Welcome to my website! 

I am an Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics at Boston University. I am also affiliated with NBER, BREAD, CEPR, and J-PAL.

My research lies at the intersection of political economy and development economics. I study how political, cultural, and institutional factors and constraints shape the process of economic development. The first strand of my research studies elections and democracy in developing countries and globally. The second strand explores the political economy of religion. The third strand explores questions related to state-building and nation-building in historical perspective. I completed my PhD in Economics from MIT in 2018.

You can download here my CV and my research statement, read my papers here, and find my Google Scholar profile here.

Recent papers:

Religion in Emerging and Developing Regions (with Sara Lowes and Eduardo Montero). New draft.

It Takes a Village Election: Turnover and Performance in Local Bureaucracies (with Sam Bazzi, Masyhur Hilmy, Mahvish Shaukat and Andreas Stegmann). New draft. 

Religion, Education, and the State (with Sam Bazzi and Masyhur Hilmy). Review of Economic Studies, August 2025.

Electoral Turnovers (with Vincent Pons and Vincent Rollet). Review of Economic Studies, November 2024.

The Dynamic Consequences of State-Building: Evidence from the French Revolution (with Cédric Chambru and Emeric Henry). American Economic Review, November 2024.