Embedded Files
Job Market Paper
The Cultural Foundations of State Legitimacy: Kinship Intensity and Institutional Mismatch. (2026) [Draft]
[Frank D. Lewis Memorial Prize in Economic History]
Abstract: Why do institutional transplants succeed or fail? I argue that formal institutions lose legitimacy when they conflict with local social structures. I compare communities within ethnic homelands partitioned by borders between Civil and Common Law. Civil Law lowers economic activity in high-kinship societies but not in low-kinship societies, implying 12.6% lower GDP per capita and aggregate losses of up to 4.7%. Geocoded surveys link this mismatch to lower state trust and civic participation. The trust deficit amounts to 1.6 cross-country standard deviations in Sub-Saharan Africa. Text analysis of a new corpus of colonial court documents finds legal language more accommodating of customary institutions under Common Law. After Civil Law judges were appointed to Cameroon's Common Law courts in 2016, economic activity fell three times more in high-kinship communities. The results suggest that compatibility between culture and institutions affects state legitimacy and economic performance.
Working Papers
Corporations as the State: Urbanisation, Women's Empowerment, and Long-Run Development in the Copperbelt. (2025) - Revise & Resubmit at Journal of Development Economics [Draft]
[SSRN] [African Economic History Network Working Paper] [Mining History Association Research Grant]Rational Superstition: Environmental Volatility and the Origins of Magical Beliefs. (2026) [Draft]
[SSRN] [Slides]The Dispossessed: Large-Scale Land Acquisitions, Elite Capture, and Dissent in Africa. (2026) [Draft]
[arXiv]What's in a Name? Champagne Exports under Shampanskoye Protectionism. (2026) - Revise & Resubmit at Journal of Wine Economics
Publications
Champagne Spillovers: Geographical Indications and Regional Economic Development. Journal of Wine Economics (2026)
[AAWE Scholarship for Research Papers in Wine Economics] [Media: VinoVonk]Interest rate risk exposures and hedging of euro area banks’ banking books. Financial Stability Review (2022)
(with B. Klaus, F. Lenoci and C. Pancaro) [Media: ECB Speech]
Book Chapters
The Digital Money Trilemma: Sovereignty, Stability, and Integration in Cross-Border CBDCs. Digitalisation towards Sustainable Development – Comparative perspectives from emerging economies and Europe, Routledge (forthcoming)
(eds. S. Lucatello and W. Reiners) [Marie Skłodowska-Curie PRODIGEES Grant]
Papers in Progress
Rooted in Place: Staple Crops, Trade, and Structural Transformation
(with J. Enguehard & C. Hamilton)Kinship Structure and the Marriage Market: Evidence from West Sumatra
Software
rddid. A Stata package to estimate Difference-in-Discontinuities. (2026) [GitHub]
(Install: ssc install rddid) [Documentation]
Google Sites
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