Visiting Fellows

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Current Visiting Fellows

2010-2011

	Chris Haid Alexander Hamilton Center Politics Department 19 West 4th St. Room 230 New York University Email: haid@nyu.edu Click to see CV

Chris Haid is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of Chicago and a Research Associate at the Caribbean Policy Research Institute in Kingston, Jamaica. His dissertation analyzes variation in the types of violence used to affect electoral outcomes in the developing world and currently focuses on the genesis and spread of Kingston's garrison communities---i.e., politically homogenized neighborhoods controlled by party affiliated gangs. His analysis focuses on the social embeddedness of local violent actors and political elites and  employs the tools of game theory, graph theory, and non-linear dynamics as well as a variety of empirical sources culled from archival research and in depth interviews of political elites, party activists, organized criminal elements, security forces, and others.  His other research interests include the effects of violence on voters, how variation in types of internal wars effect regime transitions and duration,  and the role of international organizations during constitutional crises.

Previous  Visiting Fellows

2009-2010

Kate’s research examines how democratic institutions operate when they are imposed on top of unequal social structures. She is interested in the effect of local-level patron-client relationships on the way voters cast their ballots and the type of representation elected politicians provide. Her dissertation analyzes the influence of hereditary chiefs on the operation of democracy across different areas of Zambia. She uses experimental methods, spatial analysis and natural breaks following the deaths of chiefs to identify the effect of these local patrons on voting behavior and redistributive politics.

During her year at the Alexander Hamilton Center for Political Economy, Kate is extending her dissertation research by conducting a multinational analysis of traditional leaders, public good provision and state weakness across Africa. In addition, she will be conducting a study comparing the effectiveness of using elected representatives versus non-elected community leaders to target and deliver emergency aid to households.

Heather Bergman’s current research focuses on how emerging market countries’ reliance on international capital flows influences domestic policy choices. Her dissertation is about how emerging market governments make their market reform policies seem credible in the eyes of international investors. As part of her dissertation research, she has done fieldwork recently in Lima, Peru and Buenos Aires, Argentina, which entailed interviews with policy makers, regulators and participants in the private pension fund industry.

Heather is also a Ph.D. candidate in the Political Science Department at UCLA. She received her Master’s in International Economic Policy from Columbia University (SIPA). Heather’s background is in international finance and she has previously worked as an analyst of emerging market economies. She is also interested in Latin American politics and U.S. foreign policy strategies related to Latin America.

2008-2009

Sam Abrams is a fellow with the Hamilton Center for Political Economy at NYU. He is interested in political culture, statistical methodology and issues of public policy with particular focus on educational access and welfare inequality. Abrams has published broadly on these issues in the American context and is now expanding his work to include Western European democracies, namely those in the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy and Germany. His dissertation deals with understanding political participation, specifically voting. Related work deals with understanding political change in the 1970’s and populism in a global context.

He was previously at Harvard University where he was an associate with the IGERT-Program on Inequality and Social Policy, the Institute for Quantitative Social Science, the Center for European Studies, and the Canada Program in the Weatherhead Center.

A native of Philadelphia and a graduate of Stanford and Harvard Universities, Sam enjoys star-gazing, wine tasting, architecture, cycling, Stanford sports, and loves getting up to Yankee Stadium.

Leonardo Baccini is a Ph.D. candidate at Trinity College Dublin. He holds a MA in Economics from University of Florence and MA in International Relations from University of Bologna. His dissertation addresses the formation of preferential trade agreements, combining game-theoretic and empirical models. Specifically, his works address three broad research areas:
1.    The impact of domestic political institutions on economic integration.
2.    The influence of incomplete contracts on the bargaining process among countries.
3.    The impact of policy diffusion in the proliferation of trade agreements.
His main research interests are trade policy, international cooperation, international organizations, development studies, and democratic transition.

His research agenda at the Alexander Hamilton Center involves two papers. The first paper seeks to answer the following research question: What explains the recent spread of bilateral and regional preferential trade agreements? The argument of the paper is that policy diffusion as a result of competition over market access is a major driving force behind the spread of preferential trade agreements. The second paper addresses the following question: What political factors explain the United States’ selection of countries for preferential trade agreements? The paper argues that in forming trade agreements the U.S. is more likely to target countries that have high political and economic transparency relative to other developing countries. In highly transparent countries the U.S. is able to monitor effectively whether or not these countries adhere to the U.S.’s forms of conditionality, the fulfillment of which is assumed to be the main rationale for U.S. regionalism.

Selected Working Papers:

The New Regionalism and Policy Interdependency with Andreas Dür (University College Dublin). Working paper at the Alexander Hamilton Center for Political Economy.

Democracy Unpacked: How Domestic Institutions Affect Trade Cooperation. To be presented at Southern Political Science Association Annual Meeting, January 7th – 10th, 2009, New Orleans, Louisiana.

The Impact of Formal Institutions on the Formation of Trade Blocs: Different Patterns Between Bilateral and Regional Arrangements. To be presented at the ISA’s Annual Convention at New York City, NY, 15th – 18th, February, 2009.

Cheap Talk and Transparency: Explaining the Bilateral Trade Agreements with the EU. To be presented at the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) Fourth Pan-European Conference on EU Politics, University of Riga, Latvia,25th – 27th September 2008.

2007-2008

Alisa DiCaprio Alexander Hamilton Center Politics Department New York University Email: ad115@nyu.edu Tel: 212-998-8085

Alisa DiCaprio is a political economist who recently received her PhD from MIT where she studied the extent to which U.S.-based free trade agreements can be used to proxy for certain industrial policies that have been restricted under the WTO regime. Alisa has authored and co-authored a number of publications about industrialization, policy space for developing countries, and the effects of various discrete features of free trade agreements, such as labor provisions.  

Alisa’s work at the Hamilton Center focuses on the role of asymmetric regional trade agreements on industrial and human rights outcomes in the developing country partner. Specifically, this will consist of projects analyzing the accessibility of labor provisions to workers in developing countries, and the overall policy constraints posed by post-NAFTA free trade agreements.  These topics are representative of her broader research interests which include economic development, institution of international trade, industrialization, free trade agreements, labor standards, South America, Cambodia and Southeast Asia.

Piero Stanig Alexander Hamilton Center Politics Department New York University Email: ps2025@columbia.edu Tel: 212-998-8085

Piero Stanig's research at the Alexander Hamilton Center focuses on two projects. The first concerns the relationship between the information regarding corruption and the turnover in office of corrupt politicians: the main question that drives the inquiry is why notoriously corrupt politicians enjoy, at times, long tenures in office. The second project concerns the relationship between campaign spending regulations and political corruption. Imperfectly enforced regulation might foster more corruption, if some types of legal fund-raising are more easily monitored than illegal ones, or if caps on campaign spending can be avoided by resorting to informal networks.

Piero is also a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University. His dissertation combines formal models and systematic empirical evidence to answer two questions in his research agenda, which is related to the broad issue of the role of information in democratic accountability. The first question is how media freedom affects political corruption; the second concerns the legal and economic determinants of media freedom. Piero also has a strong commitment to political methodology. In particular, as a comparative institutionalist, he doubts that experimental data ---the gold standard for causal inference--- will ever become a prominent part of his research: for such a reason, the estimation of causal effects from observational data via instrumental variables in a Bayesian framework is one of the subjects of his current research.

Selected Working Papers
"Does Defamation Law Affect How Newspapers Cover Corruption in Mexico?"
"Money, Corruption, and the Press: A Model and Cross-Country Evidence." R&R, Journal of Politics.
"Why Do the Poor Support Right-Wing Parties? A Comparative Analysis."(with John Huber)

2006-2007

Katya Drozdova Research Scholar Alexander Hamilton Center Politics Department New York University Email: drozdova@nyu.edu Tel: 212-998-0835

katerina (Katya) Drozdova’s research at the Alexander Hamilton Center concentrates on understanding policy and political economy implications of organizational/social network characteristics in different contexts. This includes, among other issues, the development of predictive terrorist-activity indicators based on the analysis of adversary networks as well as the study of US public opinion dynamics and its impact on national security policy. A report on her work while at the Hamilton center is available.

Katya’s work focuses on the general role of technology in national and international security issues. This includes the study of how various organizations use technology to counter or cloak their vulnerabilities in different socio-political and socio-economic contexts. Specific applications of Katya’s work address problems in counterterrorism, critical infrastructure protection, cybersecurity, privacy, and nuclear nonproliferation – across public and private or security and subversive organizations – with emphasis on asymmetric threats in the post-9/11 world. Katya has published articles on issues ranging from balancing national security with individual liberty to identifying, estimating and disrupting adversary organizations. Her prior experience includes having served as a member of the NSA-sponsored Consortium for Research on Information Security & Policy at Stanford University and as a principal contributor to a DARPA proposal for an integrated information system aimed at helping improve US intelligence-analysis capabilities. Along with being a Research Scholar at NYU, Katya is currently a Research Associate at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Previously, she has been a Science Fellow and a MacArthur Affiliate at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University. Katya did her Ph.D. work at NYU’s Stern School of Business, Department of Information, Operations & Management Sciences. The subject of her dissertation is the impact of technology choices on organizational fault-tolerance in hostile and competitive environments. Katya received her undergraduate and Master’s degrees in International Relations and International Policy Studies from Stanford University.

Selected Recent Publications

“Security and Liberty: How to Protect the Nation against Terrorism without Sacrificing our Liberty” co-author Hoover Digest, 2002(1)

“Crystal Ball: Quantitatively Estimating Impacts of Probes and Interventions on an Enemy Organization”, book-chapter in Information Warfare and Organizational Decision-Making, co-author (Boston: Artech House) 2007

"Price of Security: An Audit of a few Historical Accounts”, Hoover Digest (submitted) 2007

“The Half-Life of Public Opinion: Long-Term Consequences of the Electorate’s Short Memory”, co-author (in preparation) 2007

"Organizational Complexity and Resilience: Implications for National Security Issues”, Proceedings of the North American Association for Computational Social & Organization Sciences Conference, co-author, 2006

"Dealing with Low-Tech Terrorist Communications in the Hi-Tech Age: Toward a Theory of Fault-Intolerant Network Organizations”, Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems, 2002

"Civil Liberties and Security in Cyberspace”, book-chapter in The Transnational Dimension of Cyber Crime & Terrorism, (Stanford: Hoover Press) 2001

"Impact of the Internet on Human Rights”, Stanford Journal of International Relations, co-author, 1(2) 1999

"Comparative Analysis of Approaches to the Protection of Fissile Materials”, co-author (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) 1998