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E.J. Fagan

Ph.D. student

I am a Ph.D. student at the University of Texas at Austin. I study agenda setting, political parties, Congress, think tanks, lobbying, and economic policy. In particular, I am interested in how legislatures process information and solve problems, and how capacity, ideology, and accountability impact decision-making. I am also the graduate student project manager with the Policy Agendas Project and the host of the Policy Agendas Podcast.

Before graduate school, I worked for five years in Washington, DC. From 2011-2014, I was Deputy Communications Director for Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a research and advocacy organization based in Washington, DC. GFI works to study and curtail illicit financial flows from developing countries.

When not working, I spend my time cooking, hiking, and watching baseball. I write about baseball at Baseball Prospectus. I also host and produce a weekly baseball podcast on the New York Yankees.

Post

A polarized Congress relies more on party-aligned think tanks

May 15, 2019
Congress is more polarized and has less capacity to process complex information than ever. These trends are related. As Congress cut the budgets of its own internal think tanks –… Read More