Nathan J. Kelly, an assistant professor of political science, joined the faculty of the University of Tennessee in 2005. He received his M.A. (2001) and Ph.D. (2004) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed his undergraduate degree at Wheaton College (IL) with highest honors. His primary research program examines how macro political dynamics influence, and are influenced by, income inequality in the United States. A book manuscript from this research agenda, The Politics of Income Inequality in the United States, was published by Cambridge University Press (2009). Within this research agenda, he continues to conduct research on how income inequality influences public opinion and the democratic system more broadly. Building on this research agenda, he is currently developing a new project that examines income inequality in America's cities. In addition, he is developing a book manuscript examining policy production throughout the history of the United States. He also has research interests in religion and politics, time series methods.
Articles
The Rise of the Super-Rich: Power Resources, Taxes, Financial Markets, and the Dynamics of the Top 1 Percent, 1949 to 2008, American Sociological Review (2012)
The income share of the super-rich in the United States has grown rapidly since the...
Legislative Productivity of the U.S. Congress, 1789–2004 (with J. Tobin Grant), Political Analysis (2008)
We measure legislative productivity for the entire history of the U.S. Congress. Current measures of...
Religious Traditionalism and Latino Politics in the United States (with Jana Morgan), American Politics Research (2008)
This article examines how and why ethnic context conditions the link between religious traditionalism and...
Dynamic Models for Dynamic Theories: The Ins and Outs of Lagged Dependent Variables (with Luke Keele), Political Analysis (2006)
A lagged dependent variable in an OLS regression is often used as a means of...
Issue Attitudes and Survey Continuity across Interview Mode in the 2000 NES (with Brian J. Fogarty and H. Whitt Kilburn), Political Analysis (2005)
Can researchers draw consistent inferences about the U.S. public's issue attitudes when studying survey results...
Books
The Politics of Income Inequality in the United States (2011)
This book revolves around one central question: Do political dynamics have a systematic and predictable...