Chris Dann
Chris Dann
Welcome! I am a PhD candidate in Political Science at Stanford University. My research interests lie in the political economy of infrastructure and how large-scale public investments affect the social contract. I am also a junior fellow of the Association for Analytic Learning about Islam and Muslim Societies (AALIMS) and a graduate fellow with Stanford's Poverty, Governance and Violence (PovGov) Lab.
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Before Stanford, I received my BSc in Government at the London School of Economics (LSE) and an MSc in Politics Research at Oxford University. I then returned to LSE for two years as a pre-doctoral fellow in the Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines (STICERD), working for economist Professor Sir Tim Besley.
Research
Publications
Papers
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(with Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey and Jacob Chapman)
European Journal of Political Economy, September 2022, vol. 74, 102209.
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Book Chapters
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A Political Economy Perspective on State Effectiveness and the COVID-19 Pandemic in Emerging Europe
(with Tim Besley)
in P. Nagy-Mohácsi and E. Takáts, Emerging Europe's Chronic Distrust: Lessons from the Region's Covid Puzzle, 2022.
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Working Papers
Transport Infrastructure and the Nature-Growth Trade-Off: Evidence from Road Projects
(with Mert Kompil and Yue Li)
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Building Trust in Government: Evidence from Large-Scale Infrastructure Projects in Asia
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Growth Experiences and Trust in Government
(with Tim Besley and Sacha Dray)
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(with Lutfi Sun)
Informal Institutions and Economic Growth: Evidence from El Dedazo and the Mexican Miracle​
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Miscellaneous and Blog Pieces
Policy
The Impact of Infrastructure on Environment
(co-contributor with Mert Kompil, Yue Li, Jan Orlowski and Jiaqi Su)
in Asian Infrastructure Finance 2023 Report,
Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), 2023.
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State capacity, compliance, and multi-level governance: Three facts from Covid-19
(with Tim Besley)
in L. Bear and N. Simpson, Best Practice in Multi-Level Governance During Pandemics: A Case Study Report,
Pan-European Response to the ImpactS of COVID-19 and future Pandemics and Epidemics (PERISCOPE), 2022.
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State Capacity and Climate Actions
(external contributor with Tim Besley and Sacha Dray)
in Asian Infrastructure Finance 2022 Report,
Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), 2022.
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Pillars of Prosperity: A Ten-Year Update
(with Tim Besley and Torsten Persson)
CEPR Discussion Paper, DP16256, June 2021.
Blog Pieces
​Why political trust and voluntary compliance have been key to government pandemic responsiveness in Europe
(with Tim Besley)
LSE European Politics and Policy (EUROPP) blog, 2023.
Does public trust in government matter for effective policy-making?
Economics Observatory, 2022.
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How might an independent Scotland build fiscal capacity?
(with Tim Besley)
Economics Observatory, 2022.
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When we talk about state capacity to deal with COVID, we shouldn't ignore interpersonal trust
(with Tim Besley)
LSE Covid-19 blog, 2022.
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State capacity and development clusters
(with Tim Besley and Torsten Persson)
VoxDev, 2021.
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Events
Emerging Europe's Chronic Distrust: lessons from the region's COVID-19 Puzzle
(with Joan Costa-i-Font, Piroska Nagy-Mohácsi, Elod Takáts and Andres Velasco)
LSE School of Public Policy and the LSE European Institute, 2023.
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Economics and Political Science: Which is the more 'dismal' science?
LSE SU Economics Society, 2019.