My research lies at the intersection of political and institutional economics, with broader interests in authoritarian politics and history. Broadly speaking, I study the interaction between economic and political decision-making, with a particular focus on the strategic behavior of politicians as they pursue electoral and political goals.
My work relies on formal modelling, though more recently I have also developed a strong interest in empirical research, especially in building original datasets from the ground up. For more information, you can find my CV here. If you work on related questions or share similar interests, I would be very happy to hear from you.
Why and when politicians align with wealthy elites rather than relying on broad public support. Politicians face a strategic choice: pursue self-reliant electoral strategies or form patronage alliances with influential elites who provide campaign resources, media support, and endorsements in exchange for state benefits. The model of this paper shows that elite influence and expected payback determine politicians’ strategies. When elite influence is limited, incumbents avoid costly patronage. When it is high, politicians with low public support rely on elite backing, while those with strong support remain independent. In a dynamic setting, however, even strong incumbents turn to patronage to secure long-term power. If many voters are uninformed, patronage becomes even more attractive. These insights help explain patterns observed in the regimes of Yeltsin and Putin (Russia), Erdogan (Türkiye), and Orbán (Hungary), where elite alliances have been central to maintaining power.
Although repression generally reduces political participation and thereby strengthens an incumbent’s hold on power, incumbents are often observed to refrain from employing maximal levels of repression even when doing so appears feasible. This paper examines how repression shapes opposition interaction in hybrid regimes and, in turn, incumbents’ prospects for remaining in power. We develop a dynamic model in which opposition factions decide whether to remain politically active under repression and, conditional on participation, whether to cooperate or pursue independent strategies. Repression has two effects. First, it raises the cost of political engagement, reducing the number of active opposition factions. Second, repression strengthens incentives for cooperation among those factions that remain active by intensifying a shared threat and reducing the number of actors who must coordinate. The two effects generate a non-monotonic relationship between repression and the incumbent's chance to stay in power. Intermediate levels of repression limit opposition activity while keeping cooperation unstable. The model thus explains why incumbents may rationally refrain from maximal repression.
This paper examines Political Budget Cycles in federal systems, focusing on how a central incumbent allocates discretionary transfers across states in response to electoral incentives. We develop a theoretical model predicting that average discretionary transfers increase during federal election periods. While swing states consistently receive higher transfers due to their electoral competitiveness, the election-period increase is larger for non-swing states. This occurs because non-swing states are targeted primarily during federal elections: allocating transfers to them in state elections is not advantageous for the federal incumbent, as it has little effect on the probability of winning those state elections. To test these predictions, we compile a panel dataset of Indian states from 2006 to 2022. Using fixed effects specifications, we find evidence consistent with the theoretical model: discretionary transfers are significantly higher in federal election periods, swing states receive more discretionary transfers in non-election periods, and the election-period increase in discretionary transfers is more pronounced for non-swing states.