Research

Working Papers

Cultural Distance and Ethnic Civil Conflict, revise and resubmit at the American Economic Review

Ethnically diverse countries are more prone to conflict, but why do some groups engage in conflict while others do not? I show that civil conflict is explained by ethnic groups’ cultural distance to the central government: an increase in cultural distance, proxied by linguistic distance, increases an ethnicity's propensity to fight over government power. To identify this effect, I leverage within-ethnicity variation in linguistic distance resulting from power transitions between ethnic groups over time. I provide evidence that the effects can be attributed to differences in preferences over both the allocation and the type of public goods.

Coverage: VoxDevTalks

Publications

Cultural Distance and Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, with Ana Tur-Prats,  The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 138, Issue 3, August 2023 

Coverage: Science, 5centims.cat, VoxDevTalks 

Colonialism and Female Empowerment: A Two-Sided Legacy, with Helmut Rainer, Journal of Development Economics, Volume 151, Article 102666,  June 2021
Link to Working Paper 

Coverage: Frontiers in African Economic History 

The Legacies of War for Ukraine, with Ellen Munroe, Anastasiia Nosach, Moises Pedrozo, Juan Felipe Riaño, Ana Tur-Prats, and Felipe Valencia, Economic Policy, Volume 38, Issue 114, April 2023 

Greater than the Sum of the Parts? Evidence on Mechanisms Operating in Women’s Groups, with Lucía Díaz-Martin, Akshara Gopalan, and Seema Jayachandran, The World Bank Research Observer, Volume 38, Issue 1, February 2023 

Coverage: World Bank Development Impact Blog Post 

Work in Progress

Male Dominance and Cultural Extinction, with Ana Tur-Prats 

Other Writings

What Works to Enhance Women’s Agency: Cross-Cutting Lessons from Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Studies, J-PAL Working Paper, with Wei Chang, Lucía Díaz-Martin, Akshara Gopalan, Seema Jayachandran, and Claire Walsh  

Coverage: J-PAL Evidence Review