Ransi Clark

Political Geography and Political Methodology

I study the fiscal, economic, and political impacts of domestic migratory waves, with a particular focus on the recent outmigration out of California caused by wildfires, pandemic, and high taxes. I take a quantitative approach to these questions, producing spatially granular panel datasets, and analyzing them with estimators conscious of dynamic trends.

I also develop diagnostic and corrective tools for panel data analysis for more general settings, focusing on biases caused by parallel trend violations, composition changes between groups, and overlap violations.

In a parallel strand of research, I design messaging experiments that investigate American public reticence to energy infrastructure and heavy industry including data centers.

Political Economy of Domestic Migration

California Leavin’: An economic and political recomposition?

Fire, Flight, and Fiscal Strain: Wildfire-Driven Out-Migration and California School Enrollment with R. Michael Alvarez

Methodology and software

Unintended Consequences of Overlap Violations in Covariate-adjusted Causal Regressions

Saturation dangers in multi-decade democracy studies with Jonathan N. Katz

didunit: a unit-level multi-period differences-in-differences estimator in R
with Jonathan N. Katz and R. Michael Alvarez
published at SoftwareX

Public Opinion

Who pays for the grid? Experimental insights into the data center backlash with Alexander Halsey and R. Michael Alvarez

Threat of China’s nuclear dominance boosts Americans’ support for nuclear energy
with Beatrice Magistro and R. Michael Alvarez
published at Energy Policy

Education

California Institute of Technology | PhD Social Science | 2021-

University of Queensland | BEcon (Honours) | 2015-2018