Jonathan Rodden

Jonathan Rodden is professor of political science at Stanford, director of the Spatial Social Science Lab, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.  He has written several articles and a pair of books on federalism and fiscal decentralization, and continues to work on issues related to state and local government finance around the world.  His most recent work focuses on economic and political geography in North America, Europe, and beyond.  He published a book on the topic in 2019, entitled Why Cities Lose: The Deep Roots of the Urban-Rural Political Divide. 

Rodden has several ongoing research projects with collaborators in Europe, including a new project on comparative federalism at the University of Salzburg.  He spent the winter of 2013 as a visiting scholar at the Juan March Institute in Madrid while also teaching in Stanford’s Madrid Bing Overseas Program.

Rodden received his PhD from Yale University and his BA from the University of Michigan, and was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Leipzig, Germany. Before joining the Stanford faculty, he was the Ford Associate Professor of Political Science at MIT. 

Rodden's research was featured in The Europe Center February 2018 Newsletter.