Kay Sugahara Professor of Social Sciences and Statistics
Caltech: Statistical Methods for Social Sciences
Jonathan N. Katz is the Kay Sugahara Professor of Social Sciences and Statistics at Caltech where he also served as the Chair of the Division of Humanities and Sciences for seven years. His research lies at the intersection of political science, economics, and statistics. His work focuses primarily on the development of statistical methods for the social sciences and their empirical applications, particularly to elections and other public policy questions.
Dr. Katz's work on methods for time-series cross-sectional data—such as those used in comparative political economy and international relations—has been highly influential, appearing in textbooks and widely used statistical-analysis software. The paper he wrote with Nathaniel Beck in 1995 in the American Political Science Review was listed as the eighth most influential article published in the first century of the journal's history. His research on redistricting and other aspects of elections has been cited in several legal cases, including a Supreme Court decision.
Dr. Katz was the co-editor of Political Analysis, the journal of the Society for Political Methodology, for eight years and the editor for quantitative methods at the Political Science Network (PSN) for nine years. He also previously served as co-director of the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project.
Dr. Katz is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an inaugural fellow of the Society for Political Methodology. He was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, a visiting professor at the University of Konstanz, a John M. Olin Foundation faculty fellow, and a postdoctoral fellow in positive political economy at Harvard University He was previously on the faculty of the University of Chicago.
