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Fields of interest

Political Economics and Development

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Work in progress

Aid Effectiveness: New Instrument, New Results? (with Emmanuel Frot)

Despite a voluminous literature on the topic, the question of whether aid leads to growth is still controversial. To observe the pure effect of aid, researchers used instruments that must be exogenous to growth and explain well aid flows. This paper argues that instruments used in the past do not satisfy these conditions. We propose a new instrument based on predicted aid quantity and argue that it is a significant improvement relative to past approaches. We find a significant and relatively big effect of aid: a one standard deviation increase in received aid is associated with a .46 to 3.2 percentage points higher growth rate.

Hidden Redistribution in Higher Education

Low income countries, and in particular countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, have invested huge resources over the last 40 years in financing higher (university level) education, compared with the number of students at that level and with the corresponding expenditures for lower levels of education. I propose and test an elite capture hypothesis: that expenditure in tertiary education is used as a tool for redistribution towards the elites close to the political leaders, when this level of education is accessible exclusively or mostly to such groups.

The Impact of a Food For Education Program on Schooling in Cambodia (with Maria Cheung)

Food for education (FFE) programs, which consist of meals served in school and in some cases take-home rations conditional on school attendance, are considered a powerful tool to alleviate short-term hunger and to improve learning and cognitive outcomes for undernourished children, particularly in areas where the schooling participation is initially low. Compared to other programs, such as conditional cash transfers (CCT) and scholarships, school meals may provide a stronger incentive to attend school because children must go to school to receive the rations. In this paper, we find that the Cambodia FFE, that was implemented in 6 Cambodian regions between 1999 and 2003, affected enrollment rates, school attendance and completed education. We also ask who benefited the most, and how cost-effective such a program is for given benefit compared to other types of interventions.

Constitutions and the Growth Elasticity of Poverty

Although economic growth per se is a rather blunt tool for poverty reduction, increasing per capita incomes are generally associated with decreasing poverty rates. After the UN Millennium Declaration, a big research effort has focused on the responsiveness of poverty to growth using the concept of growth elasticity of poverty: the percentage change in poverty associated with a 1 percent growth in per capita income. This paper investigates, with help of new data, the heterogeneity around a well known average relationship, that can teach us much on how to make the effort for poverty reduction more effective. The main finding is the effect of the electoral rule, previously not explored in the literature.

Self-Portrait with the Ballot. Vote Buying in Italy (with Pamela Campa and Ethan Kaplan)

Vote buying practices are common and well known in Italy. This project is a first attempt to evaluate their extent, and their impact on participation (turn out), voters preferences (in particular, incumbency advantage), and possibly election-related violence. The identification strategy is provided by a law, introduced in 2008, that forbids the use of mobile phones and camera devices inside the voting booths; those devices were known to be used to document and "sell" the expression of electoral preferences.

Political Polarization and Endogenous Voter Turnout (with Anders Åkerman)

Where does the Money Go and Why? Foreign Aid and Budget Allocations in a FederalState

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Additional information

I can also be reached on my mobile phone +46-(0)73-7332198. My office is A814, located on the 8th floor in the A building (Universitetsvägen 10).

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My CV