national share of renewable electricity would increase by 3.3 percentage points, which is more than the sample mean. In addition to demonstrating that the FIT is an effective way to increase renewable electricity generation, our approach lays the foundation for future studies of the causal effects of renewable energy policies.
Early Adopters of Solar Panels in Developing Countries: Evidence from Tanzania Review of Policy Research, Volume 31, Issue 1, January 2014. Pages 17-37. With Johannes Urpelainen. Who pioneers the adoption of solar home systems as a source of power in developing countries? While many scholars of electrification praise off-grid options, evidence on their adoption from nationally representative surveys is in short supply. We test existing and new hypotheses using the 2007 Tanzanian National Household Budget Survey. Since the survey is nationally representative and has more than 10,000 respondent households, it is ideal for our purposes. We find some support for the notion that wealthier households adopt more readily than their poorer counterparts, though the effect is modest. Perhaps surprisingly, households that have already been electrified adopt solar home systems more readily than other households, suggesting that solar home systems are a source of backup power for people who are willing to pay for electricity. As for new hypotheses, we find that households with many members adopt more readily than households with few members. Finally, we find that a rural location or high education levels do not predict the use of solar power. Together, these findings suggest that new policies are needed to promote solar home systems in poor and rural areas, where their development effectiveness is maximal..
Windows of Opportunity: Legislative Fragmentation Conditions the Effect of Partisanship on Deregulation
With Johannes Urpelainen. Forthcoming, Journ of Public Policy. Previous research on deregulation in industrialized countries emphasizes differences between left-wing and right-wing parties, but data on product market regulation (PMR) indicate that these differences have been mostly modest. If partisan preferences on the merits of deregulation differ sharply, why such modest differences? We argue that partisan differences only become pronounced when the government is strong and rules a relatively unified legislature. Thus, legislative fragmentation should reduce the left-right difference in deregulation. We test this theory against PMR data in 29 industrialized countries, 1978-2007. We find that right-wing governments only have a strong negative effect on regulation if the legislature and the government are not fragmented. These findings can account for trajectories in several salient cases and they show how political institutions mediate the effect of partisanship through changes in opportunity structures.