Research

Job Market Paper

Essig, J. (2024). The Nature of Framing Effects: Connecting Theory and Evidence. Job Market Paper (PDF) (see abstract below)

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Essig, J., Xu, P., Garand, J. C., & Keser, C. (2021). The “Trump” effect: political elite and support for free trade in America. American Politics Research, 49(3), 328-342.
Keser, C., Garand, J. C., Xu, P., & Essig, J. (2023). Partisanship, Trump favorability, and changes in support for trade. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 54(1), 46-64.

In Progress

Molino, T., & Essig, J. (2024). A Novel Measure of the Policy Content of Federal Regulations in Ideological Space. (PDF)
Essig, J. (2023) There's The Party: Preferences & Party Influence in The U.S House of Representatives. Working Paper (PDF) (see abstract below)
Essig, J., & Rothenberg, L. (2024) How Income Inequality Shapes Americans' Willingness to Pay for Climate Change Mitigation. Work in Progress

Dissertation Summary

My dissertation contributes to our knowledge of preference formation, public opinion, legislator behavior, and political institutions within the field of American politics. My research employs a combination of theoretical and methodological approaches, from observational data, to political-psychological theory, to new survey experimental designs. On a broader level, it prompts communication between the behavioral and institutional subfields of American politics.

The Nature of Framing Effects: Connecting Theory and Evidence (Job Market Paper)

ABSTRACT:

The expectancy value (EV) model is ubiquitous in framing research, but its utility

has been circumscribed by its treatment as merely a conceptual tool. This article

posits that the EV model is most useful insofar as it directly corresponds to observable

quantities in the framing process, but these quantities go unmeasured in standard

designs. In particular, no studies to date have tested whether within-subject changes in

opinions and importance weighting before and after treatment assignment correspond

to the model’s predictions. This article develops a theory of issue framing based on the

EV model and suggests multiple improvements to experimental designs. Two studies

confirm the model’s success: a novel repeated-measures design validated by replicating

a canonical framing effect, and an extension of this design analyzing competing frames

of protests for racial justice during the Trump era. These results encourage renewed

scholarship in the framing tradition, and explicitly challenge the notion of an “end of

framing.”

There's The Party: Preferences & Party Influence in The U.S House of Representatives

ABSTRACT:

The U.S. Congress is today almost unimaginable without parties, yet evidence that parties influence votes remains limited. Without direct evidence of party discipline, the literature has studied roll call votes themselves in search of party effects. Using individual responses to Democratic whip counts in the House from 1955 to 1987, I reassess the evidence for party influence and reflect on the consequences of relying on roll call votes to capture preferences. Such a strategy cannot distinguish initial positions from final votes, which overstates members' natural party loyalty, shifts ideology estimates to the extremes, and distorts the relationship between preferences and votes. Even in this less polarized historical period, members do change their positions in patterns consistent with party persuasion, and those vote-switches are driven by both ideological and electoral concerns. Roll call scores like DW-NOMINATE remain key tools, but the distinction between preferences and votes cannot be ignored.