Sarah M Brooks
Biographic Data
| ID | 387030 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sarah M Brooks |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sarah M |
| FAMILY NAME | Brooks |
| SIGNATURE | BROOKS S M |
| AFFILIATIONS | The Ohio State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6465-5490 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 593 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Environmental, economic, and geopolitical trade-offs in critical mineral mining projects
The energy transition and intensifying geopolitical competition have triggered a rush for critical minerals, often extracted in developing countries. These projects have increasingly provoked public opposition. How do citizens in developing countries evaluate the trade-offs among the environmental, economic, and geopolitical dimensions of mining? We address this question empirically through a pre-registered conjoint survey experiment in Argentina…
Financial markets and mass political attitudes
How do financial markets affect mass attitudes toward candidates in democratic elections? We theorize that, especially in financially open countries in the Global South, voters respond to financial market assessments of candidates for national election. We expect that they do so via two mechanisms: First, voters may be aware that financial market movements can affect material outcomes, such as the prospects for future economic growth and the like…
Oil “Rents” and Political Development
Research on the political implications of oil wealth is now over two decades old, and yet still unresolved. Despite many advances in this literature, a core concept—resource rents—remains under-theorized, and even less well measured. This mis-measurement, we contend, has direct and significant consequences for theoretical findings on the resource curse. Although rents refer to excessive profits, analyses to date have not directly or indirectly fo…
Sovereign Risk and Government Change
Global capital markets can react dramatically to elections in developing countries, affecting governments’ access to finance and sometimes setting off broader crises. We argue, contrary to some conventional wisdom, that investors do not systematically react to the election of left-leaning parties and candidates. Government ideology is often an imprecise heuristic, given the diversity in policies among parties, especially those on the left. We the…
Oil and Democracy
By the end of the twentieth century, a scholarly consensus emerged around the idea that oil fuels authoritarianism and slow growth. The natural abundance once thought to be a blessing was unconditionally, and then later only conditionally, a curse for political and economic development. We re-examine the relationship between oil wealth and political regimes, challenging the conventional wisdom that such natural resource rents lead to authoritaria…
Categories, Creditworthiness, and Contagion
We assess how investors evaluate sovereign borrowers, arguing that sovereign risk is less "sovereign" than previous research assumes. Investors evaluate governments based not only on what they do, but also on investors' views of similar, "peer" countries. Professional investors use investment categorizations (geography, sovereign credit rating, or level of market development) as a heuristic device. As a result, peer country effects, as well as co…
Social Protection for the Poorest
Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) represent an innovation in social assistance policy by conditioning welfare benefits on recipients' behaviors associated with human capital development. Although social assistance has expanded throughout the developing world in the 21st century, the political logic guiding CCT adoption differs sharply from that of unconditional cash transfers, and from the politics of social insurance development. Striking spatia…
Insecure Democracy
In recent decades, developing countries around the world have undergone dual transitions to democracy and more open markets. Such reforms often have coincided with the retrenchment of state-sponsored social insurance, even as unemployment, crime, and informality have risen. This article examines how insecurity associated with lack of adequate protection against the risks of income loss and violent crime affects patterns of political engagement in…
Paths to Financial Policy Diffusion
The dominant approaches to the study of capital account liberalization have highlighted institutional barriers to reform and have also demonstrated an important role for interdependence, or the diffusion of a policy innovation from one country to another, as a causal force. Our approach contrasts with the institutional approach and seeks to clarify the political mechanisms of international policy diffusion. Specifically, we develop and test hypot…
Conditioning the “Resource Curse
Since the 1990s it has become conventional wisdom that an abundance of natural resources, most notably oil, is very likely to become a developmental “curse.” Recent scholarship, however, has begun to call into question this apparent consensus, drawing attention to the situations in which quite the opposite result appears to hold, namely, where resources become a developmental “blessing.” Research in this vein focuses predominantly on the domestic…
Social Protection and the Market in Latin America
Social security institutions have been among the most stable post-war social programs around the world. Increasingly, however, these institutions have undergone profound transformation from public risk-pooling systems to individual market-based designs. Why has this 'privatization' occurred? Why do some governments enact more radical pension privatizations than others? This book provides a theoretical and empirical account of when and to what deg…
Embedding Neoliberal Reform in Latin America
Although research in the advanced industrial nations has identified a supportive link between an expanded public sector role and economic openness, studies of the developing world have been much less sanguine about the possibilities of broader state intervention in the context of economic liberalization. The authors investigate the possibility that governments in Latin America may “embed” economic openness in a broader public sector effort. They …
When Does Diffusion Matter? Explaining the Spread of Structural Pension Reforms Across Nations
When and where is cross-national diffusion an important determinant of policy innovation? I posit that the characteristics of a policy innovation—whether it imposes high or low “sunk” costs on adopters—and country attributes such as wealth, mediate the importance of diffusion in domestic policy choices. Competing risks analysis of two structural pension reform models in 71 developing and industrialized countries supports these hypotheses. Peer di…
Capital, Trade, and the Political Economies of Reform
Existing approaches to the study of economic reform have focused on the mobilization of special interests that oppose liberalization and have tended to assume that reform dynamics follow a similar logic across distinct policy arenas. Analysis of the dynamics of capital account and trade liberalization in 19 Latin American countries between 1985 and 1999 demonstrates otherwise. Movement toward liberalization is shaped systematically by the timing …
Globalization and Pension Reform in Latin America
While financial globalization has created powerful incentives for Latin American governments to privatize old age pension systems, reliance on short-term capital flows has also constrained the ability of cash-strapped governments to enact that reform. Analysis of the technocratic process of pension reform in Argentina and Brazil provides evidence. Instead of simply generating unidirectional pressures for structural pension reform, financial globa…
Interdependent and Domestic Foundations of Policy Change
In the last two decades, striking correlations in the location and timing of structural pension reforms have raised important questions about the kind of information used by policy makers in their decisions to adopt such measures. This study tests the hypothesis that the adoption of pension privatization is shaped systematically by an interdependent logic, wherein the decision to privatize pensions in one country is systematically linked to corre…
Explaining Capital Account Liberalization in Latin America
In the past three decades governments around the world have lowered barriers to international capital flows. This movement is widely attributed to the forces of globalization, as developed nations moved toward relative convergence on international financial openness. Yet developing nations with much to gain from openness to foreign investment moved only hesitantly and inconsistently in this direction. Analysis of two decades of capital account li…
Social Protection and Economic Integration
In the past two decades of the 20th century, governments around the world began to apportion greater responsibility for old-age income provision to individuals and market forces through the privatization of pension systems. This article examines the political and economic foundations of the turn to private pension systems through a quantitative analysis of 57 countries around the world. I offer a causal model to explain the likelihood and degree …
The Political Economy of Structural Pension Reform
Interdependent and Domestic Foundations of Policy Change
In the last two decades, striking correlations in the location and timing of structural pension reforms have raised important questions about the kind of information used by policy makers in their decisions to adopt such measures. This study tests the hypothesis that the adoption of pension privatization is shaped systematically by an interdependent logic, wherein the decision to privatize pensions in one country is systematically linked to corre…
Categories, Creditworthiness, and Contagion
We assess how investors evaluate sovereign borrowers, arguing that sovereign risk is less "sovereign" than previous research assumes. Investors evaluate governments based not only on what they do, but also on investors' views of similar, "peer" countries. Professional investors use investment categorizations (geography, sovereign credit rating, or level of market development) as a heuristic device. As a result, peer country effects, as well as co…
When Does Diffusion Matter? Explaining the Spread of Structural Pension Reforms Across Nations
When and where is cross-national diffusion an important determinant of policy innovation? I posit that the characteristics of a policy innovation—whether it imposes high or low “sunk” costs on adopters—and country attributes such as wealth, mediate the importance of diffusion in domestic policy choices. Competing risks analysis of two structural pension reform models in 71 developing and industrialized countries supports these hypotheses. Peer di…
Social Protection for the Poorest
Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) represent an innovation in social assistance policy by conditioning welfare benefits on recipients' behaviors associated with human capital development. Although social assistance has expanded throughout the developing world in the 21st century, the political logic guiding CCT adoption differs sharply from that of unconditional cash transfers, and from the politics of social insurance development. Striking spatia…
Embedding Neoliberal Reform in Latin America
Although research in the advanced industrial nations has identified a supportive link between an expanded public sector role and economic openness, studies of the developing world have been much less sanguine about the possibilities of broader state intervention in the context of economic liberalization. The authors investigate the possibility that governments in Latin America may “embed” economic openness in a broader public sector effort. They …
Capital, Trade, and the Political Economies of Reform
Existing approaches to the study of economic reform have focused on the mobilization of special interests that oppose liberalization and have tended to assume that reform dynamics follow a similar logic across distinct policy arenas. Analysis of the dynamics of capital account and trade liberalization in 19 Latin American countries between 1985 and 1999 demonstrates otherwise. Movement toward liberalization is shaped systematically by the timing …
Conditioning the “Resource Curse
Since the 1990s it has become conventional wisdom that an abundance of natural resources, most notably oil, is very likely to become a developmental “curse.” Recent scholarship, however, has begun to call into question this apparent consensus, drawing attention to the situations in which quite the opposite result appears to hold, namely, where resources become a developmental “blessing.” Research in this vein focuses predominantly on the domestic…
Oil and Democracy
By the end of the twentieth century, a scholarly consensus emerged around the idea that oil fuels authoritarianism and slow growth. The natural abundance once thought to be a blessing was unconditionally, and then later only conditionally, a curse for political and economic development. We re-examine the relationship between oil wealth and political regimes, challenging the conventional wisdom that such natural resource rents lead to authoritaria…
Social Protection and Economic Integration
In the past two decades of the 20th century, governments around the world began to apportion greater responsibility for old-age income provision to individuals and market forces through the privatization of pension systems. This article examines the political and economic foundations of the turn to private pension systems through a quantitative analysis of 57 countries around the world. I offer a causal model to explain the likelihood and degree …
Paths to Financial Policy Diffusion
The dominant approaches to the study of capital account liberalization have highlighted institutional barriers to reform and have also demonstrated an important role for interdependence, or the diffusion of a policy innovation from one country to another, as a causal force. Our approach contrasts with the institutional approach and seeks to clarify the political mechanisms of international policy diffusion. Specifically, we develop and test hypot…
Explaining Capital Account Liberalization in Latin America
In the past three decades governments around the world have lowered barriers to international capital flows. This movement is widely attributed to the forces of globalization, as developed nations moved toward relative convergence on international financial openness. Yet developing nations with much to gain from openness to foreign investment moved only hesitantly and inconsistently in this direction. Analysis of two decades of capital account li…
Insecure Democracy
In recent decades, developing countries around the world have undergone dual transitions to democracy and more open markets. Such reforms often have coincided with the retrenchment of state-sponsored social insurance, even as unemployment, crime, and informality have risen. This article examines how insecurity associated with lack of adequate protection against the risks of income loss and violent crime affects patterns of political engagement in…
Sovereign Risk and Government Change
Global capital markets can react dramatically to elections in developing countries, affecting governments’ access to finance and sometimes setting off broader crises. We argue, contrary to some conventional wisdom, that investors do not systematically react to the election of left-leaning parties and candidates. Government ideology is often an imprecise heuristic, given the diversity in policies among parties, especially those on the left. We the…
Oil “Rents” and Political Development
Research on the political implications of oil wealth is now over two decades old, and yet still unresolved. Despite many advances in this literature, a core concept—resource rents—remains under-theorized, and even less well measured. This mis-measurement, we contend, has direct and significant consequences for theoretical findings on the resource curse. Although rents refer to excessive profits, analyses to date have not directly or indirectly fo…
Globalization and Pension Reform in Latin America
While financial globalization has created powerful incentives for Latin American governments to privatize old age pension systems, reliance on short-term capital flows has also constrained the ability of cash-strapped governments to enact that reform. Analysis of the technocratic process of pension reform in Argentina and Brazil provides evidence. Instead of simply generating unidirectional pressures for structural pension reform, financial globa…
The Political Economy of Structural Pension Reform
Social Protection and Economic Integration
In the past two decades of the 20th century, governments around the world began to apportion greater responsibility for old-age income provision to individuals and market forces through the privatization of pension systems. This article examines the political and economic foundations of the turn to private pension systems through a quantitative analysis of 57 countries around the world. I offer a causal model to explain the likelihood and degree …
Explaining Capital Account Liberalization in Latin America
In the past three decades governments around the world have lowered barriers to international capital flows. This movement is widely attributed to the forces of globalization, as developed nations moved toward relative convergence on international financial openness. Yet developing nations with much to gain from openness to foreign investment moved only hesitantly and inconsistently in this direction. Analysis of two decades of capital account li…
Interdependent and Domestic Foundations of Policy Change
In the last two decades, striking correlations in the location and timing of structural pension reforms have raised important questions about the kind of information used by policy makers in their decisions to adopt such measures. This study tests the hypothesis that the adoption of pension privatization is shaped systematically by an interdependent logic, wherein the decision to privatize pensions in one country is systematically linked to corre…
When Does Diffusion Matter? Explaining the Spread of Structural Pension Reforms Across Nations
When and where is cross-national diffusion an important determinant of policy innovation? I posit that the characteristics of a policy innovation—whether it imposes high or low “sunk” costs on adopters—and country attributes such as wealth, mediate the importance of diffusion in domestic policy choices. Competing risks analysis of two structural pension reform models in 71 developing and industrialized countries supports these hypotheses. Peer di…
Capital, Trade, and the Political Economies of Reform
Existing approaches to the study of economic reform have focused on the mobilization of special interests that oppose liberalization and have tended to assume that reform dynamics follow a similar logic across distinct policy arenas. Analysis of the dynamics of capital account and trade liberalization in 19 Latin American countries between 1985 and 1999 demonstrates otherwise. Movement toward liberalization is shaped systematically by the timing …
Globalization and Pension Reform in Latin America
While financial globalization has created powerful incentives for Latin American governments to privatize old age pension systems, reliance on short-term capital flows has also constrained the ability of cash-strapped governments to enact that reform. Analysis of the technocratic process of pension reform in Argentina and Brazil provides evidence. Instead of simply generating unidirectional pressures for structural pension reform, financial globa…
Social Protection and the Market in Latin America
Social security institutions have been among the most stable post-war social programs around the world. Increasingly, however, these institutions have undergone profound transformation from public risk-pooling systems to individual market-based designs. Why has this 'privatization' occurred? Why do some governments enact more radical pension privatizations than others? This book provides a theoretical and empirical account of when and to what deg…
Embedding Neoliberal Reform in Latin America
Although research in the advanced industrial nations has identified a supportive link between an expanded public sector role and economic openness, studies of the developing world have been much less sanguine about the possibilities of broader state intervention in the context of economic liberalization. The authors investigate the possibility that governments in Latin America may “embed” economic openness in a broader public sector effort. They …
Conditioning the “Resource Curse
Since the 1990s it has become conventional wisdom that an abundance of natural resources, most notably oil, is very likely to become a developmental “curse.” Recent scholarship, however, has begun to call into question this apparent consensus, drawing attention to the situations in which quite the opposite result appears to hold, namely, where resources become a developmental “blessing.” Research in this vein focuses predominantly on the domestic…
Paths to Financial Policy Diffusion
The dominant approaches to the study of capital account liberalization have highlighted institutional barriers to reform and have also demonstrated an important role for interdependence, or the diffusion of a policy innovation from one country to another, as a causal force. Our approach contrasts with the institutional approach and seeks to clarify the political mechanisms of international policy diffusion. Specifically, we develop and test hypot…
Insecure Democracy
In recent decades, developing countries around the world have undergone dual transitions to democracy and more open markets. Such reforms often have coincided with the retrenchment of state-sponsored social insurance, even as unemployment, crime, and informality have risen. This article examines how insecurity associated with lack of adequate protection against the risks of income loss and violent crime affects patterns of political engagement in…
Categories, Creditworthiness, and Contagion
We assess how investors evaluate sovereign borrowers, arguing that sovereign risk is less "sovereign" than previous research assumes. Investors evaluate governments based not only on what they do, but also on investors' views of similar, "peer" countries. Professional investors use investment categorizations (geography, sovereign credit rating, or level of market development) as a heuristic device. As a result, peer country effects, as well as co…
Social Protection for the Poorest
Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) represent an innovation in social assistance policy by conditioning welfare benefits on recipients' behaviors associated with human capital development. Although social assistance has expanded throughout the developing world in the 21st century, the political logic guiding CCT adoption differs sharply from that of unconditional cash transfers, and from the politics of social insurance development. Striking spatia…
Oil and Democracy
By the end of the twentieth century, a scholarly consensus emerged around the idea that oil fuels authoritarianism and slow growth. The natural abundance once thought to be a blessing was unconditionally, and then later only conditionally, a curse for political and economic development. We re-examine the relationship between oil wealth and political regimes, challenging the conventional wisdom that such natural resource rents lead to authoritaria…
Oil “Rents” and Political Development
Research on the political implications of oil wealth is now over two decades old, and yet still unresolved. Despite many advances in this literature, a core concept—resource rents—remains under-theorized, and even less well measured. This mis-measurement, we contend, has direct and significant consequences for theoretical findings on the resource curse. Although rents refer to excessive profits, analyses to date have not directly or indirectly fo…
Sovereign Risk and Government Change
Global capital markets can react dramatically to elections in developing countries, affecting governments’ access to finance and sometimes setting off broader crises. We argue, contrary to some conventional wisdom, that investors do not systematically react to the election of left-leaning parties and candidates. Government ideology is often an imprecise heuristic, given the diversity in policies among parties, especially those on the left. We the…
Environmental, economic, and geopolitical trade-offs in critical mineral mining projects
The energy transition and intensifying geopolitical competition have triggered a rush for critical minerals, often extracted in developing countries. These projects have increasingly provoked public opposition. How do citizens in developing countries evaluate the trade-offs among the environmental, economic, and geopolitical dimensions of mining? We address this question empirically through a pre-registered conjoint survey experiment in Argentina…
Financial markets and mass political attitudes
How do financial markets affect mass attitudes toward candidates in democratic elections? We theorize that, especially in financially open countries in the Global South, voters respond to financial market assessments of candidates for national election. We expect that they do so via two mechanisms: First, voters may be aware that financial market movements can affect material outcomes, such as the prospects for future economic growth and the like…
Economics (17 works) · Political science (15 works) · Politics (13 works) · Market economy (11 works) · Development economics (10 works) · Finance (8 works) · Political economy (8 works) · Economic system (7 works) · Finance (7 works) · Latin Americans (6 works)