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 generously 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

Recently featured:

• Our Indian Development Finance Dataset is finally out and available here and here.  Joint work with Andreas Fuchs, Vera Z. Eichenauer, and Bradley C. Parks.
    
• Read our column The economic impact of the Russian state in the Southern Urals, from the 18th century to the present on VoxEU.org. Joint work with Raphaël Franck.