State Capacity, National Economic Policies and Local Development

The Russian State in the Southern Urals

joint with Raphaël Franck

working paper (March 2022) download via CESifo

revise & resubmit at the Journal of Economic History

This study analyzes how state capacity shapes the local impact of national policies by exploiting a quasi-natural experiment in the regional expansion of the state. It uses the local discontinuity created by the boundary of the largest peasant rebellion in 18th century Russia where the state increased security forces and levied taxes more efficiently after the uprising ended. The results show that increased state capacity had limited effects on economic growth until the central government targeted specific development objectives. Namely, when rulers chose to build schools or foster industrialization, their national policies benefited areas which already had strong state capacity.

Political Elites and Civic Engagement

The Russian Empire's First Revolution 1825

This study investigates whether the promotion of liberal ideology can have a lasting impact on contemporary behavior, by exploiting the random exile settlements of an educated elite to the Russian Empire's 'Hinterland' as a quasi-natural experiment. It uses the locations of the failed Decembrist insurgents sent to Siberia and other remote areas of Russia, and matches them with the household locations of contemporary surveys. The results show that individuals that live within 10 km proximity of at least one Decembrist' exile location, are more likely to participate in informal and formal political activities, and are more inclined toward liberal values.

Independence Movements and Ethnic Politics

The Mau Mau Origins of Ethnic Voting and Distrust in Kenya

joint with Richard Bluhm, Tobias Korn

This study examines the effects of the violent repression of independence movements on ethnic politics and social cohesion. We exploit local variation in the intensity of repression to analyze the long-run impacts of British detention camps in 1950s colonial Kenya. Using a rich body of census and survey data and a triple-difference design, we show that exposure to a detention camp increases ethnic voting in the contested 2007 presidential election and erodes contemporary trust. In addition, we show that affected individuals accumulate less wealth, are less literate, and have poorer labor market outcomes three to five decades after the event.

Does India Use Development Finance to Compete With China? 
A Subnational Analysis 

joint with Vera Z. Eichenauer, Andreas Fuchs, Bradley Parks
access to the data via indiandevelopmentfinance.net

working paper (September 2021) download via AidData

accepted at the Journal of Conflict Resolution

China and India increasingly provide aid and credit to developing countries. This paper explores whether India uses these financial instruments to compete for geopolitical and commercial influence with China. We build a new geocoded dataset of Indian government-financed projects in the Global South between 2007 and 2014 and combine it with data on Chinese government-financed projects. Our regression results for 2,333 provinces within 123 countries demonstrate that India's Exim Bank is significantly more likely to locate a project in a given jurisdiction if China provided government financing there in the previous year. Since this effect is more pronounced in countries where India is more popular relative to China and where both lenders have a similar export structure, we interpret this as evidence of India competing with China. By contrast, we do not find evidence that China uses official aid or credit to compete with India through co-located projects.