Moving Up the Ranks: Conscription and Intergenerational Mobility (with Juan Pedro Ronconi)
Conditionally accepted at the Journal of Development Economics
This paper examines whether military service can promote intergenerational mobility in developing countries. We use survey data from 3,037 men exposed to conscription to compare respondents’ socioeconomic and educational outcomes with those of their parents. Exploiting the random assignment of conscription by lottery, we show that serving increases upward mobility for individuals from low-SES backgrounds, with no effects for those from more privileged ones. The positive effects of military service on mobility disappear under non-democratic regimes or wartime, underscoring the importance of stable institutional contexts for the military to enhance mobility. (Access Paper Here)
Measuring the Preference for Democracy in Greater China and its Diaspora with Survey and Experimental Methods (with Josie I Chen and Louis Putterman)
Does China’s failure to democratize after decades of economic “reform and opening” reflect persistent cultural resistance to democracy? How democracy is viewed in a one-party state is difficult to judge given restrictions on political discussion. We explore less direct ways of studying the issue: eliciting incentivized choices in a decision-making task without political framing, surveying Chinese émigrés in N. America, and comparing the responses of ethnic Chinese émigrés who grew up under more Western-style political institutions in Hong Kong and Taiwan to those of émigrés from China. Our incentivized task (i) constitutes a methodological departure from existing experimental approaches, (ii) exhibits significant correlation with responses to the survey question on political institutions, and (iii) both it and the survey question responses show variation in favorability towards democracy that aligns with expectations based on differential political exposures. High favorability towards democracy among the quarter of P.R.C. émigrés who include political rights among their motives for moving, as well as among émigrés from Hong Kong and Taiwan, suggests that a Chinese cultural bias towards trusted authorities, if present, is adaptable. Our task-based indicator suggests that adults in China itself are not less favorable in their views of democracy than are the majority of Chinese émigrés who give only other reasons for emigrating. (Access Paper Here) [A previous version of this paper circulated under the name "Gauging Preference for Democracy in Abscence of Free Speech]
Supplementary Files: Instructions and Questionnaires
Historical Narratives and Political Behavior in the US (with Elsa Voytas)
We examine how people think and speak about the history of race in the United States. Based on over 12,000 surveys, we document substantial ideological divides in views about the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement, and slavery's legacy, with pronounced differences among whites. The structure of historical narratives also varies by ideology: Conservatives, particularly white conservatives, emphasize individual agency and detach the past from the present, while liberals tend to portray the present as the continuation of the past. Evidence from two survey-embedded interventions suggests that historical narratives about race can deepen polarization in institutional satisfaction.
Nation-Building Through Military Service (with Juan Pedro Ronconi)
Accepted at the Journal of the European Economic Association
This paper studies conscription’s role in durably shaping attitudes and beliefs consistent with nation-building. We pair original survey data covering 29 cohorts of conscripts in Argentina with random variation in service emerging from a lottery. We find that serving in the military leads to a stronger national identity and social integration several decades after serving but does not affect civic behaviors such as voting or paying taxes. Value inculcation during service helps explain the baseline patterns, while exposure to and interaction with diverse peers reinforce but do not drive the results. (Access Paper Here | Pre-analysis Plan | Pre-analysis Plan Second Round )
Social Exclusion and Social Preferences: Evidence from Colombia's Leper Colony, American Economic Review 2023, 113 (5): 1294-1333.
This paper explores the intergenerational legacy of social exclusion on pro-sociality. A lab-in-the-field approach in the historical region of Colombia’s leper colony reveals that descendants of socially excluded individuals are locally altruistic and extend such altruism to outsiders who have undergone similar circumstances. These individuals also display mistrust toward those who have, historically, been exclusionary—in this case, doctors. The content of historical narratives shared by ancestors who were excluded, which emphasize the endured mistreatment and doctors’ historical misinformation, is one mechanism that partially explains the intergenerational patterns. (Access paper here)
Media: Psychology Today | Nada es Gratis (In Spanish) | Winner of the Nada es Gratis Job Market Paper Prize | El Espectador (In Spanish)
Legacies of Liberation: Political Dynamics in Civil War Refugee Camps, Journal of Economic Growth 2025, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10887-025-09259-1
This paper documents the evolution of political outcomes in Civil War refugee camps, where roughly 600,000 enslaved African Americans achieved freedom. Refugee camps became sites of African American empowerment after the war, but these accomplishments were followed by a backlash that overturned the progressive outlook by the early 1900s. Despite the backlash, African Americans enjoyed persistently higher rates of literacy in counties home to refugee camps, fostering a sustained, selected outmigration of whites and enabling improved interracial relations. Today, progressive politics enjoy an advantage at these sites of former emancipation, and whites are key contributors to this progressive outlook. Overall, while progressive achievements may provoke backlash, they can also set in motion the very conditions that eventually erode resistance and foster renewed political progress. (Access Paper Here)
Historical Conflict and Gender Disparities (Access latest draft here)
Interpersonal Diversity and Carbon Emissions (Access latest draft here)