Working Papers
Do Political Identities Matter at Work? The Politics of Workplace Cooperation (with Francesco Raffaelli) (working paper) Under review
Abstract
What role do political identities play in modern workplaces, and under what conditions do they shape workers’ willingness to collaborate with colleagues? Using an original preregistered survey experiment with British employed citizens, this article reveals that while workers avoid close collaboration with outpartisans and favour copartisans, competence considerations prevail over political ones. Political identities do, however, interact with task competence in meaningful ways: highly competent workers are significantly penalized when they are outpartisans. We argue this reflects workers turning to colleagues' political identities as a signal for highly valued interpersonal traits and as a heuristic for avoiding workplace conflict, rather than a purely taste-based preference. Heterogeneity analyses of the conjoint findings support this argument, drawing on a novel work-centered measure of affective polarization, open-ended responses, and an additional survey. More broadly, this article contributes to our understanding of the conditions under which political sorting may emerge in the modern workplace.
When Do Firms Speak Up? Employee Ideology and the Politics of Corporate Speech (working paper)
Abstract
Large U.S. companies have increasingly voiced support for progressive causes, such as gender and racial equality and climate change. Despite a growing conservative backlash, little is known about the conditions under which firms publicly engage in these politically divisive topics. Linking Twitter data from S\&P 500 companies (2015–2022) and 10-K filings (2015–2025) with donation-based measures of stakeholders' ideology, I show that firms with more progressive workforces are significantly more likely to publicly embrace progressive causes. Using proprietary monthly data on firm-level labour movements, I find that concerns over employee attraction and retention are an important mechanism driving this alignment. An event study around George Floyd's murder shows that firms with Democratic-leaning workforces responded more strongly to this shock than otherwise similar firms with conservative workforces, suggesting that workforce ideology can influence corporate speech beyond pure sorting. However, the Republican-led backlash since 2020 has moderated (but not eliminated) the influence of progressive workers on corporate speech. These results suggest that a growing, politically realigned group of highly educated employees can shape the public discourse of traditionally conservative, market-driven institutions.
From Talk to Action: Informal Political Conversations and Political Engagement in the Knowledge Economy (draft available upon request)
Work in Progress
The Effect of University Fields of Study on Civic Behaviors (with Adam Altmejd and José Montalbán Castilla) [Pre-Analysis Plan] [Slides]
Diverging Incomes, Divided Politics? Educational Elites in the Knowledge Economy (with Briitta van Staalduinen)
The Effects of Political Polarization on Firms’ Performance and Workers’ Well-Being (with Joaquin Artes and Miguel Vazquez-Carrero)