Gabriel Lopez-Moctezuma

Gabriel Lopez-Moctezuma is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), joining the faculty in 2017. He holds a B.A. from Instituto Tecnologico Automomo de Mexico (2007), an M.A. (2012), and a Ph.D. (2016) from Princeton University.

• Caltech affiliations:
  • Ronald and Maxine Linde Institute of Economic and Management Sciences
  • Center for Theoretical and Experimental Social Sciences (CTESS)

His research focuses on collective decision-making in committees (e.g., Federal Open Market Committee, U.S. Supreme Court) and electoral competition. Methodologically, he employs structural estimation, causal inference, and text analysis to study how sequential decision-making affects policy outcomes and voter behavior. Key contributions include analyzing social learning in judicial deliberations and quantifying the trade-off between ideological preferences and reelection incentives in U.S. Senate elections.

Teaching roles include courses on Political Theory (SS 202 abc) and Applied Empirical Methods in the Social Sciences (SS 228 abc). Publications span topics from monetary policy dynamics to democratic representation, with ongoing work on political advertising effects and deliberation mechanisms in electoral systems.