Research

Published papers:

Lynching and Economic Opportunities: Evidence from the US South, with Sotiris Kampanelis (Cardiff University). accepted at KYKLOS:  This paper examines the impact of historical lynching on the economic opportunities of Black individuals today. Our results indicate that past lynchings have an adverse effect on the current economic opportunities of Black people, likely arising from persistent racial prejudice dating back to the early 20th century. We emphasize the importance of rapid urbanization, industrialization, and population mixing in the US South post-1880, which led to heightened competition among racial groups for economic, social, and political prominence, ultimately resulting in a surge of lynchings. Our findings survive a series of robustness checks.

On the economic effects of indigenous institutions: Evidence from Mexico , 2020. (Journal of Development Economics). Paper awarded the Sir Alec Cairncross Prize for best paper submitted by a young economist: While Indigenous institutions affect policy outcomes and, consequently, economic development, our understanding of this association is as yet unclear. This paper examines this relationship using land reform in Mexico as a case study. Between 1917 and 1992, the rights to 16 million hectares of ancestral land were transferred to the Indigenous population in the form of land plots known as Comunidades Agrarias. By exploiting novel panel data for 13,600+ municipality-census observations, I find that ancestral land redistribution was more successful in municipalities with more complex Indigenous institutions. I hypothesise that centralised societies would have been more politically cohesive and therefore better able to coordinate collective actions against the state. The economic gains of the restoration policy were mainly found in the area of education. 

Pre-colonial institutions and socioeconomic development: The case of Latin America, with Luis Angeles. January 2017. (Journal of Development Economics): We study the effects of pre-colonial institutions on present-day socioeconomic outcomes for Latin America. Our thesis is that more advanced pre-colonial institutions relate to better socioeconomic outcomes today. We advance that pre-colonial institutions survived to our days thanks to the existence of largely self-governed Amerindian communities in rural Latin America. Amerindians groups with more advanced institutional capacity would have been able to organize and defend their interests in front of national governments; leading to better development outcomes for themselves and for the population at large. We test our thesis with a dataset of 324 sub-national administrative units covering all mainland Latin American countries. Our extensive range of controls covers factors such as climate, location, natural resources, colonial activities and pre-colonial characteristics – plus country fixed effects. Results strongly support our thesis.

Working Papers:

Public good or public bad? Nation-building and Indigenous institutions, with Eduardo Hidalgo, Nayeli Salgado, and Sotiris Kampanelis. R&R at Journal of Development Economics: While existing evidence shows that nation-building policies unify societies, little is known about how and what makes some societal groups to resist them. We examine this in the context of the post-Mexican Revolution (1920s-1950s), when the new state implemented a nation-building policy to eliminate Indigenous cultures and identities by increasing connectivity via transport infrastructure. In a difference-in-differences design, we leverage heterogeneity in the exposure to pre-colonial political centralisation as a proxy for the ability of Indigenous populations in mobilising to resist national integration. We find that the expansion of transport infrastructure was lower in municipalities with a stronger efficacy of Indigenous mobilisation. We demonstrate that this underprovision of public goods can be partly explained by lower demand from Indigenous groups with high preferences for Indigenous identity and a high capacity for coordination.

Songlines,  with Sotiris Kampanelis (Cardiff University) and Yannis M. Ioannides (Tufts  University). Under review: This paper examines the long-term economic impacts of the adoption of local knowledge during European colonisation. We use the case of Australia, where Aboriginal knowledge of the landscape was integral to colonial exploration and settlement. To quantify the effects of this knowledge, we construct a newly digitised and georeferenced dataset of trade routes created by Aboriginal people based on oral traditions, known as Songlines. Our results indicate that Aboriginal trade routes are strongly associated with current economic activity as measured by nighttime satellite imagery and, alternatively, population density. We attribute this association to path dependence and agglomeration effects that emanate from the transport infrastructure built by Europeans roughly along these routes, which have agglomerated economic activity. Finally, by exploiting exogenous variation in optimal travel routes, we provide evidence that our results are not entirely determined by the inherent characteristics of Australian topography, but rather by  Aboriginal knowledge.

Socially disadvantaged  ethnic groups and  distributive politics: Evidence from Bolivia, with Patrick Allmis (University of Antwerp)  and Vangjel Bita (University of Hannover): This study examines whether socially disadvantaged ethnic groups practise favouritism when they reach national power. We use the case of Bolivia, where Evo Morales, a member of the traditionally disadvantaged Indigenous Aymara, became the first Indigenous president in 2005. We develop a theoretical framework to uncover the necessary conditions for favouritism. The incentives to practise favouritism vary according to the income and size of an ethnic group. In municipalities with higher incomes or relatively few Aymaras, favouritism is more likely. We investigate whether different forms of favouritism occur using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design and a first difference estimator. Our empirical results show no evidence of favouritism towards Aymaras at the national level. However, we do find evidence for favouritism in high-income areas or where few Aymara live. Ethnic groups thus differ in how much they tend to practise favouritism and how much they suffer when others do so. 

Selected work in progress:

European explorations and the roots of modern economic growth, with Sotiris Kampanelis (Cardiff University) and Yannis M. Ioannides (Tufts  University). 

Financial deregulation & drug abuse, with  Ashley Burdett (University of Essex),  Elena Falcettoni (Federal Reserve Board), Emmanouil Pyrgiotakis  (University of Essex), Sotiris Kampanelis (Cardiff University).