Welcome to my website! 

I am an Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics at Boston University. I am also affiliated with NBER, BREAD, CEPR, and J-PAL.

My research lies at the intersection of political economy and development economics. I study how political, cultural, and institutional factors and constraints shape the process of economic development. The first strand of my research studies elections and democracy in developing countries and globally. The second strand explores the political economy of religion. The third strand explores questions related to state-building and nation-building in historical perspective. These research interests have also led me to work on varied topics such as urban poverty,  ethnic favoritism, and discrimination. I completed my PhD in Economics from MIT in 2018.

You can download here my CV and my research statement, read my papers here, and find my Google Scholar profile here.

Recent papers:

Religion, Education, and the State (with Sam Bazzi and Masyhur Hilmy). Accepted for publication, Review of Economic Studies.

It Takes a Village Election: Turnover and Performance in Local Bureaucracies (with Sam Bazzi, Masyhur Hilmy, Mahvish Shaukat and Andreas Stegmann). New draft. 

Electoral Turnovers (with Vincent Pons and Vincent Rollet). Review of Economic Studies, November 2024.

The Dynamic Consequences of State-Building: Evidence from the French Revolution (with Cédric Chambru and Emeric Henry). American Economic Review, November 2024.

J'Accuse! Antisemitism and Financial Markets in the Time of the Dreyfus Affair (with QA Do, Roberto Galbiati, and Miguel Ortiz Serrano). Journal of Financial Economics, April 2024.