with Jensen A. 2026. Journal of Economic Literature. Working Paper. AEA highlight.

The empirical economics literature on taxation in developing countries has centered on the importance of third-party information for enforcement. This article reviews an emerging complementary literature focused on strengthening the “sinews” of state capacity: tax administration. We argue that reforms to the organizational structure, personnel management, and task management of tax authorities have potential to raise tax capacity in developing countries…

with Callen M, Levy G, Muthukumaran S, Yuchtman Y. Working Paper. In preparation for the Handbook of Political Economy.

We develop a new empirical approach to detect critical junctures as they unfold. Our key insight is to understand critical junctures as moments of uncertainty about institutions, which provides a text classifier with a theoretically motivated object to detect in contemporaneous discourse.

with Callen M and Yuchtman. 2024. Annual Review of Economics. 16:105-31. Paper.

We review an emerging experimental literature studying institutional change. Institutions are a key determinant of economic growth, but the “critical junctures” in which institutions can change are not precisely defined. For example, such junctures are often identified ex post, raising methodological problems: selection on the outcome of institutional change; an inability to study beliefs, central to coordination and thus the process of institutional change; and an in- ability to conduct experiments to identify causal effects...

with Balan P, Bergeron A, Tourek G. Paper. Cond. Accepted, Comparative Political Studies.

We study a randomized land titling program in a large Congolese city that sharply reduced the costs of acquiring a title. The program markedly increased both initiation and receipt of titles...

with Kabue E. 2023. Economica. Ungated version. Published version.

How might fragile states escape a low-capacity trap in which citizens refuse to pay taxes and the government has too little revenue to increase enforcement or provide public goods? We argue that governments can initiate a virtuous cycle in which non-coercive and systematic tax collection improves perceptions of government legitimacy and increases intrinsic motivation to pay taxes.