Welcome! I am a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. My research interests lie in comparative political economy, business in politics, and development, with a focus on subnational governments in Latin America.
My research examines the causes and consequences of business elites' engagement with local politics. In my dissertation, I study why business sectors mobilize in local politics, how they rebuild access to government after losing a partisan ally, and when business-government ties foster development in low-capacity settings. To address these questions, I use causal inference with observational data, administrative data, original survey experiments, and in-depth interviews.
In related work, I also study under what conditions voters support candidates with business backgrounds, and how individuals form attitudes toward market institutions.
Before graduate school, I spent over five years conducting policy research on fiscal decentralization and subnational government in Chile.