I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at New York University Abu Dhabi. My research sits at the intersection of comparative politics, historical political economy, and racial and ethnic politics. I am particularly interested in how political power shapes what governments can do, whom they tax, and whom they serve.
Questions that currently motivate my work include:
When do economic elites support building a capable state, even if it means taxing themselves?
What holds elite coalitions together, and why can economic booms, not just busts, pull them apart?
How do the rules that decide who is represented, such as how legislative seats are apportioned and who can vote, shape who pays taxes and who benefits from public spending?
Can a stronger central state break up the patronage networks that local politicians use to trade favors for votes?
Does ethnic and racial diversity really undermine public goods, social trust, and tax compliance, or do those patterns reflect histories of exclusion and weak state institutions?
I study these questions in Latin America, the United States, and, more recently, Turkey. Much of my work rests on original datasets that I build from historical archives and make publicly available to other researchers. My research has been published in the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, the British Journal of Political Science, World Politics, and World Development.
At NYU Abu Dhabi, I teach Introduction to Comparative Politics, Latin American Politics, Inequality, Research Design and Causality, and the Capstone Seminar. I also serve as co-editor of the APSA Comparative Politics Newsletter.
I received my Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University in 2019. Before that, I earned a master’s degree in economics from the Paris School of Economics and a Master of Public Policy (MPP) from the Hertie School of Governance. My undergraduate degree is from the Universidade de São Paulo.