Daniel T. Roberts

Hello, I am a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Government at Harvard University. I will be on the academic job market in Fall 2025. My CV can be found [here].

My research agenda examines the contested politics of opportunity access, focusing on credit, education, and labor market policy. My political economy approach spans rich democracies globally, including the study of American Political Economy in Comparative Perspective

My first job market paper offers a theory of "Boundary Defense" to explain why policies that limit equal opportunity are resilient, and applies it to the case of early-age school tracking in Germany. My broader dissertation also applies this theory to explaining persistent opportunity boundaries in the U.S. and Japan, while further explaining how "Boundary Coalitions" of opportunity outsiders and vested interest groups pursue more ''quiet" reform in the wake of successful boundary defense.

My second job market paper examines the politics of the 2018 Dodd-Frank rollback in the US. It theorizes that "local dependence" creates coalitions of interest between firms and communities reliant on them, and offers evidence that this explains the 2018 deregulation better than alternatives. This builds on insights from both my published research in the Journal of Banking and Finance and my dissertation, previewing future directions of my research agenda on how domestic opportunity politics contributes to global financial instability.

My teaching history reflects my subfield-spanning political economy approach, including experience with Comparative Politics, American Education Politics, International Political Economy, Public Policy, and Political Theory. This breadth is highlighted in a syllabus on "Opportunity Politics" that I developed and taught as a lead-instructor.

Before beginning my Ph.D., I received a B.A. in Economics at the University of Chicago and worked as a Research Analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. During my Ph.D., I received an M.A. in Government at Harvard, and have been a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, the AxPo Observatory of Market Society Polarization at Sciences Po Paris, and Nuffield College at Oxford University while on a Fellowship offered by Harvard's Center for European Studies, where I am also an affiliate. 

Feel free to reach out at danielroberts (at) g.harvard.edu if you have any questions!