I am a Harvard Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. I am also an affiliate with the SoDa Labs at Monash University and the SPIRES Lab at the Yale School of the Environment. I received my PhD in political science from the University of California, San Diego in 2021. My research lies at the intersection of political economy, environmental economics and development economics. I have a regional focus on Latin America, where I am from.
I use geographic data and causal methods to study the politics of deforestation in the Amazon. In this vein, I have papers which study the effects of property rights, both collective and private, on land use decisions. In another set of projects we use high resolution satellite imagery to study the effects of infrastructure investment on development, focusing on road construction projects.
My dissertation and book project investigates the effects of oil windfalls on political corruption and selection. I use a combination of formal models, natural quasi-experiments, and structural estimation to identify the effects of oil shocks on mayors’ corruption levels, reelection rates and policy outcomes in Brazilian municipalities.
My research has been published in the Journal of Urban Economics and PNAS. While at UCSD, I was an affiliated student with the Big Pixel Initiative at UCSD and an IGCC fellow. My work has been funded by the CSSN at Brown University, the World Bank, the International Growth Center, the International Center at UCSD, CILAS and the Tinker Fund.
Prior to beginning my PhD, I worked as a research economist at the Chilean Antitrust Agency, Fiscalía Nacional Económica. I received a BA degree and Masters in Economics from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
In my free time I enjoy yoga, pilates, running by the beach, bush walks, painting and pottery.
Please feel free to email me if you have any questions or need any additional information.