Contact Info

Reach me at either sarang.a.shah@gmail.com or sarang.shah@berkeley.edu.

Current Research Projects

• Dissertation on the political economy of housing in California and how to build the state and local politics to support the Abundance Agenda. Featuring comparative case studies of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Sacramento metro areas, interviews and surveys, and an analysis of industrial policy approaches to housing.

• Survey of business elites with Eitan Hersh gauging the appetite of business leaders for increased political engagement on broad-based public interest issues. “Who Wants Stakeholder Capitalism? Public and Elite Perceptions of the Role of Business in Politics” and “The Partisan Realignment of American Business Leaders“. Coverage of working papers in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Niskanen Center.

• “‘Health and Decency’: A Political Economy History of the CPI.” with David Grewal and Sanjay Reddy.

• Modeling market measures as signals: a dynamic reinterpretation of economic theory for industrial policy. Presented at the Stanford Economic Methodology: Models, Measurements, and Interventions (2024).

• “The Comparative Industrial Policies of Quantum Technologies: US and China.” with Vinod Aggarwal, and Andrew Reddie. (in progress)

Education

• MA Political Science, University of California, Berkeley (2023)

• JD, University of California, Berkeley - School of Law (2021). Licensed to practice law by the State Bar of California Lic. No. #342210.

  • Dean’s Fellowship, 2018-2021. Edley Grant, Summer 2020.

  • Founder and former Chair of The Law and Political Economy Society @ Berkeley.

  • Co-founder of the Older, Wiser Law Students of Berkeley Law.

  • Law clerk at East Bay Community Law Center, Community Economic Justice clinic.

• Post-graduate studies in Applied Mathematics at Cambridge University (Wolfson College, 2011-12) and Trinity College Dublin (MS in theoretical physics, thesis on monopole topology), and undergraduate at the Georgia Institute of Technology (BS in physics with a minor in public policy).

• Scholarships and awards

  • George J. Mitchell Scholar, class of 2009-2010.

  • German Academic Exchange Service RISE Scholar, class of 2008.

  • Robert C. Byrd Honors Scholarship, 2005-2009.

  • HOPE Scholarship, 2005-2009.

Academic Organizing and Advising

• Organizer of the Capitalism and Democracy Cluster at the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative.

• Founder and organizer of the Industrial Policy Working Group at UC Berkeley.

• Policy Member at The Leadership Now Project.

Employment

• Graduate student researcher @ UC Berkeley (2019-Present).

• Editor and Contributor @ Law and Political Economy Blog at LPE Project + Yale Law School (2020-21).

• Louis Brandeis Law and Political Economy Fellow @ Open Markets Institute (2020).

• Mediation intern at California Lawyers for the Arts (2019).

• Writer at Crowdpac (2018).

• Tech writer at Palantir. Developed documentation for the Foundry product (2015-17).

• Data Editor at MapLight, work with reporters to produce front-page stories for The New York Times, BuzzFeed, KQED, and other publications as well as politics stories for publications such as San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times (2013-15).

  • Worked on Voter's Edge at MapLight, developing sophisticated back-end data analytics software tools and statistical methods and processes.

• Founded Distilled Magazine (2012-14), a publication and international community dedicated to telling a narrative about who we are and where we are going as a global society. Contributor at successor publication distilled.pm. Archived site. Index of articles written for Distilled Magazine.

• Other Experience

  • Wrote a play titled "Sycamore" and produced a stage reading at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre (2017).

  • Organizer of Current Events Discussion Meetup, Culture Club, and Book Club (2014-18).

  • Researcher at the Technical University of Berlin (2008), Georgia Tech School of Public Policy (2006-2009), and Trinity College Dublin (2009-10).

  • Worked for the Democratic Party (2006) and Progressive Change Campaign Committee (2012-13) as a fellow/intern.

Technical Experience

• 10+ years coding experience in C++, Java, R, Stata, MATLAB, SQL, Mathematica.

• Advanced degrees in technical fields: theoretical physics and applied mathematics.

• Developed a crowd-sourced multitasker to analyze campaign finance data at big data scale at MapLight using PHP, SQL, and Javascript.

• Network mapping experience as director of MapLight’s data journalism team, using UCINet, Markov Clustering, and random forest based machine learning/neural network AI.

• Experience with setting up full stack modular architecture platforms at Palantir to run big data logging, networking, and analysis (Patent: Building dynamic documentation based on installed services).

• Dissertation in string theory with a computational proof, and research work in computational neuroscience.

Curriculum Vitae

• Publications:

  • Shah, Sarang, The Transformation of Debt: The Paper State and Paper Economy in Early America (Draft, October 13, 2020). Available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3710898. Supervised by Christopher Tomlins.

  • Shah, Sarang. “LPE Society at Berkeley Law,” The Law and Political Economy Blog, Nov. 5, 2019, https://lpeproject.org/blog/lpe-society-at-berkeley-law/.

  • Shah, Sarang. Building dynamic documentation based on installed services. US 10509647 B1, United States Patent and Trademark Office, 17 Dec 2019;

  • As Data Editor at MapLight

    • Research editor with Iowa Pays the Price. Archived site, key findings,

    • Shah, Sarang. “Top 5 Homeland Security Contractors Spend $107M Lobbying Congress and Federal Agencies, Receive $9B in Contracts Sarang Shah,” MapLight, Feb. 27, 2015, https://maplight.org/story/top-5-homeland-security-contractors-spend-107m-lobbying-congress-and-federal-agencies-receive-9b-in-contracts/.

    • Shah, Sarang. “2016 Presidential Candidates Raise Millions from Key States Sarang Shah,” MapLight, Jul. 17, 2015, https://maplight.org/story/2016-presidential-candidates-raise-millions-from-key-states/.

    • Shah, Sarang. “Los Angeles and Silicon Valley Among Top Zip Codes Contributing to Federal Candidates,” MapLight, Jul. 28, 2015, https://maplight.org/story/los-angeles-and-silicon-valley-among-top-zip-codes-contributing-to-federal-candidates/.

    • Shah, Sarang. “What’s the Cost of a Seat in the California State Legislature?,” MapLight, May 5, 2015, https://maplight.org/story/whats-the-cost-of-a-seat-in-the-california-state-legislature/

    • Shah, Sarang. “Labor and Business Square Off in CA Special Senate Election,” MapLight, May 17, 2015, https://maplight.org/story/labor-and-business-square-off-in-ca-special-senate-election/.

    • Shah, Sarang. “Companies with Stake in Net Neutrality Debate Have Financial Ties to Subcommittee Members Overseeing FCC,” MapLight, Feb. 25, 2015, https://maplight.org/story/companies-with-stake-in-net-neutrality-debate-have-financial-ties-to-subcommittee-members-overseeing-fcc/.

    • Shah, Sarang. “Defense Contractors Dominate List of Top 10 PAC Contributors in 2015,” MapLight, Jun. 11, 2015, https://maplight.org/story/defense-contractors-dominate-list-of-top-10-pac-contributors-in-2015/.

    • Shah, Sarang. “Report: New Tool Reveals $80M in Independent Expenditures Spent in California’s 2014 Election,” MapLight, Sep. 28, 2015, https://maplight.org/story/report-new-tool-reveals-80m-in-independent-expenditures-spent-in-californias-2014-election/.

  • Bangham, George, and Sarang Shah. 2012. “The National Security Council and the Prime Minister.” Cambridge: The Wilberforce Society (March): 1-12. Supervised by Lord Wilson and Sir Christopher Andrew.

  • S. Shah, Moduli space of SU(2) singular monopole, M.Sc. thesis, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland (2011). Supervised by Sergey Cherkis.

  • Hövel, P., Shah, S. A., Dahlem, M. A. & Schöll, E. "Feedback-dependent control of stochastic synchronization in coupled neural systems," From Physics to Control Through an Emergent View, eds. Fortuna, L., Fradkov, A. L. & Frasca, M. (World Scientific, Singapore), pp. 35-44 (2010). Supervised by Philip Hövel, Eckhard Schöll, and Markus Dahlem.

• Panels and presentations

  • Introduction to Law and Political Economy with Sarang Shah @ Stanford Law School + American Constitution Society (recording).

  • Moderator of panel on Art and Law hosted by Berkeley Art + Design Initiative, September 2020.

  • Contributor/Thought Leader @ Summer Academy on Law, Money, and Technology: Transforming Political Economy at University of Manchester, July 2020.

  • Moderator of panel on LPE perspectives on the COVID crisis hosted by Berkeley Network for a New Political Economy, April 2020.

  • Panelist, Reclaiming Our Legal Education, Rebellious Lawyering Conference, Yale Law School, Feb. 2020.

  • Presenter, International Forum Connect: Corruption and Money-in-Politics, World Affairs Council, November 2014.

Personal background

I am a first-generation American of Indian descent. I am also a first-generation college graduate/professional/ academic/lawyer.

I have lived in Berkeley, Oakland, Atlanta, Berlin, Dublin, Cambridge, London, and Washington DC, and grew up between Kennesaw and Acworth in Cobb County, Georgia. When I can get away from my desk, I enjoy eating and cooking, watching movies and plays, reading history books and detective novels, running and cycling, and frequenting art openings with my spouse Hannah Skoonberg.