Research

This paper studies the effects of the Green Revolution—one of the largest development projects in the late 20th-Century—on individualism and collective action. Specifically, we use a difference-in-differences approach to investigate how rapid technological and organizational changes in traditional agriculture reshaped cultural norms in Indonesia—where Green Revolution rollout was largely driven by centralized government interventions. We hypothesize that the disruption of cooperative and interdependent practices—hallmarks of collectivist societies—led to a shift towards greater individualism. Regions with greater exposure to Green Revolution policies experienced significant and persistent increases in individualism (as measured by a higher prevalence of infrequent names) decades after the end of the program. Results are not driven by pre-trends and hold across a battery of robustness checks. We further document a persistent fall in community funding for public goods (collective action). Our findings suggest that technical change can lead to rapid and persistent changes in culture.

This study examines the economic legacy of civilian killings during the Korean War, which disproportionately targeted local elites, educated individuals, and their families. For identification, we exploit plausibly exogenous variation in the spatial distribution of killings driven by unanticipated UN military operations. Evidence suggests that local exposure to civilian killings had a persistently negative impact on contemporary development. These effects are not driven by immediate, direct influence on local economic outcomes. Instead, we highlight one possible explanation: targeted killings appear to have discouraged educational investment, leading to reduced human capital accumulation and slower structural transformation across generations. Our findings shed light on the potential long-term legacies of (small-scale) strategic killings.

This paper examines the effects of non-salary, asset-based compensation schemes on local leader performance. Using a spatial regression discontinuity, I exploit a historical policy that granted elected village chiefs cultivation rights over village rice land (bengkok) on one side of a historical border, but not the other. Chiefs generate higher local revenue, village public goods, and schooling. Using original surveys, I trace this to positive political selection and, suggestively, higher embedded-ness and pro-social motivation. I discuss policy implications. Awarding leaders economic rents derived from a stable, community-owned asset, can have persistently positive effects on local governance and development.

This paper studies the economic legacy of ethnic Chinese immigration on Indonesia. Our instrumental variables strategy exploits 15th-century landing sites that shaped subsequent Chinese settlement but lost maritime access due to 17th-century silting. A one-percentage-point higher Chinese share in 1930 leads to 9.4% higher household consumption and 26% higher population today. Using manufacturing census data, we show strong effects on firm sales driven by improved financing through private networks. Effects attenuate sharply during the 1997-1998 crisis, then recover. Despite their small size, ethnic Chinese minorities have played an outsized role in Indonesia’s modern development, with spillovers to the broader population.

This paper examines the optimal choice set size in an online donation setting. We randomize the number of beneficiaries (3, 8, or 10) per screen (screen size) in a field experiment. Across screens, the total number and value of donations are highest in the 8-beneficiary treatment (pre-registered). To explore underlying mechanisms, we conduct an exploratory analysis and find that the results are largely driven by differences in refresh rates and beneficiary exposure (choice overload and search behavior). In the 3-beneficiary treatment, donors refresh twice as often but view only half as many beneficiaries compared to the 8- and 10-beneficiary treatments (12 vs 25). Within screens, we classify self-written beneficiary narratives using both manual and machine learning methods to extract key characteristics. Beneficiaries perceived as more deserving receive larger donations (exploratory). Finally, we observe strong evidence of female in-group bias (pre-registered), likely due to the heightened saliency of female poverty among female donors in a male breadwinner context. This study highlights low-cost choice architecture adjustments to maximize donations.

This paper studies how the (forced) co-existence of ethnic groups shapes positive political development. We study a Cold War era program that resettled over 500,000 ethnic minority Chinese—many of which were recent economic immigrants—into mono-ethnic villages across Malaysia. Today, areas surrounding these villages remain highly ethnically segregated and polarized. Yet ethnic-majority Malay communities in these areas exhibit weaker zero-sum beliefs, greater identification with a more inclusive Malaysian identity, and lower electoral support for the ethnonationalist coalition. We find little evidence of cohort-level heterogeneity, though overall effects appear stronger in areas with historical interethnic economic complementarities. Turning to mechanisms, Malays report greater intergroup contact in the workplace and moderately positive economic effects. Effects are amplified (attenuated) under economic complementarities (competition). Strikingly, even after more than half a century, we do not observe broader social integration. Our findings show how economic interdependence & sustained (impersonal) contact can foster bottom-up political moderation despite the lack of deeper social integration and initially adverse conditions.