Ernesto Dal Bó

About

Ernesto Dal Bó is the Phillips Girgich Professor of Business and a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. His research interests encompass political economy, democratic institutions, influence and corruption, morality, coercion, conflict, state formation, and the development of state capabilities. He teaches courses on political economy primarily within the Berkeley MBA program and at the doctoral level. Dal Bó's work focuses on understanding governance broadly, including the qualities and behavior of politicians and public servants, social conflict, and the development of state institutions. He has held various academic positions since 2003, including roles at UC Berkeley, Stanford University, and Oxford, and is actively involved in external research and policy organizations.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Economics
• Sociology
• Computer Science
• Computer Security
• Microeconomics
• Law
• Engineering
• Political economy
• Operations research

Selected publications

• Who Becomes A Politician?

  London School of Economics and Political Science Research Online (London School of Economics and Political Science) · 2017-06-01 · 322 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Can a democracy attract competent leaders, while attaining broad representation? Economic models suggest that free-riding incentives and lower opportunity costs give the less competent a comparative advantage at entering political life. Moreover, if elites have more human capital, selecting on competence may lead to uneven representation. This article examines patterns of political selection among the universe of municipal politicians and national legislators in Sweden, using extraordinarily ric…

  OA PDFDOI

• The Demand for Bad Policy when Voters Underappreciate Equilibrium Effects

  The Review of Economic Studies · 2017-05-08 · 131 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Most of the political economy literature blames inefficient policies on institutions or politicians’ motives to supply bad policy, but voters may themselves be partially responsible by demanding bad policy. In this article, we posit that voters may systematically err when assessing potential changes in policy by underappreciating how new policies lead to new equilibrium behaviour. This biases voters towards policy changes that create direct benefits—welfare would rise if behaviour were held cons…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Economic and Social Outsiders but Political Insiders: Sweden’s Populist Radical Right

  The Review of Economic Studies · 2022 · 89 citations

  Abstract We study the politicians and voters of the Sweden Democrats, a major populist radical-right party. Based on detailed administrative data, we present the first comprehensive account of which politicians are selected into such a party. Surveys show that politicians and voters of the Sweden Democrats share strong anti-establishment and anti-immigration attitudes that drastically set them apart from Sweden’s other parties. Searching for individual traits that link naturally to these attitud…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Information Technology and Government Decentralization: Experimental Evidence From Paraguay

  Econometrica · 2021 · 51 citations

  Standard models of hierarchy assume that agents and middle managers are better informed than principals. We estimate the value of the informational advantage held by supervisors—middle managers—when ministerial leadership—the principal—introduced a new monitoring technology aimed at improving the performance of agricultural extension agents (AEAs) in rural Paraguay. Our approach employs a novel experimental design that elicited treatment‐priority rankings from supervisors before randomization of…

  PublisherDOI

• The Paradox of Civilization: Preinstitutional Sources of Security and Prosperity

  American Political Science Review · 2021 · 34 citations

  The production of economic surplus, or “prosperity,” was fundamental to financing the rise of pristine civilizations. Yet, prosperity attracts predation, which discourages the investments required for civilization. To the extent that the economic footing of civilization creates existential security threats, civilization is paradoxical. We claim that, in addition to surplus production, civilizations require surplus protection, or “security.” Drawing from archaeology and history, we model the trad…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Frederico Finan

  48 shared

• Pedro Dal Bó

  John Brown University

  46 shared

• Erik Eyster

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  32 shared

• Jesse M. Cunha

  Naval Postgraduate School

  20 shared

• Sebastián Mazzuca

  19 shared

• Ned Augenblick

  University of California, Berkeley

  19 shared

• Justin M. Rao

  19 shared

• Pablo Fuentes Hernández

  University of Bío-Bío

  18 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Economics

  University of California, Berkeley

  1998

• M.A., Economics

  University of California, Berkeley

  1994

• B.A., Economics

  University of California, Los Angeles

  1990

Awards & honors

• Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching PhD Program (2020)
• Hellman Family Faculty Fund Award (2006)
• Schwabacher Fellowship Award (2005-2006)
• Earl F. Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching, Full-Time MB…
• Special Mention, Earl Cheit Outstanding Teaching Award, PhD…

Similar researchers at University of California, Berkeley

• Ann E. Harrisonh-63
• Matilde Bombardinih-33