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I participated at the Academic Symposium of the UN CoSP in Atlanta on 9th-10th December 2023 as an invited Rapporteur for the Europe and Asia Regional Dialogue on the Implementation of the UN Convention Against Corruption (see UN Advisory Work).

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I am an applied economist with a passion for policy innovation and evaluation informed by behavioural science. 

I am deeply interested in how humans and societies can make better decisions and create stronger institutions to foster economic development and thrive. Here are some questions my research tackles:

• How do we combat corruption and foster a culture of integrity for thriving societies?

• How do we motivate and select civil servants to provide high quality public services? 

• How do we empower women and underrepresented groups to access opportunities, reach their potential and contribute to economic growth?

My methodological toolkit includes field, lab-in-the-field experiments, quasi-experimental designs, survey designs. These have been deployed in a range of settings, from recruitment of headteachers in Romanian schools, to evaluating the effectiveness of ethics training for police officers in Ghana and law graduates in Ukraine .  

My international collaborations and consultancy work span development, integrity and anticorruption projects for the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, and the United States Agency for International Development. 

I also sometimes look at economic development through a historical lens, and my research has contributed new data and insights into the deep determinants of economic growth, like the Neolithic transition to agriculture and the accumulated experience of state institutions throughout history.

Some of my research has been published in top journals, such as the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Journal of Public Economics and the Journal of Economic Growth.