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Applied Microeconomics and Trade Seminar Series Presents: Guo Xu
January 22 @ 1:40 am
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Applied Microeconomics and Trade Seminar
Date: Thursday, January 22, 2026
Time: 1:40 – 3:00 p.m.
Location: E2-499
Speaker: Guo Xu
Title: Associate Professor of Economics
Affiliation: University of California, Berkeley
Host: Ajay Shenoy
Seminar title: Personnel is Policy: Delegation and Political Misalignment in the Rulemaking Process
ABSTRACT: We combine comprehensive data on the U.S. federal rulemaking process with individuallevel personnel and voter registration records to study the consequences of partisan misalignment between regulators and the president. We present three main results. First, even important pieces of new regulation are frequently delegated to bureaucrats who are politically misaligned. Second, rules that are overseen by misaligned regulators take systematically longer to complete, are more verbose, generate more negative feedback from the public, and are more likely to be challenged in court. Third, in assigning regulators to rules, agency leaders often face a sharp tradeoff between political alignment and expertise. Agency frictions notwithstanding, they tend to resolve this tradeoff in favor of expertise.
