David Luengas-Silva

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I'm a graduate student and PhD candidate in economics. I’m a researcher interested in uncovering what people and institutions don’t reveal—whether deliberately or not—and understanding the economic consequences of that hidden information. My work brings together large-scale administrative data, causal inference, and structural econometric tools to study misperceptions, opacity, and strategic behavior in politically or economically sensitive contexts.

My current research investigates how mistaken beliefs about product origins—such as perceived “Russianness” in liquor brands—shaped consumer demand following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. More broadly, I develop and apply methods to quantify difficult-to-observe phenomena, including the prevalence of judicial corruption in post-Soviet legal systems and the presence of collusive bidding in U.S. public timber auctions.

Broad Research Interests

Empirical Industrial Organization

Microeconomics

Structural Methods