Published

Brokering Votes with Information Spread via Social Networks (Review of Economic Studies, 2025)

with Frederico Finan, Horacio Larreguy, and Laura Schechter

Abstract: Politicians rely on political brokers to buy votes throughout much of the developing world. We investigate how social networks facilitate these vote-buying exchanges. Our conceptual framework suggests brokers should be particularly well-placed within the network to learn about non-copartisans’ reciprocity in order to target transfers effectively. As a result, parties should recruit brokers who are central among non-copartisans. We combine village network data from brokers and citizens with broker reports of vote buying, allowing us to use broker and citizen fixed effects. We show that networks diffuse information about citizens to brokers who leverage it to target transfers. In particular, among those citizens who are not registered to their party, brokers target reciprocal citizens about whom they can learn more through their network, and these citizens are more likely to support the brokers’ party. Moreover, recruited brokers are significantly more central than other citizens among non-copartisans, but not among copartisans. These results highlight the importance of information diffusion through social networks for vote buying, broker recruitment, and ultimately for political outcomes. (PDF)

Working Papers

Patronage Hierarchies, Corruption, and Tax Collection (2026)

Abstract: Why are developing country bureaucracies ineffective despite repeated modernization efforts? Patronage (hiring on partisanship rather than merit) is often thought to undermine public sector performance, yet it is difficult to measure and usually studied either among frontline agents or supervisors separately, rather than across hierarchical layers. I emphasize patronage hierarchies, instances where layers of the bureaucracy have patronage hires, and measure how they affect state performance. I study this problem using comprehensive data on around 300,000 shipments inspected by Paraguayan customs and develop a method for identifying patronage hires based on political appointment cycles. My findings suggest that patronage inspectors monitored by a patronage port administrator (patronage pairs) exhibit compounded underperformance. They detect less customs fraud and more often fail to detect fraud subsequently identified by headquarter audits, while also deviating more frequently from prescribed random assignment of inspectors to shipments. Additionally, their fraud detection decreases further when dealing with high shipment volumes at their port, as high workloads can mask lower inspection effort. Finally, patronage pairs make smaller tax adjustments than non-patronage pairs, even among comparable products with similar tax evasion risks. Shipments handled by patronage pairs generate around 11% less tax revenue, undermining state capacity.

Getting a Seat at the Table: Partisan Poll Workers and Electoral Bias (2025)

with Andrés Carrizosa

Abstract: Does poll workers’ partisanship affect electoral outcomes? Many countries use partisan and adversarial vote-counting systems where poll workers are party representatives and mutual control is expected to provide fairness. Yet in countries with established party regimes, parties often have de facto unequal capacities to send representatives to all booths. Exploiting quasi-random assignment of voters to booths in Paraguay’s 2018 general elections, we estimate that partisan poll workers decrease an opposing party’s vote share by up to 1.1 percentage points (pp) and increase theirs by up to 0.7pp. Our analyses also expose differential effects according to the electoral system. In proportional representation races, established parties have more opportunities to increase their support at the expense of smaller parties. In contrast, single-winner plurality races dampen this effect due to the winner-take-all aspect of these races. Our results have practical implications for politicians and policymakers, and theoretical implications for elections in developing democracies.

Coalition Trimming of Purged Elites

with Jesús Daboin Pacheco and José Morales-Arilla

Abstract: Do leaders court or cut the entourage of sidelined elites during economic crises? We look at the case of Rafael Ramirez, Venezuela’s former Oil Czar, who was purged from Chavismo’s Cabinet in late 2014. We find that Ramirez-affiliated individuals and firms became discretely less likely to receive government appointments and contracts upon his purge. Effects on appointments are greatest for high-spending agencies, and firms affiliated with the military and with Nicolas Maduro gained access to government contracts. Downstream agents seem to share the fortunes of their patrons after coalition-shaping policies induced by worsening economic conditions.

In Preparation

Brokers on the Payroll: The Patronage Consequences of Becoming a Political Broker

Customs Efficiency Around the World

with Yewon Choi, Ana Fernandes, Bob Rijkers, and Niharika Satish

Decentralizing Intergovernmental Grants: Evidence from Indonesia’s Village Fund

with Vincent Tanutama

Improving Customs Auditing Algorithms through Machine Learning

with Ernesto Dal Bó, Frederico Finan, and Laura Schechter

Land Misallocation and Agricultural Productivity

with Chang-Tai Hsieh

Technological Capacity

with Anders Jensen. In the Oxford Handbook of State Building and State Capacity, eds. Mark Dincecco and Yuhua Wang. Oxford University Press.

Voting Technology, Political Competition, and Clientelism

Teaching Fellow — DPI-410: The Politics of Development

Harvard Kennedy School - Cambridge, MA - Spring, 2023

• Taught by Gautam Nair at the Harvard Kennedy School
• Course Website

Teaching Fellow — DEV-101: Economic Development: Theory and Evidence

Harvard Kennedy School - Cambridge, MA - Fall, 2022

• Taught by Eliana La Ferrara and Dani Rodrik at the Harvard Kennedy School
• Course Website

Teaching Fellow — ECON 50: Using Big Data to Solve Economic and Social Problems

Harvard University - Cambridge, MA - Spring, 2022

• Taught by Raj Chetty and Greg Bruich at Harvard College
• Course Description and Materials

Teaching Fellow — Contemporary Developing Countries: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Intractable Problems

Harvard University - Cambridge, MA - Fall, 2021

• Taught by Tarun Khanna, Satchit Balsari, Krzysztof Gajos, Doris Sommer, and Rahul Mehrotra at Harvard College
• Awarded Certificate of Distinction for Excellence in Teaching
• Course Website

Stata/R Tutor — Harvard Economics Department

Harvard University - Cambridge, MA - Fall, 2021 and Spring, 2022

• Weekly office hours on the Department’s Stata/R support team.
• Course Website

Intelligent taxation and AI: Promises and pitfalls

International Growth Centre (IGC) - January 2026 (with Anders Jensen)

Opinion Articles and Blog Posts

• “Aprendiendo de la historia: para acabar con el nepotismo, hay que levantarse” [Learning from history: to end nepotism, we must rise up] (ABC Color, January 2024)