Working Papers

Collusion, Connection and Capture: The Political Economy of Late Tsarist Industrialization (Available upon request)

Firms behave differently depending on who owns them and the political connections they have, which can have subsequent effects on economic growth. My paper uses the context of Late Tsarist Russia to study how elites, foreign entities and merchants affect economic growth in a late-industrializer. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries Tsarist Russia was trying to industrialize. During this period, it is unclear how various social groups affected firm performance, market power, the general business environment, and what the subsequent effects on growth were – were they helping industrialization or were they simply rent-seeking? The different social groups had various tools at their disposal: while elites and foreign entities held power and influence, and foreigners had the advantage of new technology, merchants could choose to partner with elites to gain access to political influence, or they could choose to collude with other firms on prices and output to counteract the power of elites and foreigners. My findings reveal several patterns. Elites are associated with market power, and foreigners and merchants are associated with profits. Using a novel dataset on collusive agreements and organizations, I find elites and foreigners are negatively associated with collusion, and a collusive event is associated with higher market share, lower profits and higher assets for all firms. Within the metallurgical sector, firms participating in collusion start to have lower assets and eventually see a rise in their profits.

Presented at: LSE Graduate Economic History Seminar, WEast Dublin Workshop 2024, LSE Seminar in Political Economy and Economic History, AMSE PhD Seminar, ENS Lyon Economic History Workshop, EHS 2025 (Strathclyde)

Firm Formation in Tsarist Russian Empire: The Effect of the Polish Revolt (Available upon request)

My study takes advantage of a natural experiment related to the reallocation of land due to the serf emancipation in the Tsarist Russian Empire. In 1863 the Polish nobility revolted against the Tsar in the Western part of the empire. The revolt failed, and in retaliation the Tsarist government revised the terms of the emancipation by taking more land from the Polish nobility and reallocating the land towards the peasantry in the affected regions. Through spatial analysis and using detailed data on corporate charters and manufacturing censuses, I document a divergence in firm formation, firm characteristics and founder characteristics between the regions where there was greater reallocation from the gentry to the peasantry.

Presented at: AMSE PhD Seminar, WEAI 2023, EHES 2023 (WU Vienna), Middlebury, EHS 2024 (Northumbria), Baltic Connections 2024 (Jyväskylä), LAGV 2024 (Aix-Marseille), and ICDE 2024 (Aix-Marseille)

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