Research
Current working papers
Mining for peace (with Paul Schaudt and Alberto Vesperoni).
Personalization of web search during the 2020 US elections (with Ulrich Matter and Johannes Ladwig).
Ethnic clustering in schools and early career outcomes (with Caroline Chuard, Annatina Aerne and Beatrix Eugster).
Ethnofederalism and ethnic voting (with Richard Bluhm and Paul Schaudt).
Local majorities: How administrative divisions shape comparative development (with Richard Bluhm and Paul Schaudt).
Partisan effects of information campaigns in competitive authoritarian elections: Evidence from Bangladesh (with Firoz Ahmed and Asad Islam). R&R at The Economic Journal.
Reassessing the resource curse using causal machine learning (with Michael Lechner and Paul Raschky).
Key players in economic development (with Ashanie Amarasinghe, Paul Raschky and Yves Zenou).
Selected publications
Religion and terrorism: Evidence from Ramadan fasting (with Paul Raschky and Anthony Strittmatter), Journal of Peace Research, forthcoming.
Ethnic geography: Measurement and evidence (with Michele Valsecchi and Alberto Vesperoni), Journal of Public Economics, 2021.
Measuring ethnic stratification and its effect on trust in Africa (with Sorawoot Srisuma, Alberto Vesperoni and Noémie Zurlinden), Journal of Development Economics, 2020.
Expropriations, property confiscations and new offshore entities: Evidence from the Panama Papers (with Ralph Bayer, Paul Raschky and Anthony Strittmatter), Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2020.
Effect of oil spills on infant mortality in Nigeria (with Anna Bruederle), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2019.
African leaders and the geography of China's foreign assistance (with Axel Dreher, Andreas Fuchs, Brad Parks, Paul Raschky and Michael Tierney), Journal of Development Economics, 2019.
Ethnic favoritism: An axiom of politics? (with Giacomo De Luca, Paul Raschky and Michele Valsecchi), Journal of Development Economics, 2018.
The political economics of the Arab Spring, Economic Inquiry, 2018.
Nighttime lights as a proxy for human development at the local level (with Anna Bruederle), PLOS One, 2018.
The effects of voting costs on the democratic process and public finances (with Simon Luechinger and Alois Stutzer), American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2015.
Regional favoritism (with Paul Raschky), Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2014.
Development (paradigm) failures (with Axel Dreher), Journal of Development Economics, 2013.
All-pay war (with Hadi Yektas), Games and Economic Behavior, 2012.
Inefficient policies and incumbency advantage (with Simon Loertscher and Dominic Rohner), Journal of Public Economics, 2010.
Natural resources, democracy and corruption (with Sambit Bhattacharyya), European Economic Review, 2010.
Industrial policy in an imperfect world, Journal of Development Economics, 2009.
The curse of natural resources in fractionalized countries, European Economic Review, 2006.