Working Papers

The Long Civil War: Battle Exposure and Anti-Black Racism in the US South (with Federico Masera and Sarah Walker) 

This paper studies the effect of the US Civil War on the geography of racism in the US South. We construct a new dataset of the universe of soldiers enlisted in the Confederate army, their town of residence before the war, and their military deployment. We show that, after the war, towns whose soldiers participated in more high-casualty battles increased their support for racially conservative parties and discriminatory laws and engaged more in violence against Black Americans for generations to come. The effect is similar in size to and independent from the prevalence of slavery. These towns were more likely to develop a cultural attachment to the war heritage and transmit it to future generations, as indicated by the presence of memorial organizations, Confederate monuments, and the use of distinct Confederate names. The war's legacy persists, shaping hate crimes, white supremacist rallies, and police officer killings of Black Americans to this day.

Slavocracy: Elite Capture and the Support for Slavery (with Federico Masera) [IOEA Best Project 2018]

Slavery in the US South was detrimental to economic development and concentrated wealth in the hands of a small elite. And yet, it was staunchly defended by the majority of the white population. While the slaveowners' reasons for supporting slavery are well-documented, why the non-slaveowners majority supported the institution remains unclear. This paper exploits the competitive forces generated by the Westward Expansion to identify changes in the slaveowners’ incentives to defend slavery. We show that these changes also determined the non-slaveowners support for the institution. We find that the planter elite's presence was instrumental in shaping non-slaveowners’ voting behavior. We highlight two mechanisms: rent sharing with white wage laborers and political persuasion through media control. Our paper shows that economic power begets political power, allowing institutions that benefit only a small elite to persist even in democracies.

Agricultural Modernization and Land Conflict (with Stefano Falcone) [IOEA Best Paper 2019] 

Agricultural modernization is a critical driver of economic development. However, it can generate conflicts on previously uncontested land. This paper shows that the expansion of capital-intensive agriculture induced by market-oriented reforms and technological innovation in the mid-1990s in Brazil increased the number of land occupations by subsistence farmers and rural workers. Our identification strategy exploits local variation in the profitability of investments in soy production given by geographic characteristics and the timing of our shock in a difference-in-differences setting. We find that higher land inequality increases conflict by decreasing land access for subsistence farmers and rural workers.

Factory Location: Resistance to Technology Adoption and Local Institutions  (with Federico Curci) 

This paper studies technology adoption and factory location in England during the Industrial Revolution. First, we document a negative relationship between industrialization in the 19th century and preindustrial economic activities. Second, we show that while cities with self-governing institutions had higher early economic growth, these cities failed to adopt new industrial technologies during the 19th century. We argue that because local self-governance led to the development of representative institutions, these facilitated collective action and enabled workers threatened by labor mechanization to resist technology adoption. Higher resistance to technology adoption, in turn, resulted in the relocation of economic activities away from traditional centers of production.

External Players in the Political Economy of Natural Resources

This paper studies the role of external players in shaping incentives to fight for natural resources in weak countries. I build a model in which the presence of a multinational company affects incentives for the domestic government and the domestic opposition to reach peaceful solutions regarding the control of natural resources. Multinational companies in the extractive sector negotiate their relative share of the rent with the domestic government. The outcome of the bargaining process depends on the relative strength of both the company and the government. The presence of the external player distorts the incentives to fight for the rent and can sustain peaceful equilibria. At the same time, this creates incentives for the external player to support the opposition group in order to weaken the government's ability to negotiate. The model rationalizes two classic ideas: the effect of a power vacuum on peace, repression, and conflict on the one hand and the use of the divide and rule strategy as a way to gain a higher proportion of the rent for the external player on the other.

Work in Progress

Protests and Institutional Change: The Effect of BLM Movement on Black-White Sentencing (with Michael Poyker)

Holding on to Power: Labor Relations in a Post-Slavery Society (with J. Clegg, F. Masera, and S. Walker)

The Power of Narratives (with F. Masera, and S. Walker)