Research

My research addresses topics in international and comparative political economy. My core research has focused on the consequences of economic integration for democracy, accountability, and prospects of income redistribution in emerging economies. I am also interested in economic voting, the politics of foreign direct investment and political risk, and Latin American politics. Click here for my C.V. in pdf format.

Books

“The Politics of Market Discipline in Latin America: Globalization and Democracy” (Cambridge University Press 2015) 

In this book, I employ a combination of formal theory, large-N empirical analyses, as well as in-depth case studies of Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina, to shed light on the inner workings and long term consequences of ians during national elections. It identifies how financial markets respond to the victory of the left, and determines the political and economic financial markets’ influence on economic policymaking. The book focuses on the interaction between investors and politic conditions under which market responses push leftist governments into adopting a conservative economic agenda. The book also explains why market discipline, imposed during elections, leads to long-term ideological convergence between left and right-wing economic policies in some political systems but not in others.

“The Volatility Curse: Exogenous Shocks and Representation in Resource-Rich Democracies” (with Cesar Zucco, Cambridge University Press 2020)

Economic voting is both a widespread empirical regularity and an optimistic theory of democracy. Even with uninformed voters, elections can provide good incentives for governments and, therefore, ensure good democratic representation. The “Volatility Curse” shows that such optimism in unwarranted in developing democracies that are strongly dependent on natural resources and on inflows of foreign capital. Not only these countries are much more economically volatile than their developed counterparts, but much of this volatility is induced by international factors that are not controlled by their own governments. Under these circumstances, voters face the insurmountable task of comparing incumbents governing under extremely different conditions, which leads to voters judging governments more on their luck than on their competence. Economic voting, in short, does not provide positive incentives for governments in contexts of extreme exogenously induced economic volatility that are typical of the developing world.

Articles and Chapters