[7] Jacobs has written or edited, alone or collaboratively, 17 books and over 100 scholarly articles in addition to numerous reports and media essays on American democracy, national and Minnesota elections, political communications, health care reform, and economic inequality.

[10] Recurring topics in Jacobs' research include American democracy, health care reform, political communications, and central banking.

He used American and British archival evidence to demonstrate that the preferences of citizens along with the organization of interest groups and the administrative capacity of government institutions were critical factors in accounting for the cross-national differences.

[15] Jacobs has published books on the passage of Medicare in 1965, the enactment of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, and the failure of Bill Clinton’s effort at health reform in 1993-94.

The research in Talking Together indicated that more than one out of four Americans join organized deliberations – on par with more traditional forms of political engagement such as contacting a government official or attempting to persuade someone to vote for a favored candidate.

[19] Fed Power was updated in its second edition to cover the impact on the Biden administration by Black Lives Matter protests and the growing influence of progressives in the Democratic Party.

[20] More recently, Jacobs and King are investigating the variations across western countries in how central banks regulate risk, manage access to capital, and respond to the inequality generated by their policies.

[10] Jacobs is a leading public intellectual,[citation needed] offering non-partisan commentary and programming on American politics and government policy.

Under his direction, it has become a regional hub[citation needed] for research and initiatives to strengthen democratic institutions and civic engagement, with a mission to foster conversations and collaborations across the partisan divides in Minnesota and America.

The Task Force's report in 2005 spurred increased media attention, research, and teaching on the political effects of rising economic and racial disparities.

[32] Their course concentrated on the U.S. Constitution and national security and tracked the growing pattern across Democratic and Republican administrations of unilateral exercises of executive power since the Second World War.