Research

My research examines how inequality, aspirations, and social interactions shape economic behavior, mobility, and conflict. I develop theoretical and empirical frameworks to understand how economic environments influence investment, cooperation, and identity-based behavior, with a focus on low- and middle-income settings.

This page presents my main research areas, along with selected publications and current working papers. For a complete list of publications, grants, and professional activities, please see my CV.

1. Aspirations and Mobility

This work develops aspiration-based frameworks linking inequality to investment behavior and economic mobility, showing how aspiration gaps can either motivate effort or generate persistent poverty traps depending on how aspirations are formed.

Current Work

• The Great Gatsby Curve: Upward Mobility, Persistence and Inequality  (working paper) with Laura Mayoral and Debraj Ray  Talk 

 Publications

• Identities in Conflict with Debraj Ray,  Handbook on the Economics of Conflict 2024

• Measuring Upward Mobility, with Debraj Ray,  American Economic Review  2023  Slides

• Upward Mobility in Developing Countries with Carolina Concha-Arriagada and Debraj Ray, Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics forthcoming

• Aspirations and Inequality,, with Debraj Ray, Econometrica 2017. See also the online appendix 

• Aspirations and Economic Behavior, with Debraj Ray, Annual Reviews of Economics 2020. Slides

2. Political Economy and Bureaucracies.

This research examines how political institutions and bureaucratic incentives shape public service delivery and the allocation of resources, with implications for efficiency, accountability, and distribution.

Current Work

• Pack-Crack-Pack: Gerrymandering with Differential Turnout  (working paper) with Laurent Bouton, Micael Castanheira and  Allison Stashko 

• Hierarchy and Performance Pay: Experimental Evidence from the Public Sector  (working paper) with Ghazala Mansuri and Zahra Mansoor 

Publications

• Electoral Systems and Inequalities in Government Interventions, with Laurent Bouton and Micael Castanheira Journal of the European Economic Association 2021 Slides

3. Gender, Property Rights and Household Economics

This work examines how gender and institutions shape household structure, intra-household allocation, and economic outcomes, including the effects of women’s property rights and the role of birth order and family composition.

Current Work

• Female Firstborn and Family Structure  (working paper) with Maria Hernandez de Benito

Publications

• Women's Land Rights and Village Institutions in Tanzania with Maria Hernandez de Benito, World Development 153, 2022. 

• Suicides and Property Rights in India, with Siwan Anderson, Journal of Development Economics 114, pp. 64-78, 2015. Our column in Ideas for India. 

4. Social Networks and Strategic Interaction

This research analyzes how network structure shapes strategic interaction, cooperation, and the diffusion of behaviors, with particular emphasis on how individuals coordinate, compromise, and respond to social information.

Current Work

• Aspirations in Network with Yann Bramoullé

Publications

• Diffusion and Targeting Centrality, with Yann Bramoullé, Journal of Economic Theory, forthcoming (latex notation)

• Tolerance and Compromise in Social Networks , Journal of Political Economy 2022 Slides

• Two-sided Altruism and Signaling, Economics Letter 2016.

• Informal Insurance in Social Networks, with Francis Bloch and Debraj Ray, Journal of Economic Theory 2008.

5. Risk Sharing, Kinship, and Informal Insurance

This work provides a framework for understanding informal insurance in environments with limited commitment, highlighting how social ties and enforcement constraints jointly determine risk-sharing arrangements and resource allocation.

• Asymmetry of Information within Family Networks, with Joachim de Weerdt and Alice Mesnard, Journal of Human Resources 2019.  Slides

• Informal Risk Sharing in an Infinite-horizon Experiment, with Gary Charness, Economic Journal 2009.

• Risk Pooling, Commitment and Information: An Experimental Test, with Abigail Barr, Journal of the European Economic Association 2008.

• Informal Insurance in Social Networks, with Francis Bloch and Debraj Ray, Journal of Economic Theory 2008.

• Reciprocity in Groups and the Limits to Social Capital, with Francis Bloch and Debraj Ray, American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, May 2007.

• Group Formation and Risk Pooling in a Field Experiment, with Abigail Barr, Orazio Attanasio, Juan Camilo Cardenas and Costas Meghir, AEJ: Applied Economics 2012.

• Informal Risk Sharing in an Infinite-horizon Experiment, with Gary Charness, Economic Journal 2009.

• Risk Pooling, Commitment and Information: An Experimental Test, with Abigail Barr, Journal of the European Economic Association 2008.

• Informal Insurance, Enforcement Constraints, and Group Formation, with Debraj Ray, in Group Formation in Economics: Networks, Clubs, and Coalitions, edited by Gabrielle Demange and Myrna Wooders, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2005.

• Endogenous Group Formation in Risk-Sharing Arrangements, with Debraj Ray, Review of Economic Studies 2003. For a conjecture related to the paper, click here. For robustness checks of Example 2, click here.