Publications
Reproducibility and Robustness of Economics and Political Science Research
Selected Working Papers
Local Queens and Princesses: The Impact of Female Dynasts on Provision of Public Goods
Female representation in politics remains limited, and the women who do reach office frequently come from political dynasties, in part because of the entry barriers they face. The effects of female and dynastic politicians on their constituents vary with the setting, so what happens when a female dynast is elected is an empirical question. I study this question in the context of Indonesia, where district governments hold statutory responsibility for basic services. I combine district elections from 2005 to 2020 with eight waves of a national village census, and I estimate the effect with a heterogeneity-robust event study estimator. Electing a female dynast raises an index of public infrastructure by 0.075 of a village standard deviation, and household infrastructure and education carry the gain. The gender contrast is about two and a half times the dynastic one. The effect is largest where her family never held the office and its network is wider and older.
Does Rent Beget Rent? Natural Resource Boom and Political Selection
How do economic shocks shape the entrenchment of political dynasties? I study Indonesia’s nickel boom—a large, location-specific rent shock driven by electric-vehicle battery demand and Chinese downstream investment—and its effect on the election of dynastic politicians in district-level office. Using an original dataset on Indonesian dynasties from 2005 to 2018 and an event-study design that exploits the staggered timing of a district’s first nickel permit, I show that a nickel opening is followed by a medium-run rise in dynastic selection on the order of six percentage points. The effect runs through dynastic persistence—the election of dynastic descendants. Falsification tests using coal and gold permits produce no analogous effect. Resource booms can entrench the political concentrations that already exist in the places that hold them.
Works in Progress
- The Anatomy of Local Political Dynasties in Indonesia
- Labor Market Trade-off and Local Resource Boom with Hamidah Alatas and Nabil Ryandiansyah
- Pathways to Political Engagement: Evidence from Random Group Formation with M. R. Sharan and Niharika Singh
- Conflict, Crime, and Critical Minerals: Evidence from Indonesia's Nickel Mining Communities with Eki Ramadhan and Nabil Ryandiansyah
- Does Women's Education Affect Children's Outcomes? Evidence from Indonesia's School Construction Program in the 1970s Undergraduate thesis