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Hi and thanks for visiting my website! I'm an applied microeconomist with a broad set of interests. 

My main research interest is in how to have an effective, high-performing public sector within a polarized democracy. I try to combine insights from economics, political science, and law, and specifically to tie together themes like personnel economics, bureaucratic discretion, democratic accountability, political polarization, and law and economics (since a lot of important applications are in regulatory and law enforcement). I also have a longstanding passion for more standard labor economics and continue to work in that area. All of my work is empirical, most relies on methods of causal inference, and some aims to develop or apply theory in a meaningful way. 

I am an Assistant Professor at Stockholm IIES (which you can follow on Twitter @IIES_Sthlm). I received my PhD in economics from UC San Diego in 2017. If you're interested in my work, I'd love to hear from you! I can be reached at mitch.downey [at] iies.su.se.