I’m a member of the faculty at the University of Washington, Seattle, where I serve as professor of political science, adjunct professor of statistics, and associate director of the Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences. Substantive Interests My political economy and comparative politics research explores the ways political institutions and interests jointly determine the public policies that shape our lives, including monetary policy, fiscal policy, health policy, and trade policy. I am particularly interested in the influence of career incentives and partisanship on elite behavior and policy making. Methodological
interests I specialize in the visual display of scientific information, particularly the illustration of substantive findings from statistical models. I’m also interested in statistical inference using data whose logical bounds enable or improve estimation, as in the study of political rank; compositional data like careers, budgets, and trade portfolios; and ecological inference. Other activities I serve as an expert witness on the use of statistical methods to resolve contested elections. I also consult on matters relating to statistical methodology and data visualization. COVID-19 State Policy Project During 2020 and 2021, I served as faculty lead for a team of political science and public health researchers collecting and comparing policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic across the US states. Data reflecting state-level social distancing policies and other non-pharmaceutical interventions issued from March 2020 through July 2021 are available at covid19statepolicy.org. See also our articles on partisan patterns in the adoption of social distancing mandates, the adoption of mask mandates, and the easing of social distancing requirements. Our data also inform IHME’s COVID-19 forecasting and modeling efforts. | 
26-sep-26.
New publication: “The Taste for the Beautiful: Influence of Diet on the Evolution of Plumage in Tanagers” by Carlos David Arcila, Christopher Adolph, Oscar Laverde-R., Allison Shultz, and Alejandro Rico-Guevara, has been published in Evolution. This article translates my techniques for interpretation of regression models with compositional covariates from social science contexts (shares of budgets, trade flows, and career components) to evolutionary biology (dietary composition of bird species). 24-aug-26.
New working paper: “Can Statistical Models Capture Mamdani’s Success? Social Choice, Ranked-Choice Voting, and Model Fit, with an Application to the 2025 New York City Democratic Primary” by Michael Pearce, Erin R. Lipman, Christopher Adolph, and Elena A. Erosheva. 20-jul-26.
Fall course offered: Maximum Likelihood Methods for the Social Sciences is intended for graduate students seeking a deeper understanding of statistical inference, tools for analyzing discrete outcomes, and methods for general purpose model fitting. Course flyer. 1-mar-26.
Spring course offered: Time Series and Panel Data for the Social Sciences is intended for graduate students. |
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