My research interests lie in development economics, with a focus on state capacity and political economy. I study these issues using unintended natural experiments with spatial data and estimation techniques.

My work has been supported by grants from the DFG (German Research Foundation), the Israeli Council for Higher Education (CHE), and the Excellence Initiative of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (FoF4).

Last visiting research stays: 

University of California San Diego, the USA  since 2019 

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel in 2018 and 2019