The Unelected Hand? Bureaucratic Influence and Electoral Accountability (2025), with Christos Mavridis (Unich, Pescara) and Federico Vaccari (Bergamo)
R&R, The Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization (JLEO)
What role do non-elected bureaucrats play when elections provide imperfect accountability and create incentives for pandering? We develop a model where politicians and bureaucrats interact to implement policy. Both can either be good, sharing the voters' preferences over policies, or bad, intent on enacting policies that favor special interests. Our analysis identifies the conditions under which good bureaucrats choose to support, oppose, or force pandering. When bureaucrats wield significant influence over policy decisions, good politicians lose their incentives to pander, a shift that ultimately benefits voters. An intermediate level of bureaucratic influence over policymaking can be voter-optimal: large enough to prevent pandering but small enough to avoid granting excessive influence to potentially bad bureaucrats.
When efficient help is perceived as greed (2025), with Werner Güth (Max Planck Institute), Andrej Angelovski (MDX), Christos Mavridis (Unich, Pescara)
Public Choice, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11127-025-01270-9
We study charitable behaviour when making genuine donations can be misinterpreted as being greedy. This is relevant when private benefits from donations, like tax exemptions, raise doubts among the public about donors' altruistic motives. In our experimental setting, a potential donor, the distributor, can make a socially desirable donation but shares the cost of this donation with an anonymous non-distributor who may not know that this socially desirable donation option is available. Comparing the behaviour of a distributor when the non-distributor knows the socially desirable option is available to when the non-distributor does not know it, allows us to explore the distributor's motives. Overall, not donating may stem from self-interest or from respect for the non-distributor's lack of choice and distributors must weigh the risk of being perceived as greedy against sacrificing social efficiency.
Distributional effects of immigration and imperfect labour markets (2024), with Julian Costas (Surrey)
Economics Letters, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2024.111832
In canonical models, the labour share is orthogonal to immigration shocks in the long run, regardless of the impact of immigration on productivity. In contrast, this paper provides evidence that immigration increases labour productivity while reducing the labour share. We produce this evidence using data from Great Britain with a shift-share instrument that exploits European Union expansions and changes in immigration to other high-income countries. Our results are consistent with the predictions from imperfect labour market models, where immigrant and native workers are heterogeneous in skills, and the former have lower labour supply elasticities than the latter. A significant implication of our analysis is that immigration redistributes income from workers to employers.
Poverty, Inequality and the Composition of Redistribution (2022), with Julian Costas (Surrey)
Social Choice & Welfare, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-022-01415-5
We study the use of social expenditures and regulation for redistribution. When regulated goods are essential in the consumption bundle of the poor, a high poverty rate creates incentives to increase redistribution through regulation. By contrast, inequality directs redistribution towards social expenditures. We propose a theoretical model that captures the trade-off between these two redistributive policies and test the model implications with a novel municipality dataset on income and local government policies. Theory predicts and empirical evidence supports that failing to account for poverty biases the effect of inequality on redistribution. Our evidence also reflects the positive connection between poverty and the use of regulation for redistribution.
When do interest groups lobby legislators in strong presidential systems? (2023), with Andrés Dockendorff (UChile)
Legislative Studies Quarterly, https://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12419
When do interest groups target legislators to approach or lobby under strong presidentialism? This article explores two hypotheses. First, interest groups and lobbyists seek to access committee chairs with gatekeeping power, even in those jurisdictions where the executive holds (most) exclusivity to initiate legislation (Gatekeeping Hypothesis). Second, interest groups and lobbyists target legislators who introduce more bills on issues that concern them but only on policy areas outside the executive’s exclusive sphere (Legislative Activity Hypothesis). We test these hypotheses with evidence from the Chilean Chamber of Deputies. We have coded and analysed 6,479 lobbying audiences and over 2,300 bills.
Constituency Service and Representation: The effects of remoteness and social deprivation (2023), with Andrés Dockendorff (UChile)
Representation (Journal of Representative Democracy), https://doi.org/10.1080/00344893.2023.2237028
We examine and test the determinants of constituency service in the Chilean Chamber of Deputies. We argue that socio-demographic factors lead towards differences in the provision of constituency service. We use a new data set of meetings between legislators, constituents, and groups to provide evidence for two main hypotheses. First, Chilean deputies from more remote districts devote a higher proportion of their meetings to addressing local or personal issues from constituents (Centre-Periphery Hypothesis). Second, deputies from districts in worse socio-economic situations also provide relatively more constituency services of this type (Social Deprivation Hypothesis).
Parties and Interests Groups in the CPTPP Ratification Process in Chile: A Case of Politicisation? (2024), with Dorotea López Giral (UChile) and Andrés Dockendorff (UChile)
World Affairs, http://doi.org/10.1002/waf2.12042
This study examines the strategies employed by Chilean political parties and interest groups to politicise the Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). To achieve this goal, political entrepreneurs and anti-trade lobbies opposed the CPTPP using a distinct strategy to shape the debate. The idea of trade politicisation helps understand how these key actors expanded the scope of topics, mobilising political action from various groups such as environmentalists, unions, indigenous activists, and advocates for gender equality. Furthermore, this strategy involves shifting the discourse away from the traditional dichotomy of free trade versus protectionism and redirecting the debate towards ideological and cultural dimensions such as legitimacy and sovereignty.
What makes a legislator promote or thwart trade liberalization in developing democracies? (2025), with Dorotea López Giral (UChile) and Andrés Dockendorff (UChile)
Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional, http://doi.org/10.1590/0034-7329202500102
The political economy of law interpretation (ongoing), with Gustavo Torrens (IU Bloomington)
Intelligence and Security Services in Democracies (ongoing), with Stephen Calabrese, Sambit Bhattacharyya, and Adnan Fakir (USussex)
Elites and social connections on political representation (ongoing), with Marcel Aubry (UChile), Naim Bro (UAI), Julian Costas (Surrey) and Andrés Dockendorff (UChile)
Segmentation and asymmetric information in marriage markets (ongoing), with Shilan Dargahi (University of Sussex)
(Un)Intended consequences of saving programs: Subjective expectations and child labour (2024), with Laura Fumagalli (Essex) and Thomas Martin (Warwick)
Is it campaign contribution or corruption? Political money in regulation with fully informed voters (2024), with Christos Mavridis (Unich, Pescara)
Trust, Beliefs and Compliance during the COVID-19 Pandemic, with Andrej Angelovski (MDX) and Ericka Rascon (MDX)
Persistence in legislative bargaining (ongoing)
The effect of support to firms on the labour market incentives (ongoing), with Tulio Cravo (African Development Bank) and Paulo Jacinto (UFPR)
Impact Evaluation of SME programs in Brazil (2014)
with Tulio Cravo, Jose Pires, and Saleema Vellani
We conducted an impact evaluation to assess the effectiveness of the main programs supporting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Brazil. Focusing only on the manufacturing sector, the evaluation examines (i) how various SME interventions and various combinations of these interventions affect variables of interest such as employment, real wages, exports, and patent and trademark registration; and (ii) to what extent the duration and sequencing of SME interventions influence the impact on these variables of interest.
Economic performance and industrial clusters in Brazil (2013)
with Tulio Cravo, Jose Pires, and Caio Piza
Industrial clusters, which are commonly targeted to receive financial support allocated to locally based development projects, are seen as an effective industrial policy tool for improving productivity and generating employment. Nevertheless, identifying clusters and assessing their economic performance is a challenge for policymakers. This paper aims to address this challenge by identifying the location of clusters based on neighbour relationships and specialisation in Brazil and providing some insights on their effects on employment generation. The paper uses both Location Quotient and Local Indicator of Spatial Association to identify potential clusters in 27 industrial sectors in 5564 Brazilian municipalities. In addition, it uses annual municipal panel data for 2006-2009 to assess whether the presence of potential clusters is correlated with employment generation. The results show that clusters located in municipalities whose neighbours have similar industrial structures perform better than those that present industry specialisation only.
Country Program Evaluation: Ecuador 2007-2011 (2012)
with Tulio Cravo, Jose Pires, Caio Piza, and Alejandra Palma
Evaluation of the Opportunity for the Majority Initiative (2012)
with Tulio Cravo, Jose Pires, and Caio Piza