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
• Demographic economics
• Business
• Economic growth

Selected publications

• Dissecting the Sinews of Power: International Trade and the Rise of Britain’s Fiscal-Military State, 1689–1823

  The Journal of Economic History · 2025-04-09 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st author

  We evaluate the role of taxes on overseas trade in the development of imperial Britain’s fiscal-military state. Influential work, for example, Brewer’s Sinews of Power , attributed increased fiscal capacity to the taxation of domestic, rather than traded, goods: excise revenues, coarsely associated with domestic goods, grew faster than customs revenues. We construct new historical revenue series disaggregating excise revenues from traded and domestic goods. We find substantial growth in revenue from traded goods, accounting for over half of indirect taxation around 1800. This challenges conventional wisdom, attributing the development of the British state to domestic factors. International factors mattered, too.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Company-State at Home: The East India Company and the Fiscal System in Eighteenth-Century Britain

  Past & Present · 2025-04-18

  articleOpen access

  Abstract The significance of the state’s fiscal system for military capacity, colonization, trade, and economic development is a long-studied topic. Much scholarship has focused on Britain and the emergence of its fiscal-military state. This article shows that fiscal capacity was not created only by government bureaucracies: the ‘company-state at home’ model presented here complements the narrative of the ‘fiscal-military state’ by showing that much fiscal revenue from trade was realized through the action of the English East India Company (EIC). Lacking the capacity to enact exhaustive laws, carry out complex calculations, or effectively manage a large bureaucracy, the English state relied on the administrative capacity of the EIC to collect customs on the East Indies trade. The institutional solution of allowing the EIC to collect revenues overcame the administrative challenge of customs revenue collection. This solution was made possible by the EIC’s administrative capacities and sustained by alignment between Company and state interests. The role of the EIC in British state development suggests a symbiotic lens through which to study the relationship between the state and corporations, which can be applied across time, space, and state objectives.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• When Democracy Refuses to Die: Evaluating a Training Program for New Politicians

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2024-12-01

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We evaluate the effects of a program in Brazil that selects and trains new politicians, addressing three main challenges: selection bias from program screening, self-selection into candidacy, and the need to quantify the contributions of both selection and training in a holistic evaluation.Our findings show that the program raised political entry by doubling candidacy rates and increasing electoral success by 69%.However, much of the overall effect was driven by screening, which accounted for 30% of the increase in candidacy and 43% of the increase in election rates, while also making the candidate pool more diverse, competent, and committed to democratic values.Renewing the political class involves trade-offs, as some traits favored by the program did not align with voter preferences, and also reduced the descriptive representation of low-income individuals.

  PublisherDOI

• When Democracy Refuses to Die: Evaluating a Training Program for New Politicians

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Dissecting the Sinews of Power: International Trade and the Rise of Britain's Fiscal-Military State, 1689-1823

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2022-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Dissecting the Sinews of Power: International Trade and the Rise of Britain’s Fiscal-Military State, 1689-1823

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2022-12-01 · 3 citations

  report1st authorCorresponding

  We evaluate the role of taxes on overseas trade in the development of imperial Britain’s fiscal-military\nstate. Influential work, e.g., Brewer’s Sinews of Power, attributed increased fiscal capacity to the taxation\nof domestic, rather than traded, goods: excise revenues, coarsely associated with domestic goods, grew\nfaster than customs revenues. We construct new historical revenue series disaggregating excise revenues\nfrom traded and domestic goods. We find substantial growth in revenue from traded goods, accounting\nfor over half of indirect taxation around 1800. This challenges the conventional wisdom attributing the\ndevelopment of the British state to domestic factors: international factors mattered, too.

  PublisherDOI

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

  The Review of Economic Studies · 2022 · 89 citations

  • Political Science
  • Political economy
  • Political Science

  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 attitudes, we classify the universe of Swedish politicians and voters by social and economic marginalization and exposure to immigration. Politicians from the Sweden Democrats over-represent marginalized groups without strong attachments to the labour market or to traditional nuclear families, which instead are under-represented among politicians in all other parties. Among voters, the Sweden Democrats have higher electoral support in precincts with higher shares of the same marginalized groups. We see the mobilization of the marginalized as an important driver of the party’s success. Finally, we uncover that Sweden-Democrat politicians score lower on a number of valence traits than other-party politicians. In sum, the rise of the Sweden Democrats raised political representation for marginalized groups, but this came at a valence cost.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Replication package for: Economic and Social Outsiders but Political Insiders: Sweden's Populist Radical Right

  2022-05-10

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This package contains all the code necessary to replicate the figures and tables in Dal Bo, E., F. Finan, O. Folke, T. Persson, and J. Rickne (forthcoming). "Economic and Social Outsiders but Political Insiders: Sweden's Populist Radical Right", Review of Economic Studies. Detailed instructions are also given about how to access the underlying data.

  PublisherDOI

• Replication package for: Economic and Social Outsiders but Political Insiders: Sweden's Populist Radical Right

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2022-05-18

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This package contains all the code necessary to replicate the figures and tables in Dal Bo, E., F. Finan, O. Folke, T. Persson, and J. Rickne (forthcoming). "Economic and Social Outsiders but Political Insiders: Sweden's Populist Radical Right", Review of Economic Studies. Detailed instructions are also given about how to access the underlying data.

  PublisherDOI

• Replication package for: Economic and Social Outsiders but Political Insiders: Sweden's Populist Radical Right

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2022-05-18

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This package contains all the code necessary to replicate the figures and tables in Dal Bo, E., F. Finan, O. Folke, T. Persson, and J. Rickne (forthcoming). "Economic and Social Outsiders but Political Insiders: Sweden's Populist Radical Right", Review of Economic Studies. Detailed instructions are also given about how to access the underlying data.

  PublisherDOI

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…