About

Nathan M. Jensen (2002, Yale Ph.D.) is a Professor in the Department of Government at the University of Texas-Austin. He was previously an associate professor in the Department of International Business at George Washington University from 2014 to 2016 and an associate professor in the Political Science Department at Washington University in St. Louis from 2002 to 2014. Jensen teaches courses and conducts research on government economic development strategies, firm non-market strategies and business-government relations, the politics of oil and natural resources, political risk in emerging markets, trade policy, and international institutions.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Economics
• Law
• Market economy
• Public economics
• Business
• Computer Science
• International trade
• Law and economics
• Political economy
• Accounting
• Monetary economics
• Biology
• Macroeconomics
• Public relations
• International economics

Selected publications

• Why Biden-era clean energy investment policies had limited political returns

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2026-02-26

  articleOpen access

  The Biden Administration enacted the largest federal policy framework to incentivize clean energy and decarbonization in U.S. history. We examine whether Biden-era green investments produced political returns by affecting public opinion. Using geolocated survey data linked to investment records and a database of company and politician statements, we assess project visibility and credit attribution. People closer to new renewable energy and green manufacturing facilities are more likely to notice these investments but are not more likely to credit the Biden Administration. Instead, the public sees governors as most responsible. This credit allocation pattern aligns with the political message environment: Governors more frequently claim credit than the White House and companies spread recognition broadly across political actors. This fragmented information environment illustrates the limits of using less traceable forms of green spending to generate electoral gains and public support for climate policy.

  PublisherDOI

• Assets and allies: The cross-Representations of energy companies in industry associations and climate policy

  Energy Policy · 2025-07-21

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Does Transparency Improve Public Policy? Evidence From a Tax Incentive Transparency Initiative

  Economics and Politics · 2025-06-08 · 2 citations

  articleSenior author

  ABSTRACT Tax incentives for business investment, a common economic development policy tool, are often criticized as bad policy but good politics: they aren't cost‐effect strategies to attract investment or create jobs, but offer electoral returns for politicians who give them out. Building on the literature on the “fiscal illusion,” we theorize that making the costs of incentives transparent will reduce policymakers' use of them. To test this theory, we leverage a unique policy change—GASB 77—that required local governments in the United States to begin reporting the costs of their tax incentives. Using a difference‐in‐differences design, we estimate that GASB 77 had no discernible effect on local governments' use of tax incentives. Why did transparency fail to improve governance? Results of multiple elite surveys, elite interviews, and heterogeneity analyses suggest that transparency is only effective in the presence of pressure groups that can use the disclosed information to hold elected officials accountable.

  PublisherDOI

• When sunshine gets you down: The role of transparency on public sentiment toward the amazon <scp>HQ2</scp> competition

  Policy Studies Journal · 2025-04-03 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract In 2019, more than 230 local governments sought to attract the second headquarters of Amazon (HQ2). The Amazon HQ2 contest presents a unique, high‐profile case of state and local government competition for a project. It took place in a defined timeframe with varying bids and levels of government transparency and offers a rare window to explore how the information environment shapes expressions of sentiment by distinct actors in the political market framework (e.g., politicians, pro‐development actors, media, and the public). By analyzing nearly 40,000 Tweets across the United States and classifying actors' roles in the policy‐making process, we are able to discern how the transparency of communities' HQ2 bids differentially shaped public sentiment around this large‐scale economic development deal. “Sunshine,” we find, led to gloomy perspectives on the bids, though this negativity was moderated by actors' positions in the policy‐making process. Our results suggest that the non‐transparency of incentive deals is a strategy used to minimize criticism of politicians' economic development policies.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Compliance is taxing: a field experiment on tax abatement information in the United States

  Business and Politics · 2025-05-21

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract In this paper, we examine a major transparency initiative affecting tax abatements for state and local economic development in the United States that has been plagued by noncompliance. Unlike academic studies examining government compliance with transparency rules such as Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, we examine government and independent auditor responses to inquiries about information already posted, or not posted, in annual financial reports. Using a pre-registered experimental approach on cities, counties, and school districts in a single large-population state (Texas), we remind entities and their external auditors of their transparency obligations as well as our ability to check their compliance with this transparency rule and ask these entities follow-up questions about their required posts. Against expectations, we found that entities were not significantly more likely to comply with our request for information when we reminded them of their disclosure obligations and we found some evidence that nudges made entities less likely to comply. We argue these results provide novel insights into the limitations of transparency initiatives.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Creating informed demand and impacts through innovative and cost-effective extension

  2025-04-01

  report
  PublisherDOI

• Enhanced prosthetic vision by upgrading a subretinal photovoltaic implant in-situ

  2025-03-19

  article
  PublisherDOI

• How do women’s empowerment metrics measure up? A comparative analysis

  Food Policy · 2024-11-01 · 10 citations

  articleOpen access

  • Women’s empowerment is a critical factor for nutrition and health outcomes. • There is no consensus on how empowerment should be measured. • With data from a single sample of Kenyan women, we compare five empowerment metrics. • We find striking differences between these common empowerment metrics. • Metric choice dramatically influences which women are identified as empowered. Research has identified women’s empowerment as a critical factor for nutritional outcomes and a priority area for understanding women’s mental health status. At the same time, there is no consensus on how empowerment should be measured. The surrounding debate has produced several empowerment metrics that are widely used, yet we know little about whether they can be substituted for one another or their respective strengths and weaknesses. Using data collected from a single sample of women from rural, northern Kenya, we compare five empowerment metrics: The Project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI) and associated Health and Nutrition Module (HN), Women’s Empowerment in Nutrition Index (WENI), Women’s Empowerment in Livestock Index (WELI), and the Survey Based Women’s Empowerment Index (SWPER). The metrics have shared theoretical origins and are commonly used in the food, nutrition and health spaces to study rural women’s lives across low- and middle-income countries. We examine the metrics’ characteristics, distributions, pairwise correlations and capacity of each metric to predict outcomes often associated with the concept of empowerment: body mass index (BMI) and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). We find striking differences between these common empowerment metrics. The metrics’ correlations with one another are highly variable as are the predictive capacities for both outcomes. Further, our analysis finds that the choice of metric can dramatically influence which individuals are identified as empowered. In sum, our results suggest that while these metrics are used in remarkably similar ways to understand rural women’s empowerment and its consequences, unless they are computed with many identical survey questions, the metrics do not capture the same underlying concept and are not interchangeable. We recommend that our work be replicated elsewhere and caution should be taken when implementing and interpreting research using these metrics, as findings may be highly sensitive to the choice of metric.

  PublisherDOI

• Students lose out as cities and states give billions in property tax breaks to businesses − draining school budgets and especially hurting the poorest students

  2024-02-15

  article
  PublisherDOI

• No, America’s battery plant boom isn’t going bust – construction is on track for the biggest factories, with thousands of jobs planned

  2024-11-01

  article
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Edmund Malesky

  29 shared

• Guillermo Rosas

  20 shared

• Axel Dreher

  12 shared

• Michael G. Findley

  The University of Texas at Austin

  11 shared

• Daniel Nielson

  The University of Texas at Austin

  10 shared

• Susan D. Franck

  7 shared

• René Lindstädt

  University of Birmingham

  6 shared

• Stephan Meier

  5 shared

Labs

• The Texas Politics ProjectPI

  The Texas Politics Project conducts regular, non-partisan, statewide polls of registered voters in Texas, and makes the results and data available for public use.

Education

• Ph.D., Political Science

  Yale University

  2002