"Globalisation and conflicts: the good, the bad, and the ugly of corporations in Africa" Job Market Seminar abstract Using georeferenced data on the affiliates and headquarters of multinational enterprises together with georeferenced conflict data, this work is the first to establish a causal link between the activities of multinational enterprises and violence. The results indicate…

"Legislating During War: Conflict and Politics in Colombia" Download the paper abstract For many countries, the escape from weak governance and cycles of violence is today the most challenging step in their path to prosperity. This paper studies an important aspect of this challenge: the relationship between civil conflict and congressional decision-making. I study this…

"Present Bias" Download the paper abstract Present bias is the inclination to prefer a smaller present reward to a larger later reward, but reversing this preference when both rewards are equally delayed. This paper investigates and characterizes the most general class of present-biased temporal preferences. We show that any present-biased preference has a max-min representation,…

"Unions, Salaries, and The Market for Teachers: Evidence from Wisconsin" Download the paper abstract A careful study of teachers’ labor demand and supply, while extremely relevant for policy, is challenging due to a lack of variation in pay, as teacher salaries are usually set using steps-and-lanes schedules based entirely on seniority and academic credentials. This…

"Occupational Switching and Wage Risk" download the paper abstract The literature on labor income risk treats the wage process as exogenous to workers, with few exceptions. However, observed wage dynamics are the result of both exogenous factors, such as productivity shocks, and workers' choices. Using data from administrative German social security records, I document that…

"Coordination of Hours within the Firm" Download the paper Abstract Teamwork has become increasingly important in many firms, yet little is known about how coordination of hours among heterogeneous coworkers affects pay, productivity and labor supply. In this paper we propose a framework where differently productive firms choose whether or not to coordinate hours in…

"Devotion and Development: Religiosity, Education, and Economic Progress in 19th-Century France" Download the paper abstract This paper uses a historical setting to study when religion can be a barrier for diffusion of knowledge and economic development, and through which mechanism. I focus on 19th-century Catholicism and analyze a crucial phase of modern economic growth, the…

"Dynamic (In)Consistency and the Value of Information" Download the paper abstract This paper develops a revealed-preference model of information disclosure. One decision maker, DM1, ranks information sources (Blackwell experiments) knowing that a second decision maker, DM2, uses the information to select an act from a menu. Both decision makers are subjective expected utility maximizers but…

"Entrepreneurs’ Wealth and Firm Dynamics" Download the paper abstract Owners of privately-held firms typically invest a large amount of their personal wealth into their firm. In principle, the wealth not invested in the firm may be used as a buffer to smooth shocks to the firm. Is such buffer stock behavior observed among privately-held firm…

"The Impact of Early Grading on Academic Choices: Mechanisms and Social Implications"

"The Long-Term Effects of Management and Technology Transfer: Evidence from the US Productivity Program” abstract This paper uses a unique historical episode to assess the long-run effects of man-agement and technology transfer on firm performance. During the 1950s, as part of the Marshall Plan, the US administration sponsored management-training trips for European managers to US…

"Firms and Farms: The Impact of Agricultural Productivity on the Local Indian Economy"

"Political Connections and Market Structure"

"Pricing Algorithms and Tacit Collusion" Abstract There is an increasing tendency for firms to use pricing algorithms that speedily react to market conditions, such as the ones used by major airlines and online retailers like Amazon. I consider a dynamic model in which firms commit to pricing algorithms in the short run. Over time, their algorithms can be revealed…

"Merger Activity in Industry Equilibrium" ABSTRACT We study a dynamic industry-equilibrium model that features mergers, entry, and exit by heterogeneous firms. We show how different sources of synergies affect merger cyclicality. Improvements in marginal productivity between merging firms generate a procyclical motive for mergers, while reductions in fixed costs of production generate a countercyclical one.…

"Oaxaca-Blinder type Decomposition Methods for Duration Outcomes"