Peer-Reviewed PublicationS
"PROPERTY RIGHTING: the Politics of Rights over Land and Labor,” w/ Margaret Levi. Forthcoming at Annual Review of Political Science (2025).
Abstract. This essay focuses on property rights in land and labor, the ways in which they have been entangled since the development of early capitalism in the 16th and 17th centuries, and the extent to which they have realized--or failed to realize--desiderata in addition to economic productivity and growth. The definition and enforcement of property rights may reflect the power relations within a society, but their realization depends on state laws and capacities. Transformations of property rights tend to follow changes in the balance of power among elites and in state capacity or as a response to effective resistance by those who are harmed or excluded.
WorkING PAPERS
"THIS LAND IS MINE LAND: Extractive mining institutions and coercive benefits in India,” w/ Aliz Toth.
Abstract. In this project, we examine the political legacies of mines, an extractive institution. Theory suggests that extraction generates political and economic underdevelopment. Yet, extractive institutions often necessitate population engineering by attracting migrant laborers to settle in unfavorable environments. To determine how the goal of attracting labor affects state investment in new mining villages, we construct a time-varying, all-India dataset on mines and conduct a difference-in-differences analysis of public goods investment. We further collate census data on dominant population groups across villages to test the mechanism that displacement and settlement, or changes in the population groups at each village, leads to greater public goods provision and coercion in the period after a mine opens. We find that when states engage in extractive activities, e.g. opening mines, they also provide new public goods to attract laborers. At the same time, they invest in coercion to settle conflicts between native communities and migrants.
“POLICING THE PLANTATION: the long-run influence of colonial capital extraction on coercion in the case of Assamese tea plantations.”
Abstract. Political scientists have long assumed a co-evolving relationship between coercion and capital in the statebuilding process, but little empirical evidence is leveraged to understand the nature of this connection. This paper studies the long-run coercive effects of indenture, a forced labor institution established on tea plantations by the British in northeast India. Specifically, I examine police institutions, police violence, and opinions of police forces among those implicated in the plantation system. Through both digitization and coding of archival records and fieldwork among affected descendants of forced laborers in the present, I provide new estimates into the coercive consequences of colonial labor regimes. This work contributes to a growing literature using causal inference in studies of historical processes and offers an empirical approach to mechanize and test theories regarding the relations between capital extraction and coercion, understanding the political, and not merely economic, effects of forced labor regimes established by the British empire.
WORKS IN PROGRESS
“PAYING NOT TO KILL: how monetary incentives shape police violence in Rio de Janeiro,” w/ Beatriz Magaloni-Kerpel and Carlos Schmidt-Padilla.
Abstract. We study the impact of a pay-for-performance scheme on police behaviour and violence in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Starting in 2009, Rio de Janeiro introduced a performance-based, salary top-up for police officers based on semester-level reductions of crime metrics, expanding it to include use of lethal force by police officers in 2011. The pecuniary incentives are not negligible, averaging 10% of an officer's monthly salary, and in some cases, surpassing 75% of the base monthly salary. We leverage unique panel administrative data--including monthly indicators on progress toward the semester goals–and microdata on officer use of bullets collected through multi-year fieldwork to study how police patrol units (battalions) respond to the incentive scheme. Overall, there are substantial decreases in crime within the semester window that the battalions can still meet the goal, indicating greater police effort and efficacy. Police violence follows a similar pattern, as long as battalions can still meet the semester goal, there is a substantial and statistically significant decrease in police officers' use of lethal violence events, violent encounters (shootouts), and number of shots fired. We further leverage individual-level data to disentangle group versus individual-level effort in meeting the reduction in police violence metric.