Jacob Hacker

About

Jacob S. Hacker is the Stanley B. Resor Professor of Political Science at Yale University, where he also serves as Co-Director of the Ludwig Program in Public Sector Leadership at Yale Law School and is a resident fellow of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies. An expert on American politics and policy, he has authored or co-authored more than a half-dozen books, numerous journal articles, and a wide range of popular writings. His notable works include 'The Divided Welfare State,' which received the Aaron Wildavsky Enduring Contribution Award from the American Political Science Association, and 'Let Them Eat Tweets,' co-authored with Paul Pierson. Hacker's research focuses on health policy, particularly his development of the concept of 'public option,' and on the shaping of markets to address inequality through 'predistribution.' He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, received the Robert Ball Award of the National Academy of Social Science in 2020, and was inducted into the American Academy of Political and Social Science in 2021. Additionally, he is a founding director of the Consortium on American Political Economy and co-chairs the American Political Economy section of the American Political Science Association. His recent scholarly activities include serving as a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Sciences Po Center in Paris and holding the Kluge Chair in American Law and Governance at the U.S. Library of Congress.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Economics
• Political economy
• Law
• Market economy
• Sociology
• Demographic economics
• Finance
• Economic system
• Economic growth

Selected publications

• The Political Effects of Policy Drift: Policy Stalemate and American Political Development

  Studies in American Political Development · 2020 · 80 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  In recent years, scholars have made major progress in understanding the dynamics of “policy drift”—the transformation of a policy's outcomes due to the failure to update its rules or structures to reflect changing circumstances. Drift is a ubiquitous mode of policy change in America's gridlock-prone polity, and its causes are now well understood. Yet surprisingly little attention has been paid to the political consequences of drift—to the ways in which drift, like the adoption of new policies, m…

  PublisherDOI

• The American Political Economy

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2021 · 61 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  This volume brings together leading political scientists to explore the distinctive features of the American political economy. The introductory chapter provides a comparatively informed framework for analyzing the interplay of markets and politics in the United States, focusing on three key factors: uniquely fragmented and decentralized political institutions; an interest group landscape characterized by weak labor organizations and powerful, parochial business groups; and an entrenched legacy…

  PublisherDOI

• The American Political Economy: Markets, Power, and the Meta Politics of US Economic Governance

  Annual Review of Political Science · 2021 · 49 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  This article provides an overview of the emerging field of American political economy (APE). Methodologically eclectic, this field seeks to understand the interaction of markets and government in America's unequal and polarized polity. Though situated within American politics research, APE draws from comparative political economy to develop a broad approach that departs from the American politics mainstream in two main ways. First, APE focuses on the interaction of markets and governance, a peri…

  PublisherDOI

• Reducing Risk as well as Inequality: Assessing the Welfare State's Insurance Effects

  British Journal of Political Science · 2020 · 25 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Leading accounts of the politics of the welfare state focus on societal demands for risk-spreading policies. Yet current measures of the welfare state focus not on risk, but on inequality. To address this gap, this letter describes the development of two new measures, risk incidence and risk reduction , which correspond to the prevalence of large income losses and the degree to which welfare states reduce that prevalence, respectively. Unlike existing indicators, these measures require…

  PublisherDOI

• The Political Economies of Red States

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2021-11-11 · 24 citations

  book-chapter

  A striking feature of the American political economy is its fragmentation. The constitutionally protected role of the states and the localized quality of many crucial policies foster a political economy that is at once national – the rich world's most extensive nation-spanning market – and sectional, with states or groups of states constituting distinct political economies that often have enormous scope of their own.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Philipp Rehm

  171 shared

• Paul Pierson

  Arvalis - Institut du Végétal

  48 shared

• T. R. Marmor

  Yale University

  11 shared

• Alexander Hertel‐Fernandez

  8 shared

• Mark Schlesinger

  Yale University

  8 shared

• Jacob M. Grumbach

  5 shared

• Kathleen Thelen

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  5 shared

• Nicole Kazee

  Yale University

  4 shared

Awards & honors

• Aaron Wildavsky Enduring Contribution Award of the American…
• Robert Ball Award of the National Academy of Social Science…
• Inducted into the American Academy of Political and Social S…

Similar researchers at Yale University

• Adam Auerbachh-89
• Alan Gerberh-63
• Hélène Landemoreh-31