Book
Power Grab: Political Survival Through Extractive Resource Nationalization
Cambridge University Press, 2020.
[National Oil Company database] • [Table of Contents]
Peer-reviewed Articles
"Fossil fuel subsidy reforms have grown more fragile."
Nature Climate Change. (2025). Co-authored with Michael Ross and Evelyn Simoni.
"Effects of per capita payments on governance: evidence from tribal casinos."
Public Choice. vol. 199, no. 3 (2024), pp. 319-340. Co-authored with Adam Crepelle and Dominic Parker.
[email for Replication Materials]
"Examining the effect of cost information and framing on support for methane regulations in Europe."
Environmental Research Letters. vol. 18, no. 9 (2023): 094046. Co-authored with Parrish Bergquist.
"Political leadership has limited impact on fossil fuel taxes and subsidies."
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. vol. 119, no. 47 (2022): e2208024119. Co-authored with Cesar B. Martinez-Alvarez, Chad Hazlett, and Michael Ross.
"Why Do Governments Tax or Subsidize Fossil Fuels?"
Journal of Politics. vol. 84, no. 4 (2022), pp. 2123-2139. Co-authored with Michael Ross and Cesar B. Martinez-Alvarez. (Previously listed as CGD Working Paper 541.)
"Expropriation and Human Rights: Does the Seizure of FDI Signal Wider Repression?"
Review of International Organizations. vol 17, no. 4 (2022), pp. 847-875. Co-authored with Noel Johnston and Nicole Janz.
"Using Earnings Calls to Understand the Political Behavior of Major Polluters."
Global Environmental Politics. vol 22, no. 1 (2022), pp. 159-174. Co-authored with Jessica Green, Jennifer Hadden, and Thomas Hale.
"Transition, Hedge, or Resist? Understanding Political and Economic Behavior toward Decarbonization in the Oil and Gas Industry."
Review of International Political Economy. vol. 29, no. 6 (2022), pp. 2036-2063. Co-authored with Jessica Green, Jennifer Hadden, and Thomas Hale.
[Replication Materials] • [Supplementary Appendix]
"Unintended consequences of anti-flaring policies--and measures for mitigation."
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. vol. 117, no. 23 (June 2020), pp. 12503-12507. Co-authored with Raphael Calel.
"Institutions and the Resource Curse: Evidence from Cases of Oil-Related Bribery."
Comparative Political Studies. vol. 53, no. 1 (January 2020), pp. 3-40.
[Replication Materials] • [Supplementary Appendix]
"Dynamics of the inner elite in dictatorships: Evidence from North Korea."
Comparative Politics. vol. 52, no. 2 (January 2020), pp. 221-249. Co-authored with John Ishiyama.
[Replication Materials] • [Supplementary Appendix]
"Scraping public co-occurrences for statistical network analysis of political elites."
Political Science Research & Methods. vol. 7, no. 2 (April 2019), pp. 385-392.
[Replication Materials] • [Supplementary Appendix]
"Global progress and backsliding on gasoline taxes and subsidies." (open access)
Nature Energy. vol. 2, no. 16201 (January 2017). Co-authored with Michael Ross and Chad Hazlett.
[Replication Materials] • [Supplementary Appendix]
"Explaining the Oil Advantage: Effects of Natural Resource Wealth on Incumbent Reelection in Iran."
World Politics. vol. 67, no. 2 (April 2015), pp. 226-267.
[Replication Materials] • [Supplementary Appendix]
"Why Do Leaders Nationalize the Oil Industry? The Politics of Resource Expropriation."
Energy Policy. vol. 75, no. C (December 2014), pp. 228-243.
[Replication Materials] • [Supplementary Bibliography]
Peer-reviewed book chapters
"Governance Amid the Transition to Renewable Energy in the Middle East and North Africa." 2021. In Robin Mills and Li-Chen Sim (eds.), Low Carbon Energy in the Middle East and North Africa (London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, International Political Economy Series). Co-authored with Noosha Uddin, UCSB PhD student.
"The Institutional Components of Political Corruption." 2015. In Ruben Ruiz Rufinio and Jennifer Gandhi (eds.), Handbook of Comparative Political Institutions (New York: Routledge Press). Co-authored with Miriam Golden.
"Oil, monarchy, revolution, and theocracy: a study on the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC)." 2012. In David Victor, David Hults and Mark Thurber (eds.), Oil and Governance (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press).
Published Dataset
Ross, Michael and Paasha Mahdavi. "Oil and Gas Data, 1932-2014." http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/ZTPW0Y. Harvard Dataverse. (Sep 2015).
[Codebook]
Global dataset of oil and natural gas production, prices, exports, and net exports. Oil production and prices data are for 1932-2014 (2014 data are incomplete); gas production and prices are for 1955-2014; export and net export data are for 1986-2013. Country codes have been modified from earlier versions to conform to Correlates of War (COW) and Quality of Government (QOG) standards. See codebook for details.
Works in progress
"Coordinated Financial Crisis Resolution." (with Christina Schneider and Jennifer Tobin)
"How vulnerable publics in small-island states view climate change and international responses to it."" (with Matto Mildenberger, Sara M. Constantino, Parrish Bergquist, Gabriel De Roche, Emma Franzblau, Cesar Martinez-Alvarez, Ingmar Sturm)
"Measuring firm climate strategy using transformer-based language models." (with Denis Lomov)
"Developing an Indigenous Governance and Political Representation Database."" (with Christopher Alcantara and Dominic Parker)
Other writings
"National Oil Companies and the Global Methane Opportunity.'' 2024. Global Policy. (with Andrew Howell).
"Collaborative Levers for Methane Abatement in National Oil Companies.'' 2024. Environmental Defense Fund, Report.
"Strategies for Building Power to Shift Climate Politics and Policy.'' 2024. The 2035 Initiative, Evidence Review. (with Leah Stokes, Matto Mildenberger, and Lucas Boyd).
"Assessing National Oil Companies transition plans: an essential tool for banks, investors and regulators.'' 2023. World Benchmarking Alliance, Policy Brief. (with J. Roth, R. Poivet, N. Jones, and A. Picciariello).
"Opportunity NOCs: How investors can jumpstart energy transitions in national oil companies.'' 2023. The 2035 Initiative and IISD, Policy Brief. (with A. Picciariello).
"Paving a Credible Investment Pathway to Net Zero for Oil and Gas.''2022. OECD Consultation on Investment Treaties and Climate Change.
"Inuit Language and Community Engagement.'' 2022. Public report prepared for communities in Inuit-speaking parts of northern and northwest Alaska. (with U. Okleasik).
"Cultural programs and opportunities for engagement with CIRI.'' 2021. Report prepared for the the Cook Inlet Region Inc (CIRI) Alaska Native Regional Corporation.
National Oil Companies and Climate Change: Insights for Advocates. 2021. IISD and NRGI Policy Briefing. (with Alexandra Gillies, Patrick R.P. Heller, Paasha Mahdavi, David Manley, Valerie Marcel, Lourdes Melgar, Francisco Monaldi, Greg Muttitt, Angela Picciariello, and Joachim Roth)
"Oil companies aren't actually going green--but some are heading there faster than others." 2020. The Washington Post / Monkey Cage Blog. (with Jessica Green, Jennifer Hadden, and Thomas Hale)
"Stop Oil Production in Santa Barbara Once and for All." 2020. Santa Barbara Independent.
"Power Grabs and Crude Decisions.'' Invisible Histories caption essay, Harvard Center for History and Economics. June 2020.
"New Oil Finds Could Mean a Tripling of Guyana's GDP." Foreign Policy. 26 November 2019. (with Morgan Bazilian)
"Recommendations on the Draft Lebanese National Oil Company Bill" (email for a copy). Report prepared for the Lebanese Parliamentary Committee on Public Works, Transportation, Energy, and Water. 10 January 2018.
"Four things to know about nationalizations in the energy industry." 2017. Initiative for Sustainable Energy Policy (ISEP) Blog.
"Oil Conflict and Kurdish Independence." Global Policy. 4 October 2017. (with Morgan Bazilian, PeriKhan Aqrawi-Whitcomb, and Cyril Widdershoven)
"How to get reelected if you are an Iranian MP." The Washington Post / Monkey Cage Blog. 13 August 2015.
"Will Iran's parliament block the nuclear deal?" The Washington Post / Monkey Cage Blog. 14 April 2015.
"Oil and Politics in Iran's Majles-e Shura-ye Eslami." The International Society for Iranian Studies Newsletter. vol. 34, no. 4 (October 2014), pp. 10--13.
"Reforming National Oil Companies: Nine Recommendations." Natural Resource Governance Institute Briefing. July 2014. (with Patrick Heller and Johannes Schreuder)
"The Petroleum Industry Bill and the Future of NNPC." Revenue Watch Institute Briefing. October 2012. (with Aaron Sayne, Patrick Heller, and Johannes Schreuder)
"The Future Impact of Climate Change on the California Wine Industry." Stanford International Policy Studies Report, prepared for California State Assembly Member Noreen Evans. May 2009. (with Jonathan Gatto, Byung-oh Kim, Hirochika Namekawa, and Hung Tran)