Policymaking is hard. Policymakers typically have imperfect information about which policies produce which outcomes, and they are left with little choice but to fumble their way through the policy space via a trial-and-error process. This raises a question at the heart of democracy: Do democratic systems identify good policies? To answer this question I introduce a novel model of policymaking in complex environments. I show that good policies are often but not always found and I identify the possibility of policymaking getting stuck at outcomes that are arbitrarily bad. Notably, policy stickiness occurs in the model even in the absence of institutional constraints. This raises the question of how institutions and the political environment impact experimentation and learning. I show how a simple political friction—uncertainty over voter preferences—interacts with political competition and policy uncertainty in a subtle way that, surprisingly, improves the quality of policymaking over time.
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Faculty
- Academic Areas
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Conferences
- Accounting Summer Camp
- California Econometrics Conference
- California Quantitative Marketing PhD Conference
- California School Conference
- China India Insights Conference
- Homo economicus, Evolving
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Initiative on Business and Environmental Sustainability
- Political Economics (2023–24)
- Scaling Geologic Storage of CO2 (2023–24)
- A Resilient Pacific: Building Connections, Envisioning Solutions
- Adaptation and Innovation
- Changing Climate
- Civil Society
- Climate Impact Summit
- Climate Science
- Corporate Carbon Disclosures
- Earth’s Seafloor
- Environmental Justice
- Finance
- Marketing
- Operations and Information Technology
- Organizations
- Sustainability Reporting and Control
- Taking the Pulse of the Planet
- Urban Infrastructure
- Watershed Restoration
- Junior Faculty Workshop on Financial Regulation and Banking
- Ken Singleton Celebration
- Marketing Camp
- Quantitative Marketing PhD Alumni Conference
- Rising Scholars Conference
- Theory and Inference in Accounting Research
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Research Labs & Initiatives
- Cities, Housing & Society Lab
- Corporate Governance Research Initiative
- Corporations and Society Initiative
- Golub Capital Social Impact Lab
- Policy and Innovation Initiative
- Rapid Decarbonization Initiative
- Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative
- Value Chain Innovation Initiative
- Venture Capital Initiative
- Behavioral Lab
- Data, Analytics & Research Computing