I am a scholar of distribution and democracy. My fields are comparative and international political economy. Within those fields, I focus on the politics of redistribution, state-business relations, and South Asia.

The main question motivating my research concerns how distributive politics is shaped by group inequalities that are refracted through individual identities, beliefs, and preferences, as well as the influence of political parties, special interests, and institutions. I use a variety of approaches in my work, including quantitative analysis of large datasets, extensive fieldwork and qualitative interviews, experiments, and archival research.

My papers are available at my Google Scholar page. Please email me for drafts that are not listed at the link or for papers that are behind a paywall. I would be happy to send you a copy.

Publications

Great Dilution: The Global Impact of the US Inflation Shock on Sovereign Debt. IMF Economic Review, 2023. With Federico Sturzenegger.

Building Mass Support for Global Pandemic Recovery Efforts in the United States. PNAS Nexus 1 (4), 1-9, 2022. With Kyle Peyton.

Violence Exposure and Ethnic Identification: Evidence from Kashmir. International Organization 73 (2), 329-363, 2019. With Nicholas Sambanis.

Misperceptions of Relative Affluence and Support for International Redistribution. The Journal of Politics 80 (3), 815-830, 2018.

Economic Origins of Democratic Breakdown? The Redistributive Model and the Postcolonial State. Perspectives on Politics 12 (2), 353-374, 2014. With Dan Slater and Benjamin Smith.

Off-grid Energy Services for the Poor: Introducing LED Lighting in the Millennium Villages Project in Malawi. Energy Policy 38 (2), 1087-1097, 2010. With Edwin Adkins, Sandy Eapen, Flora Kaluwile, and Vijay Modi.

Book Manuscript (under review; please email me for a prospectus and draft)

Retail State: The Politics of Consumption Welfare in India and Beyond. Under revision at Oxford University Press; under review at Cambridge University Press.

Working Papers 

Voter Demand, Cronyism, or Clientelism? Voters, Business, and the Politics of Publicly Provided Consumer Goods. Accepted at Comparative Political Studies.

Incidental Representation: Consumers, Big Retail, and Trade Policy. With Owen Bernstein and Richard Zeckhauser.

Credit Coalitions: Financing Minority Enterprise under Majority Rule. With German Feierherd.

Caste Reparations: Economic Advance, Social Concord, and Policy Backlash. With Akshay Dixit and Rajat Saini.

  • MPSA Paula D. McClain award (best paper across all fields)
  • MPSA Kellogg/Notre Dame award (best paper in comparative politics)
  • APSA Class and Inequality Section award (best paper in social and economic inequality).

Women’s Political Representation and Female Enterprise: New Data and Evidence from South India. With Anwesha Bhattacharya and Naveen Bharathi.

Selected Work in Progress

Incidental Representation: How Special Interests Can Advance the Public Good. Book workshop scheduled for May 2026.