Department of International Economics, Government and Business

My research lies at the intersection of political economy of development, business and government, and political behavior. 

My ongoing research is structured around two interconnected threads. The first studies why politicians choose strategies that are suboptimal for the welfare of societies. In particular, my research concerns how distributive politics is shaped by voter beliefs, connections between politicians and firms, and institutions. The second area of my research seeks to understand, given these constraints, how to design governance systems to improve public welfare.

Informed by fieldwork, much of my work relies on a mix of surveys, survey experiments, large scale administrative data, natural experiments, and field experiments.