Jacob Edenhofer

I am a DPhil candidate in Politics at the University of Oxford, supervised by Federica Genovese and David Rueda. My aspiration is to become a comparative political economist whose principal policy domain of interest is climate policy in rich democracies. In my thesis and related research, I examine how electoral incentives and organised interest groups interact when democratic governments address long-term policymaking problems, which involve imposing costs today for potential benefits in the future.

My other projects fall into two categories. The first concerns (right-wing) populism. Across different papers, I examine the political consequences of economic shocks, including how rising energy prices and local economic decline affect support for the populist right, how Brexit has affected regional economies, and how inflation affects preferences for redistribution. A further project analyses why electoral majorities delegate policy to technocrats when they fear losing power, and how this helps explain the populist backlash against technocracy. The second concerns state capacity. One project studies how limited informational capacity constrains governments’ ability to target taxes and compensation, and another investigates when conflict between firms generates support for investment in fiscal capacity in the age of AI.

This website contains my public writing and engagement, teaching materials, and details of my professional service. In the File drawer, I discuss my approach to research and share unsuccessful ideas and projects in the hope that others can learn from them.