Robert Franzese

Professor Franzese's research interests center on the comparative and international political economy (C&IPE) of developed democracies and related aspects of empirical methodology. In C&IPE, his work has focused on how political and economic (a) institutions (e.g., electoral & governmental systems, central bank independence, labor-market organization, etc.), (b) structure (e.g., income distribution, party-system polarization and fractionalization), and (c) circumstances/events (e.g., elections, terms-of-trade shocks, etc.) affect macroeconomic policymaking: its character and its efficacy. His approach to this substantive area is interdisciplinary (with economics), positive (i.e., as opposed to normative), and empirically minded. To date, this research agenda has produced several journal articles and conference and working papers on the monetary- and fiscal-policy effects of, for example, participation, representation, veto actors, delegation, central bank independence, wage bargaining institutions, and international context and institutions.

Professor Franzese’s research and pedagogical agendas in empirical methodology, which arise from this substantive agenda in C&IPE, have produced a book and numerous articles and chapters on (a) interactions and modeling strategies for complex context-conditionality more generally, (b) on empirical methodology for comparative politics broadly, (c) on multilevel modeling, and, most recently and extensively, (d) on spatial-econometric models of interdependence, that is of contexts where the outcomes in some units affect those in other. 

Affiliation(s)

• Center for Political Studies

Field(s) of Study

• Comparative Politics
• Political Economy
• Research Methods