Robert Kubinec

Assistant Professor of Political Science

New York University Abu Dhabi

About

My research explores issues in comparative and international political economy, particularly corruption, business-state relationships and entrepreneurship, and the development of Bayesian statistical tools for research purposes. To see a list of my current working papers and access the PDFs, see my Google Scholar page. I am also the author of the ordbetareg, idealstan and CoronaNetR R packages, and a founding PI of the CoronaNet COVID-19 policy project. You can access my CV from this link.

My book, Making Democracy Safe for Business: Corporate Politics During the Arab Uprisings, shows why corruption among business elites and government officials proved so durable after popular revolutions overthrew authoritarian Arab governments. Based on original survey research and on-the-ground interviews on campaign finance, bribery and business relations with government agencies in Egypt and Tunisia, the book helps us understand why corruption is such a threat to emerging democracies, and what we might be able to do to protect new democracies these threats.

Use discount code KUBINEC23 to get 20% off on the book from the Cambridge website.

This website serves mainly as a blog in which I present ideas on political-economic topics I study and issues related to data science with R/Rstudio and causal inference. My R-related posts are syndicated with RBloggers, a consortium of R bloggers.

Scroll down to see my recent blog posts.

Recent Posts

New Survey Research on Tunisia and the IMF Deal

Tunisia’s dictator, President Kais Saied, is pushing the country towards full-scale economic collapse by refusing to negotiate with the International Monetary Fund about a potential rescue deal. Neither the government nor the increasingly repressed opposition wants to take responsibility for the wrenching changes proposed by the IMF despite the offered loan package of $1.

Last updated on Sep 26, 2023 5 min read Political Economy, Tunisia

What Do Tunisians Really Think About President Kais Saied?

Robustness check: time of completion Survey Design Sensitivity Estimates Alternative Estimation: RRreg Alternative Estimator: rr BRMS Model Adjustment with MRP Gender Age Region Simulation Comparison: Univariate Vs.

Last updated on Sep 21, 2023 16 min read R

Fixing Fractional Logit?

This post focuses on one of the more curious models in contemporary statistics, a specification for proportions that is either called fractional logit or quasi-Binomial. An earlier version of this blog post had a much more negative take on the fractional logit specification.

Last updated on Apr 23, 2023 19 min read R

What's Logs Got to Do With It?

Twitter (or what’s left of it) was recently ablaze with a discussion of two smart working papers, one by Jiafeng Chen and Jonathan Roth and the other by John Mullahy and Edward Norton.

Last updated on Dec 21, 2022 10 min read R

Simulating Turnout in Tunisia's Constitutional Referendum

I am writing this post in response to questions about estimating turnout for Tunisia’s constitutional referendum today. Turnout is an important aspect to this referendum because high turnout would signal higher legitimacy for President Kais Saied’s dramatic changes to the Tunisia’s democracy.

Last updated on Jul 25, 2022 7 min read R

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