Papers

Working Papers

"To Russia with love? The Impact of Sanctions on Elections" (with J. Hinz and R. Gold). CESifo Working Paper No. 11033. 2024. Revise and Resubmit at the Journal of the European Economic Association

Work in Progress

"Religious Practices and Voting" (in preparation, coming soon)

"Bureaucrats and Politicians: was Weber right?" (in preparation)

"Cultural Traits and Project Performance" (in preparation)

"Social Media and Firm Creation" (in preparation)

  Published Papers

"Internal Migration Networks and Mortality in Home Communities" (with R.Durante). European Economic Review (Volume 140, November 2021). (link)[latest version; online appendix; (old) CEPR Covid Working Paper]

• Media Coverage: VoxEU]

Abstract: Can migration networks harm their home communities? Looking at the spread of a virus in Italy and using pre-determined province-to-province migration, excess mortality and mobile phone tracking data, we document that provinces with a greater share of migrants in outbreak areas show lower local mobility (information mechanism), but also a greater population inflow from outbreak areas (carrier mechanism). For a subset of localities, the net effect on mortality is negative. However, for the average locality, the effect is positive and large, suggesting that the migrants' role as information providers is trumped by their role as virus carriers. The effect is quantitatively important as it accounts for 60\% of virus deaths outside outbreak areas.

“Ethnic Geography: Measurement and Evidence” (with R.Hodler and A.Vesperoni). Journal of Public Economics  (Volume 200, August 2021). (link)

    [NES Working Paper 253 (2019); CEPR Discussion Paper 12378 (2017)]

• • Abstract: The effects of ethnic geography, i.e., the distribution of ethnic groups across space, on economic, political and social outcomes are not well understood. We develop a novel index of ethnic segregation that takes both ethnic and spatial distances between individuals into account. Importantly, we can decompose this index into indices of spatial dispersion, generalized ethnic fractionalization, and the alignment of spatial and ethnic distances. We use maps of traditional ethnic homelands, historical population density data, and language trees to compute these four indices for more than 150 countries. We apply these indices to study the relation between historical ethnic geography and current economic, political and social outcomes. Among other things, we document that countries with higher historical alignment, i.e., countries where ethnically diverse individuals lived far apart, have higher-quality government, higher incomes and higher levels of trust.

“Ethnic Favoritism: An Axiom of Politics?,” (with G.de Luca, R.Hodler, P.Raschky) Journal of Development Economics (Volume 132, May 2018, Pages 115-129). (link)

[CEPR Discussion Paper 11351; ungated version here]

• Media coverage: VoxEU.

• Abstract: We investigate the prevalence and determinants of ethnic favoritism, i.e., preferential public policies targeted at the political leader's ethnic group. We are the first to study ethnic favoritism in a global sample and to use a broad measure - nighttime light intensity -- that allows capturing the distributive effects of a wide range of policies. We construct two panel datasets with several thousand ethnographic regions from around 140 multi-ethnic countries and annual observations from 1992 to 2013. We find robust evidence for ethnic favoritism: ethnographic regions enjoy 7%-10% more intense nighttime light and 2%-3% higher GDP when being the current political leader's ethnic homeland. We further document that ethnic favoritism is a global phenomenon prevalent both within and outside of Africa; that economic development and better political institutions have at best weak effects on ethnic favoritism; that ethnic favoritism is partly motivated by electoral concerns and extends to linguistically close groups; and that ethnic favoritism does not contribute to sustainable development.

"Land Property Rights and International Migration: Evidence from Mexico,” Journal of Development Economics (Volume 110, September 2014, Pages 276-290). (link)

• Abstract: In this paper, I ask whether there is a relationship between land property rights and international migration. In order to identify the impact of property rights, I consider a country-wide land certification program that took place in Mexico in the 1990s. My identification strategy exploits the staggered implementation and the households' eligibility for the program. I find that the program increased the eligible households' likelihood of having one or more members abroad by 12%. In terms of the number of migrants, my coefficient estimates explain 26% of the 1994–1997 increase in migrants from ejido areas and 13–15% of the increase from all of Mexico. Consistent with our theoretical model, the impact is strongest for households without a land will. This implies that land inheritance issues drive at least part of the effect.

Older Papers

“Corrupt Bureaucrats: The Response of Non-Elected Officials to Electoral Accountability” (link)

“Resource Windfall and Local Government Behavior: Evidence from a Policy Reform in Indonesia” (joint with O.Olsson). 2015. SWOPEC Working Paper No.635. 

“Quantifying Ethnic Cleansing: An Application to Darfur” (with O.Olsson). 2010. SWOPEC Working Paper No.479. 

 “Ethnic Diversity, Economic Performance and Civil Wars”. 2010. SWOPEC Working Paper No.433.