Please join the CAPE-Junior Working group for our first meeting of the new academic year! We will be hosting a professionalization panel on publishing books and articles as junior scholars, featuring the following editors:

• Gabe Kachuck (Acquisitions Editor, Politics) of Oxford University Press
• Philip Rocco (Marquette) of Publius: The Journal of Federalism
• Julie Rose (Dartmouth) of the American Political Science Review

Each editor will share some information and advice for publishing at their journal or press, and there will be plenty of time for audience Q&A.

The Political Economy of Tipping: Norms, Inequality, and Institutional Change in the United States

Presenter: Karina Alpayeva (UC-Riverside)
‍Discussant: Timothy Weaver (University at Albany, SUNY)

Abstract: This project investigates why tipping became institutionalized in the United States but remained marginal in the United Kingdom, despite both being liberal market economies. I argue that tipping in the U.S. emerged as a response to global economic pressures, neoliberal labor reforms, and weak union resistance—allowing employers to shift wage burdens onto consumers. Legal frameworks like the tipped minimum wage and strong tipping norms further reinforced this system. In contrast, the U.K. maintained stronger wage protections and weaker cultural support for tipping. Using comparative historical analysis, process tracing, and typological theorizing, the project develops a theory of when and why societies adopt informal wage supplements like tipping. Drawing on legal records, union documents, economic data, and cultural discourse, the research contributes to debates on labor justice, informal institutions, and the political economy of wage-setting.
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The Origins of Financial Citizenship: Savings Banks, Thrift, and State-Building in Nineteenth-Century United States

Presenter: Ayelet Carmeli (MIT)
Discussant: Katherine Rader (University at Albany, SUNY)

Abstract: How were working-class Americans first integrated into the financial system? This paper traces the rise of savings banks in early 19th-century Northeast U.S., established by social reformers to encourage thrift among the working poor. These institutions offered safe, interest-bearing accounts to promote self-help and reduce reliance on poor relief. The paper follows their development and state endorsement through special charters and regulation, culminating in the Reconstruction-era Freedman’s Savings Bank—a project that extended saving opportunities to the formerly enslaved but operated under far looser federal oversight than state-chartered mutual savings banks, leaving it vulnerable to mismanagement and collapse. By embedding savings within a broader project of moral reform, these institutions laid foundations for a welfare model based on conditional inclusion rather than redistribution. The paper develops the concept of “financial citizenship,” in which access to savings is framed as both a right and a duty, and shows how international and inter-state institutional diffusion shaped early U.S. state-building.

The Burden of Inflation and Incumbent Support Across Income Groups

Presenter: Shria Pallati (University of Missouri)
Discussant: TBD

Abstract: How do voters across different income groups provide incumbent support in US Presidential elections when inflation is their most important problem? In the 2024 US Presidential election, a staggering 96% of voters for Donald Trump claimed inflation was important for their vote, compared to 79% of Kamala Harris’ voters. It is typically argued that high-income voters will rank inflation as their “most important problem” due to stress over depreciating assets and savings. However, I posit that low-income voters will show greater concern over inflation than their high-income counterparts due to inflation’s disproportionate effect on inelastic goods, such as food, that represent much of their expenditure, the makeup of their asset profiles, and a lower level of economic literacy. Thus, low-income voters are more likely than high-income voters to punish candidates perceived to be responsible for their most important problem. I empirically test this using a linear probability model and a sample of US voters drawn from the Most Important Problem Dataset (MIPD).* I show that, indeed, low-income voters are more likely than their high-income counterparts to prioritize inflation as their most important problem and, consequently, punish the incumbent at higher rates. This issue is particularly salient for policy evaluation and as a relevant campaigning tool. By challenging assumptions about income groups in existing theory, this study provides a novel perspective on the propensity of economic voting for them. It also sheds light on the responsiveness of an electorate to the economy, supporting a natural extension of economic voting theory.
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The Hidden Inequities of Medicare Choice: Burden, Barriers, and Coverage Discontinuities

Presenter: Miranda Yaver (University of Pittsburgh)
Discussant: TBD

Abstract: Medicare enrollment is notoriously complex, and Abaluck and Gruber's seminal (2011) analysis of prescription drug coverage highlights that not only do many seniors choose their plans incorrectly, but this can be costly. Seniors are confronted with a host of decisions: original versus privatized Medicare (Medicare Advantage, where there is an average of 43 plans from which to choose) and if the former, whether to enroll in Medigap (10 plans) and Part D (average of 14 plans). This places substantial health literacy demands (which are unevenly distributed) at a time of not only greater health needs and diminished income, but also, potentially, cognitive decline. Consequently, this is a natural setting for examining health insurance enrollment barriers through the lens of administrative burden, or the experience of policy as being onerous, and resulting inequities. When one chooses a suboptimal plan, they may face greater health costs, leading to care postponement or medical debt. Drawing on a new nationwide survey of 1,964 seniors, I examine the administrative burdens experienced by seniors enrolling in Medicare plans, the extent to which their plan choices align with their priorities amid problems of choice overload, and the extent to which coverage barriers through prior authorization and related denials (which likewise demand health literacy to remedy through appeal) lead to discontinuities in coverage (and in turn, care) for seniors, especially seniors from margininalized backgrounds. The paper then offers solutions for how to better promote equitable access to health care for America's seniors.

Private Markets, Racial Politics, and Delegated Authority: Social Rented Housing in the United States, 1960-1980

Presenter: Jacob Loewenberg Ball (Rutgers University)
Discussant: TBD

Abstract: This study examines the transformation of American social rented housing during the 1960s and 1970s, a period when lawmakers and federal officials from both parties advanced policies embedding private interests into low-income rental housing. By the 1970s, these privatizing reforms interacted with the Nixon administration’s push to limit federal fiscal responsibility and delegate authority to state and local governments, curbing an expanding subsidized rental supply and reinforcing racial inequalities. Initially, a shift toward increasing reliance on private housing embedded market logics into the policies of low-income housing provision. Subsequently, despite the enactment of fair housing legislation, federal devolution intensified the spatial politics of inequality. This bolstered white suburban communities’ ability to limit in-migration of lower-income, often racial and ethnic minority households. Ultimately, this research asks how and why American housing policy prioritizes exchange-value over use-value and examines the distributional consequences of this emphasis.
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Uniquely Captured Regulators? Investor-Owned Utilities and Business Power Over American Electricity Policy

Presenter: Joshua A. Basseches (Tulane University)
Discussant: TBD

Abstract: Investor-owned electric utilities (IOUs) occupy a unique and essential space within the American political economy. They are for-profit, monopoly corporations providing an essential public service. In this paper, I develop four characteristics of this industry that I theorize, in combination, make it uniquely able to capture its regulators. I then use the case of the distributive politics of renewable portfolio standards in five U.S. states to illustrate how IOUs combine these four characteristics in order to prevail over competing political actors in every case, irrespective of variation in state context. I conclude with a comparison to other industries which share some, but not all, of the four characteristics in order to further illustrate the “uniqueness” of IOUs while also suggesting that lesser degrees of capture are still highly likely in these other industries. My findings have implications for both American electricity policy and for the study of business power generally.

Taxation at the Edges of Morality: How Tobacco Retailers Respond to Negative Public Good Provision

Presenter: Simone Paci (Stanford University)
Discussant: TBD

Abstract: Why do excise taxes exhibit chronic compliance gaps even in high-capacity states? We argue that vice taxes invert the fiscal contract: rather than funding valued public goods, revenues are earmarked for programs—cessation campaigns, inspections, enforcement—that directly harm retailers’ business interests. We call this dynamic negative public good provision. To examine compliance under these conditions, we partner with the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration (CDTFA) to conduct the first large-scale randomized controlled trial of excise inspections in the United States. Random assignment of inspections across ~30,000 licensed tobacco retailers is paired with baseline and follow-up surveys measuring deterrence, compliance costs, social norms, and fiscal contract mechanisms. The design provides causal evidence on inspection effects, heterogeneity across compliance paradigms, and spillovers within retail networks. Findings will advance theories of tax compliance and inform cost-effective enforcement strategies in sin-tax domains, with implications for both revenue collection and public health policy.
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(In)Capacity, Violence, and the Local Roots of Mass Incarceration

Presenter: Rebekah Jones (UC Berkeley)
Discussant: TBD

Abstract: What explains local variation in incarceration rates? While local governments play a central role in the criminal justice system, most scholarship has focused on state and federal policy, obscuring the role of counties in driving the American prison boom. This paper addresses that gap by applying leading theoretical frameworks to over thirty years of county-level penal policy choices across counties. I show that more variation in incarceration rates occurs within states than across them, underscoring the need to examine local–rather than solely state-level determinants of punishment. I revisit dominant accounts of the prison boom by distinguishing between relative changes over time and absolute levels of violent crime and prison admissions. Relative measures confirm prior findings that incarceration failed to decline alongside post-1990s crime drops, suggesting a decoupling between crime and punishment. Yet absolute comparisons reveal a different reality: in most counties, violent crime consistently outpaced prison admissions, with few ever approaching parity between the two. To explain divergent local trajectories, I examine the role of public opinion and novel measures of local capacity. Using California ballot initiative turnout data, I find limited evidence that county public opinion drove incarceration growth. Instead, original historical court statistics–capturing caseloads and law enforcement capacity–show that local capacity to respond to high levels of violence strongly predicts prison admissions as well as the nature of the response. These findings complicate the dominant over-punitive narrative, reframing mass incarceration as a product of weak and uneven local capacity-building rather than a uniform overreaction to crime decline, with important implications for understanding its distinct repressive character.

Natural Disasters, Workers' Attitudes, and Companies' Political Behavior

Presenter: Giulia Leila Travaglini (Columbia University)
Discussant: TBD

Abstract: This paper examines how managers’ preferences for green energy influence corporate political behavior in the U.S., focusing on lobbying and campaign contributions related to environmental policy. Using a novel dataset that links natural disaster exposure, used as a proxy for changes in perceptions of climate risk and green energy, with managers and fossil fuel companies headquarters political activity at the county level, the paper preliminary results indicate that polluting firms, especially those in Democratic areas, hide their political behavior on green energy and environment related policies after disasters. While from visual evidence it looks like managers in fossil fuel firms tend to shift campaign contributions toward Democratic politicians following climate shocks, these firms do not adopt explicitly pro-climate lobbying positions. Instead, they engage in more ambiguous political strategies, with implications for regulatory feedback and the broader politics of climate adaptation.
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Relocating Right, Lobbying Left: Firm Relocation and Lobbying for Social Inclusion

Presenter: Junwoo Suh (UC Berkeley)
Discussant: TBD

Abstract: Many private corporations across diverse sectors and countries of origin have lobbied Congress on legislation that promotes LGBTQ rights. Existing studies imply that the high costs of lobbying, diffuse benefits, and non-excludable outcomes of social policy would deter firms from lobbying on issues such as federal legislation on LGBTQ rights. What motivates firms to attempt to influence legislation on civil rights and liberties like the Equality Act and the Respect for Marriage Act? I argue that firms in industrialized economies face dual objectives, of minimizing production costs and having access to talent. In this trade-off, firms choosing to locate in lower-wage and lower-regulation regions (Relocating Right) may lobby for the advancement of civil rights in those regions (Lobbying Left) in order to attract and sustain talent. This study shows how workers' labor market leverage, firms' production costs, and cross-regional social policy heterogeneity jointly shape firms' decision to lobby politicians for civil rights protection.