Jonathan Rodden:

About

Jonathan Rodden is a professor of Political Science at Stanford University, where he also serves as a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. His work focuses on the comparative political economy of institutions, with particular emphasis on federalism and fiscal decentralization. He has authored several articles and three books on these topics, including 'Hamilton’s Paradox: The Promise and Peril of Fiscal Federalism,' which received the Gregory Luebbert Prize for the best book in comparative politics in 2007. Rodden collaborates with institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, USAID, and the European Parliament on issues related to fiscal decentralization and federalism. His research also explores the geographic distribution of political preferences within countries, legislative bargaining, the distribution of budgetary transfers across regions, and the historical origins of political institutions. Additionally, he has applied mathematical and computer science tools to questions about redistricting, culminating in his 2019 book 'Why Cities Lose: The Deep Roots of the Urban-Rural Political Divide.' Rodden is involved in an interdisciplinary project focused on handgun acquisition. He earned his PhD from Yale University and his BA from the University of Michigan, and was a Fulbright student at the University of Leipzig, Germany. Before joining Stanford in 2007, he was the Ford Associate Professor…

Research topics

• Political Science
• Law
• Medicine
• Psychology
• Computer Science
• Data Mining
• Sociology
• Economic system
• Medical emergency
• Demography

Selected publications

• Handgun Ownership and Suicide in California

  New England Journal of Medicine · 2020 · 225 citations

  BACKGROUND: Research has consistently identified firearm availability as a risk factor for suicide. However, existing studies are relatively small in scale, estimates vary widely, and no study appears to have tracked risks from commencement of firearm ownership. METHODS: We identified handgun acquisitions and deaths in a cohort of 26.3 million male and female residents of California, 21 years old or older, who had not previously acquired handguns. Cohort members were followed for up to 12 years…

  PublisherDOI

• Elections, Political Polarization, and Economic Uncertainty

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2020-10-01 · 49 citations

  reportOpen accessSenior author

  We examine patterns of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) around national elections in 23 countries. Uncertainty shows a clear tendency to rise in the months leading up to elections. Average EPU values are 13% higher in the month of and the month prior to an election than in other months of the same national election cycle, conditional on country effects, time effects, and country-specific time trends. In a closer examination of U.S. data, EPU rises by 28% in the month of presidential elections t…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Great Global Divider? A Comparison of Urban-Rural Partisan Polarization in Western Democracies

  Comparative Political Studies · 2024-03-07 · 46 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  This study is the first to measure urban-rural electoral divides in a way that facilitates comparisons beyond majoritarian democracies of the UK and North America. Based on national election results at the lowest available geographic level in fifteen countries covering roughly five decades, we present a measure for each election and political party, enabling comparisons over time and between countries with different electoral and party systems. We show that long-term increases in urban-rural div…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Homicide Deaths Among Adult Cohabitants of Handgun Owners in California, 2004 to 2016

  Annals of Internal Medicine · 2022 · 36 citations

  BACKGROUND: Although personal protection is a major motivation for purchasing firearms, existing studies suggest that people living in homes with firearms have higher risks for dying by homicide. Distribution of those risks among household members is poorly understood. OBJECTIVE: To estimate the association between living with a lawful handgun owner and risk for homicide victimization. DESIGN: This retrospective cohort study followed 17.6 million adult residents of California for up to 12 years…

  PublisherDOI

• Partisan Dislocation: A Precinct-Level Measure of Representation and Gerrymandering

  Political analysis. · 2021 · 28 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Abstract We introduce a fine-grained measure of the extent to which electoral districts combine and split local communities of co-partisans in unnatural ways. Our indicator—which we term Partisan Dislocation —is a measure of the difference between the partisan composition of a voter’s geographic nearest neighbors and that of her assigned district. We show that our measure is a good local and global indicator of district manipulation, easily identifying instances in which districts carve up clust…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Stephen Ansolabehere

  Harvard University

  360 shared

• Nolan McCarty

  52 shared

• Boris Shor

  51 shared

• Chris Tausanovitch

  50 shared

• Christopher Warshaw

  George Washington University

  50 shared

• Guy Grossman

  24 shared

• Melina Platas

  New York University Abu Dhabi

  20 shared

• Romain Ferrali

  Aix-Marseille Université

  17 shared

Awards & honors

• Gregory Luebbert Prize for the best book in comparative poli…

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