Welcome to my website. I am a Research Fellow at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (Geneva, Switzerland).

I am on the 2023-24 economics job market.

Fields: Development Economics, Political Economy, Economic History.

My CV is here.

Research Agenda: In my ongoing research, I construct new historical databases to study nation-building, political violence and climate change in South and South-east Asia. Email me to receive my job market package.

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Irrigating the Killing Fields: Economic Legacy of the Khmer Rouge Genocide (click to download)

Radical nation-building under the Communist Party of Kampuchea resulted in approximately 2 million deaths, i.e. between 20-25% of the Cambodian population between 1975-79. How did this human capital destruction impact long-term economic development? Satellite data on the regime’s failed irrigation projects provide a source of exogenous variation in mass graves. Spatial power relations between moderate and extremist administrative zones can be further exploited as a border discontinuity. My analysis finds persistent impacts of historical genocide on household wealth and village-level poverty, driven by lower human capital, limited structural transformation, restricted public goods provision and private investment flows. Directly impacted households and age-cohorts are significantly worse-off, while there are no differences in wealth for survivors with higher pre-genocide human capital. Political repression measured by proximity to Khmer Rouge prisons predicts significantly worse outcomes. There are no significant differences in internal migration rates among survivors. This paper contributes novel, country-level evidence on how the worst genocide since the Holocaust impacts economic development in Cambodia.

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Contact me:

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_{Homepage Banner Photo: Angkor Thom – Capital City of the Khmer Empire circa 12th century (Angkor Archaeological Park, Siem Reap, 2023)}

_{Job Market Paper Banner Photo: Artistic Illustration of Irrigation Project in Democratic Kampuchea (Wat Thmey Genocide Memorial, Siem Reap, 2023)}

My CV is available here.

Recent Updates:

January 2024: The Economist interviewed me on my research in Cambodia – article here

November-December 2023: Upcoming conference presentations at NEUDC (Harvard Kennedy School) and ACEGD (ISI Delhi)

October 2023: Organized policy workshop at National University of Laos in Vientiane Capital with Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Planning and Investment, National Bank of Laos, Customs and Revenue and Anti-Money Laundering Unit (news item coming soon).

September-October 2023: Research stay (as first foreign economist) at the Lao Academy of Social and Economic Sciences, the premier economic research centre of the Government of Laos.

September 2023: New research presentation at the Development Economics Network Switzerland (DENS) Annual Meeting at the Wyss Academy, University of Bern

June 2023: Conference presentations at the German Development Economics Conference (Dresden), Nordic Conference on Development Economics (Gothenburg) and CAGE Center, University of Warwick.

March 2023: New working paper presentation at the Geneva Graduate Institute and CSAE, University of Oxford, titled Irrigating the Killing Fields: Economic Legacy of the Khmer Rouge Genocide

March 2023: Hosted ~50 academics, parliamentarians & policy advisors for 2 days of debates between research-policy interface, scientific presentations and documentary film screenings. Scientific program here.