Erik Snowberg

“An Organizational Theory of State Capacity”

In this research project, Erik Snowberg, together with Mike Ting of Columbia University, provide a theory of the organizational basis of the concept of state capacity. The framework they developed, based on the Knowledge Hierarchy model of Garicano, opens the black box of state capacity, and allows that concept to be tied to the organizational and bureaucratic structures that support it. It shows the way in which organizational structure and personnel may be as important to the construction of state capacity as macro forces, such as war and economic depressions.

Other recent work of Mr. Snowberg is on behavioral and experimental economics, and he looks forward to receiving feedback on that work both from his colleagues at CESifo and at the neighboring LMU. He has proudly been a Research Fellow of the CESifo Research Network since 2015, and is excited to finally be able to pay an extended visit to the Institute, see old colleagues, and meet new ones. While at CESifo he hopes to be able to expose his recent work to the feedback of excellent researchers.

Erik Snowberg is currently the Mariner S. Eccles Presidential Professor at the David Eccles School of Business, University of Utah, and Canada Excellence Research Chair at the Vancouver School of Economics, University of British Columbia. He lives with his family in Utah. He has taught in the past at Harvard University and at the California Institute of Technology, where he was promoted to Professor four years after completing his PhD (at Stanford University). He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research has been published in top journals in Economics (American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy), Political Science (American Political Science Review, Quarterly Journal of Political Science), and Statistics (Annals of Statistics).