Research

Publications

Organized Crime, Local Politicians, and State Capacity
Journal of Development Economics, (2026), 182, 103817
Abstract | Paper (link to journal site) | Online appendix | Replication Package | Nontechnical summary: Development Impact blog

his paper examines how the assassination of mayors affects local government capacity, leveraging quasi-random variation in the success of assassination attempts against Mexican mayors. Compared to municipalities with failed attempts, tax collection falls by 29% and public expenditures shift from essential services to construction investments in municipalities with successful assassinations. The evidence is most consistent with institutional disruption from the sudden loss of mayors, rather than the violent act itself. These effects attenuate when control municipalities also experience mayoral absence. In addition, there is suggestive evidence that effects are amplified in municipalities with mayors possessing weaker political connections. In contrast, changes in security environments, municipal personnel composition, non-political violence, economic activity, demographics, and electoral dynamics do not account for the observed patterns. The results highlight how the loss of decision-makers in violent environments undermines local state capacity.

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Working Papers

The Illusion of Criminal Order: Institutional Trust and Municipal Finances in Mexico
(with Ana Isabel Lopez Garcia and Juan Pablo Figueroa Mansur)
Revise and Resubmit at Studies in Comparative International Development
Abstract | [Paper (update in progress)]|

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.

Childbirth Effects of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami
(with Elizabeth Kayoon Hur)
Revise and Resubmit at Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics
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.

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 effects on local state capacity and the local public sector remain poorly understood. This paper examines how violent conflict reshapes the fiscal capacity of local governments in Burkina Faso, a highly ethno-linguistically diverse country that has experienced a sharp rise in armed violence in recent years. We compile a novel commune-by-year dataset (2007–2021) that merges geo-coded conflict events with detailed local fiscal accounts, including both planned and executed budgets. Using event study and re-centered instrumental variable analyses, we show that violent conflicts reduce own-source revenues -- both expected and realized -- by about 2 p.p, while raising expected external support for reconstruction by 5 p.p. Conflict-ridden communes cut operational spending, underperform on revenue and expenditure targets, and fail to deliver planned reconstruction investments as expected external support fails to materialize. These plan–realization gaps persist for up to 4 years after the first conflict onset. Private investment and outward migration play only a minor or no role in explaining this erosion of capacity. Instead, we find that unmet expectations of central government support, together with declining own-source revenues and administrative contraction, weaken local administrations and lock communes into a low-capacity equilibrium, leaving the public sector vulnerable to long-term institutional fragility.

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.

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)

Teaching the Tax Men: Experimental Evidence on Bureaucrat Training and Tax Compliance in Tanzania
(with Rose Camille Vincent)
Project Description (J-PAL Governance Initiative Website)|