About

Elisabeth R. Gerber is the Jack L. Walker, Jr. Professor of Public Policy at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. She is also the inaugural Faculty Director of the School’s new Online Master of Public Affairs program, set to launch in January 2026. Her research focuses on regionalism and intergovernmental cooperation, sustainable development, urban climate adaptation, transportation policy, community and economic development, local fiscal capacity, and local political accountability. Gerber is the co-PI of the Detroit Metro Area Communities Study (DMACS), an ongoing public opinion panel survey of Detroit adults, and the founder of ViewPoint, a software platform for educational role-play simulations. She holds a PhD in political science from the University of Michigan, along with an MA and a BA in political science and economics from the same institution. Gerber is actively involved in various research centers, including Poverty Solutions and the Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy, and contributes to policy topics such as politics, poverty, social policy, and science and technology.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Public relations
• Psychology
• Business
• Public administration
• Law
• Demography
• Economics
• Management
• Political economy

Selected publications

• Investing in the Future of Mobility: The Role of Us Local Governments in Building Ev Infrastructure

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Investing in the future of mobility: The role of US local governments in building EV infrastructure

  Energy Policy · 2024-10-18 · 5 citations

  articleCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Detroit Area Studies (DAS)

  2023-01-01

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

• Rates of Delayed Care Among Detroit Residents During the COVID-19 Pandemic

  Journal of General Internal Medicine · 2022-05-09 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Detroit Area Studies (DAS)

  2021-01-01

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

• Public Perceptions of Collaborative Governance in Transportation Policy

  Political Research Quarterly · 2020 · 19 citations

  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Public administration

  Despite the widespread use and extensive studies of collaborative governance in the United States, we still know too little about how the public at large evaluates the formal inclusion of private stakeholders in collaborative decision making. We examine this question by conducting a series of survey experiments about the function, composition, and power of a proposed regional transportation board. The survey results reveal that while our respondents generally favored collaborative governance (i.e., public officials with private stakeholders) over collaborative government (i.e., public officials only), it was largely due to the inclusion of private citizens, not the stakeholder group representatives. This finding is consistent with a populist framework that presumes that interest group influences tend to impede or distort the will of the electoral majority and that favors functionally delimited mandates and limited power for non-elected decision-making bodies. This has important implications for the design and public acceptance of future collaborative government arrangements.

  PublisherDOI

• ViewPoint: Student Experiences with Technology Supporting Role-Based Educational Simulations

  2020-04-25

  articleSenior author

  We examine the experience of students who used ViewPoint to participate in a technology-supported, role-based simulation in a large university course, where graduate students designed and built a simulation about the college admissions process for undergraduate students. We focus on the user experience with ViewPoint — a web application to author, structure, and manage role-based simulations. Users noted four ways that ViewPoint supported their experience: it provided convenient and equitable access to resources, facilitated communication among roles, created focus through its self-contained environment, and mirrored real-world tasks through its interface. Users noted two dimensions to consider for future support of role-based simulations: maintaining the conceit of the simulation narrative and creating awareness of auxiliary information streams.

  PublisherDOI

• The Challenge of Externally Generated Collaborative Governance: California’s Attempt at Regional Water Management

  The American Review of Public Administration · 2020 · 21 citations

  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Public relations

  Creating successful collaborative governance regimes is difficult, but can be especially hard when collaborations are externally generated by higher levels of government as opposed to self-generated by local agencies and stakeholders due to the lack of spontaneity. We analyze this problem as it applies to California’s Integrated Regional Water Governance Program. Public administration theory indicates that a core element in a successful collaboration is empowering local leaders who share the collaboration’s intended goal. However, the political concessions to local autonomy necessary to enact an externally generated collaboration can undermine its success. The tensions between maintaining local autonomy and creating a regional approach are inherently strong in a “layered collaborative governance” approach that acknowledges and accommodates local boundaries. Drawing on the concept of role differentiation, we hypothesize that the roles participants play in layered collaborative governance will frequently derive from their preexisting issue areas, geographic orientations, and power relations, but that program design incentives can influence which groups participate in the effort and how they engage. We test these hypotheses in the context of California’s Integrated Regional Water Management (IRWM) program. We find evidence of role differentiation on grant leadership both with respect to the initial goal of regional collaboration as well as later efforts to address the water issues of disadvantaged communities.

  PublisherDOI

• Getting bipartisan support for sea level rise adaptation policies

  Ocean & Coastal Management · 2020 · 8 citations

  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Political economy
  PublisherDOI

• 17. Conclusion

  2019-12-31

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Bruce E. Cain

  Stanford University

  10 shared

• Arthur Lupia

  State Street (United States)

  9 shared

• Justin Phillips

  5 shared

• Mathew D. McCubbins

  Duke University

  5 shared

• Mark Lubell

  University of California, Davis

  5 shared

• Adam Douglas Henry

  University of Arizona

  5 shared

• Iris Hui

  Stanford University

  3 shared

• Jenna Bednar

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  3 shared

Labs

• Elisabeth GerberPI