I am a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Milan Statale and a Affiliated Researcher at CLEAN unit, Bocconi University. I am close to finishing my PhD in Economics at the the University of Barcelona and IEB.
My research interest are in political economy and development economics with a regional focus on India.
Download my current CV here and my Job Market Paper here.
I am on the 2024-25 Academic Job Market!
PhD in Economics, 2025 (Expected)
University of Barcelona and IEB
Joint Masters in Models and Methods of Quantitative Economics (QEM), 2020
Universite Paris I Pantheon Sorbonne, IDEA Graduate Program, UAB
Masters in International Economics and Finance (Advanced), 2015
University of Queensland
BA in Economics, 2011
Michigan State University
Why do criminal politicians win elections? Scholars theorize that voters may forgive criminal allegations when politicians are more effective at delivering state resources. This paper examines this theory with data from India’s largest rural workforce program. Using a regression discontinuity design, I find that in constituencies where a criminal politician won, the project completion rate falls by 68%, but work allocation increases by 36%. Program funds in criminal constituencies are disproportionately allocated to labour, rather than materials. These findings suggest that criminal politicians strategically target the wage dimension of the program as a mechanism to buy voter support.
Do dynastic politicians exert less political effort than their non-dynastic counterparts? Using a pre-registered field experiment in India, this paper tests whether the state legislators political family connections affect their responsiveness to requests for help with common public goods provision. I find that dynastic legislators are on average more than 50% less responsive. This response rate is reduced further when legislators have strong political family ties. Furthermore, the results reveal that there are no statistical differences in the response rate when the legislators provide a clear signal of their party preferences, and the raised concern comes directly under the responsibility of the legislator. These findings suggest that dynastic legislators are willing to exert more political effort when this can affect their electoral support.