Research

Production Network Diversification and Economic Development (2024)

• Co-Authors: Jorge Miranda-Pinto & David Fleming-Muñoz

• Replication files can be found here. 

• Published in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization. You can view the article here.

The Effect of Feedback on News-Verification Demand: Experimental Evidence from Mexico

• Co-Authors: Dario Trujano-Ochoa 

• Latest draft here 

• Funding Acquired: UC Alianza MX, UCLA Latin American Institute

• Summary: This study examines how feedback, overconfidence, and political bias influence individuals' ability to detect and respond to misinformation in politically charged contexts. Using a combination of fieldwork, surveys, and interviews in Mexico, the research explores how personal and group feedback affect participants' willingness to verify information and their accuracy in identifying falsehoods. The preliminary findings indicate that group feedback can significantly influence perceptions and behaviors around misinformation, while political alignment affects individuals' willingness to pay for information verification. This research aims to inform strategies for mitigating the spread of misinformation in politically sensitive environments.

Dynamic Dynasties: Elite Adaptations in the Philippines. 

• Funding Acquired: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council  Canada Graduate Research Scholarship – Doctoral

• Summary: This paper develops a model of elite adaptation in electoral democracies, using the Philippines as a case. It argues that elites with different resource endowments allocate resources between clientelistic transfers and programmatic public goods depending on the level of institutional discretion, which determines whether the two act as complements or substitutes. High-resource elites (HREs) are those with established financial, organizational, and network advantages that lower the cost of clientelistic exchange, while low-resource elites (LREs) rely more on programmatic or rule-based appeals. Under high-discretion settings, where elites retain control over benefit allocation, clientelism and public goods reinforce one another, allowing HREs to consolidate their dominance. Under low-discretion settings, where allocations are more rule-based, the two become substitutes, weakening clientelist networks and enabling LREs to compete more effectively. The paper tests these predictions using municipal-level data on electoral competition, budget composition, and elite characteristics.

Agricultural Production and the Formation of Elite Network Structure: Evidence from the Philippines. 

• Co-Authors: Blaine Finstein

• Summary: This paper examines how the historical organization of agricultural production shapes the formation of local elite networks. We study the Philippine sugar industry, where fixed processing mills created economic chokepoints that limited producers’ outside options and concentrated dependence on local landed elites. We argue that these conditions affected not only the distribution of economic power, but also the formation of relationships among elite families. Combining historical data on sugar mills with electoral data on political families, we construct local family networks and study how historical chokepoint exposure shaped both family-to-family tie formation and the resulting structure of elite networks. Our empirical analysis distinguishes simple exposure to sugar processing from the availability of alternative mills, allowing us to test whether stronger historical dependence altered which families formed political relationships and whether ties became increasingly concentrated around dominant families. We then examine whether these historically formed network structures have consequences for elite capture and the allocation of public resources.

Public Goods Misallocation & Voter Perceptions in the Philippines

• Co-Authors: Junbeom (Paul) Bahk

• Summary: This project examines how political favoritism in local procurement contracts impacts voter perceptions in the Philippines. By presenting voters with scenarios of development projects endorsed either by an international institution or a politically connected mayor, the study explores how perceptions of corruption and favoritism shape trust in government and political participation. The research aims to understand the broader political consequences of resource misallocation and the influence of political connections on voter behavior, providing insights into governance and accountability in public resource allocation.