Peer reviewed articles
Building reputation: proxy wars and transnational identities, Journal of the European Economic Association, forthcoming. (with M. Mercier and B. Tremblay-Auger, preprint)
Trust and specialization in complexity: Evidence from U.S. States, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 216:332-353, 2023. (with J. De Sousa, A. Guillin and J. Lochard)
The political reception of innovations, Economics & Politics 35(2):595-628, 2023. (with J. Frieden)
Guerres indirectes : pourquoi les États soutiennent-ils des rébellions à l’étranger ?, Revue d'Économie du Développement, 31(2/3):191-96, 2023. (with M. Mercier and B. Tremblay-Auger)
Résistance et abolition de l'esclavage au Brésil, Revue d'Économie du Développement, 31(2/3):185-90, 2023. (with F. Seyler)
Global Regulations for a Digital Economy: Between new and old challenges, Global Policy 11(4):515-22, 2020. (with G. Beaumier, M. Campbell-Verduyn, K. Kalomeni, M. Lenglet, S. Natile, M. Papin, D. Rodima-Taylor, and F. Zhang)
How informality can address emerging issues: making the most of the G7, Global Policy, 10(2):267-73, 2019. (with A. Anne, L. Bélanger, P. Dietsch, H. Dobson, J. Fabian, J. Kirton, R. Marchetti, J.-F. Morin, C. Peacock, M. Prys-Hansen, S. Romano, M. Schreurs, and E. Vallet)
A theory of regional conflict complexes, Journal of Development Economics, 133:434-47, 2018. (with T. Verdier)
Asset complementarity, resource shocks and the political economy of property rights, Journal of Conflict Resolution 62(7):1489-516, 2018.
Maurice : l'industrialisation inclusive, Afrique Contemporaine, 266(2):97-114, 2018.
Fragilité régionale, capacité de l’État et guerre civile, Revue Économique, 69(6):937-60, 2018. (with T. Verdier)
Botswana et Maurice, deux miracles africains, Afrique Contemporaine, 242(2):29-45, 2012.
translated for Cairn International
Chapters in edited volumes
“Formal modelling”, in Morin, Jean-Frédéric, Olsson, Christian, and Ece Özlem Atikcan (eds). Research Methods in the Social Sciences: An A-Z of Key Concepts. OUP, 2021. (with É. Duchesne)
“Regional fragility clusters: state capacity and civil conflicts”, in Besedeš, Tibor and Volker Nitsch (eds). Disrupted Economic Relationships: Disasters, Sanctions, Dissolutions. The MIT Press, 2019. (with T. Verdier)
Book reviews
Soudain, le développement, La Vie des Idées, 2022 (with J. Stieglitz)
Le capital et sa transmutation juridique, La Vie des Idées, 2020 (with A. Terrien).
Quand les statistiques minent la finance et la société. Risque, responsabilité et décision, Esprit 451:163-4, 2019.
Working or looting, Books and Ideas, 2017.
Dictators and Democrats. Masses, Elites, and Regime Change, Études Internationales 48(1):123-4, 2017.
Nouveau regard sur le développement, La Vie des Idées, 2017.
A new look at development Books and Ideas, 2018.
Other publications
The Political Economy of GovTech. IMF Note 2023/003, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC. 2023 (with M. Moszoro)
L'invasion de l'Ukraine annonce-t-elle un nouvel ordre mondial ?, La Conversation, 2022 (with J. Paquin).
L'enjeu politique de l'enseignement de l'économie en perspective internationale, Revue nouvelle 74(2):66-71, 2019.
Working papers
Migration and Cultural Change: An Analytical Framework (with S. Sardoschau and H. Rapoport, wp, R&R at the JODE)
Migration is a central driver of cultural change, yet existing evidence is dispersed across mechanisms that are rarely analyzed jointly. This paper introduces a unifying theoretical framework in which selection into migration is central: emigrants are an atypical subset of the origin population, generating immediate compositional shifts in both origin and destination countries. Over time, assimilation, dissemination, and cultural remittances may either magnify or offset these initial effects, depending on contact patterns, incentives, and diaspora connectivity. The framework organizes the empirical literature into comparable channels, clarifies the conditions under which migration produces cultural convergence or divergence, and delineates the data and research designs required to identify the underlying mechanisms.
Brazil was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery, and it did so by the votes of an elite legislature drawn heavily from slave-holding districts. Assembling a new district-level panel of the thirteen roll-call votes on emancipation in Brazil's Câmara dos Deputados (1884--1888), we show that access to immigrant labor shaped the abolitionist coalition. Representatives of slavery-intensive districts voted for abolition more often when their districts also drew European immigrants, while immigration had little effect where slavery was limited. The pattern holds vote by vote, however we treat abstentions and absences, and under a shift-share instrument, consistent with free labor substituting for coerced labor.
Labor coercion is often framed as an elite choice; in nineteenth-century Brazil, we show how enslaved people’s resistance reclaimed leverage and reshaped the politics of abolition. Using roll-call votes on all abolition-related bills in Brazil’s Câmara dos Deputados (1884–1888), we study how enslaved workers' outside options affected legislative support for ending slavery. We proxy outside options with the location and scale of quilombos, durable maroon communities founded by runaways, and show that representatives from slavery-intensive districts with greater quilombo exposure were significantly more likely to support abolition.
Democratic spillovers--Rent-seeking elites, mobile capital, and the coevolution of political institutions (with T. Verdier, CESifo wp, CEPR dp, R&R JDE)
We introduce a dynamic model that investigates the persistence and evolution of elite-dominated societies, where inherited political capital determines one's social standing. Our analysis highlights the critical role of the distribution of exit options in the evolution of political inclusiveness across generations. An elite comparatively more mobile than the masses generally entrenches a politically stratified society, whereas a more widespread distribution of exit options can encourage inclusiveness. Under certain conditions differential mobility may still induce political inclusiveness across generations. Exit options across different political entities lead to a joint evolution of local power structures.