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 interests are in political economy and development. I am interested in understanding how political, social, and cultural constraints interact with the process of economic development. This has led me to work on topics such as urban poverty,  ethnic favoritism, and discrimination. One specific strand of my research studies elections and democracy in developing countries and globally. Another strand explores the political economy of religion. Finally, much of my recent work is in the field of historical political economy, with a particular interest in the twin issues of state-building and nation-building. I completed my PhD in Economics from MIT in 2018.

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

Recent papers:

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

Electoral Turnovers (with Vincent Pons and Vincent Rollet). Accepted for publication, Review of Economic Studies.

Religion, Education, and the State (with Sam Bazzi and Masyhur Hilmy). Revise & Resubmit, Review of Economic Studies.

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

J'Accuse! Antisemitism and Financial Markets in the Time of the Dreyfus Affair (with QA Do, Roberto Galbiati, and Miguel Ortiz Serrano). Journal of Financial Economics, April 2024.