Research

Working Papers

Organized Crime, Local Politicians, and State Capacity
Revise and Resubmit at Journal of Development Economics
Abstract | Paper (Updated: 2025/07/14)| Nontechnical summary: Development Impact blog

This paper examines how the assassination of mayors affects local government capacity, leveraging the quasi-random variation in the success of assassination attempts against Mexican mayors. Compared to municipalities with failed attempts, tax collection falls by 28% and public expenditures shift from essential services to construction investments in municipalities with successful assassinations. There is suggestive evidence that disruptions to local government personnel contribute to these outcomes. Productive municipal workers leave, and retaining them would require an 11% wage increase. More personnel are reassigned from public service delivery to security duties. Non-political violence, economic activities, demographics, electoral environment, and the temporary rise in organized crime do not fully explain these outcomes. The results highlight how the loss of decision-makers in violent environments undermines local state capacity.

The Illusion of Criminal Order: Institutional Trust and Municipal Finances in Mexico
(with Ana Isabel Lopez Garcia and Juan Pablo Figueroa Mansur)
Abstract | Paper (Updated: 2025/10/27, UNU-WIDER Working paper)| Supplementary material

Do criminal groups which help maintain order strengthen the fiscal contract or weaken it? This paper examines how the presence of organized-crime groups shapes Mexican municipalities’ ability to collect revenue, deliver public goods, and earn citizens’ trust. Survey data show that residents living in neighbourhoods home to organized crime report lower levels of trust in local government, regardless of whether those groups provide ‘order’ or engage in extortion and violence. Municipality-level data further reveal that both local revenue collection and public spending decline over time in areas with such a presence, independent of whether they are dominated by a single group (whereby crime syndicates’ provision of order is more likely) or see multiple organizations vie for supremacy (leading to extortion and violence being more commonplace). Evidence from Mexico suggests that criminal governance fractures the social contract locally: it erodes institutional trust, weakens municipalities’ fiscal capacity, and harms publicgood provision.

Conflicts’ Long Shadow: The Decline of Local State Capacity in Burkina Faso
(with Ablam Estel Apeti, and Rose Camille Vincent)
Abstract | [Paper (draft coming soon)]|

Conflicts in fragile states disrupt governance, resource mobilization, and service delivery, yet their micro-level impact on local state capacity is under-explored. This paper examines how violent conflicts affect the capacity of local governments to raise revenue and allocate resources for public services, using Burkina Faso as a case study due to its recent political instability and escalating conflicts. We construct a commune-by-year dataset covering all 351 communes over 15 years, combining data on public finance, conflict, and economic activities. A key innovation is the inclusion of planned revenues and expenditures, allowing us to assess how conflicts alter local fiscal expectations and performance. Using event studies and recentered instruments, we find that conflict-affected communes miss revenue and expenditure targets by 6 and 5 percentage points, respectively. This is driven by drops in locally generated revenues and reduced spending on operations and staff. Investment targets also fall short as expected central government grants fail to arrive, deepening fiscal deficits. The weakened local fiscal capacity lasts long after conflicts subside, highlighting challenges in post-conflict recovery

The Impacts of Negative Income Tax on Labor Market and Health Outcomes: Evidence from a Large Scale Field Experiment
(with Hyuncheol Bryant Kim, Minki Kim, Jungmin Lee, and Sangyoon Park)
Abstract | [Paper (draft coming soon)]|

This report presents experimental evidence on the short-run impacts of providing monthly income support to low-income households, focusing on their financial stability, employment, subjective well-being, and health outcomes. We examine a randomized experiment in South Korea, the Seoul Stepping Stone Income Project, where 1,584 out of 5,111 households received monthly payments based on their income and household size across two phases. Our findings, drawn from both administrative and survey data, consistently show that households receiving income support experienced increases in total income and expenditures. However, compared to the control group, recipients of income support display lower employment and labor income growth. Notably, income support led to improvements in mental health among low-income households.

Childbirth Effects of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami
(with Elizabeth Kayoon Hur)
Abstract | Paper (Updated: 2022/08/22) | Online appendix | (Replication package in progress)

This paper evaluates the effect of the in utero exposure to the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami on short-term childbirth outcomes in Indonesia. Exploiting variation in damage intensities across locations and the timing of exposure, we find that the probability of successful pregnancies drops by 5.9 pp, while miscarriages increase by 5.5 pp. However, this does not vary by intensity of exposure across locations. Our results suggest the importance of considering fetal loss in developing countries and highlight that facilitating household investment in health through various policies may mitigate negative birth effects in the aftermath of natural disasters.

Remittance and the Tax Structures in Developing Countries
Abstract | Paper (Updated: 2024/03/15)

This paper investigates the relationship between a country's reliance on remittances from abroad and its ability to collect taxes from various domestic sources. Despite the increasing flow of remittances in volume and proportion, particularly among developing countries, their role in determining the state's capacity to collect taxes has received little attention. This chapter explores the link between remittances and various tax revenue categories using country-level data. Two-way panel regressions suggest that a 1 percentage point (pp) increase in the inflow of remittances explains a 0.12 pp rise in consumption tax revenues. The same estimate derived from IV methods proxying for migrant network strength and openness of borders increases to 0.9 pp. Decomposing this result reveals that the increase in household consumption expenditure explains all of the statistical association, not the efficient tax-collecting mechanisms such as VAT. Subsample regressions by income category suggest that the association between remittances and consumption tax revenue is stronger in countries with lower income.

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Works in Progress

Religious Conflicts and Educational Outcomes in Nigeria
(with Kayode Taiwo, and Rose Camille Vincent)

Exploring Demands, Preferences, and Public Service in Fragile States: Evidence from a Randomized Survey Experiment in Haiti
(with Jung Mun Park and Rose Camille Vincent)

Bureaucrat Training and Local Tax Compliance: Evidence from Administrative Data in Tanzania
(with Rose Camille Vincent)