I am a predoctoral fellow at Yale's Tobin Center for Economic Policy working with Prof. John Eric Humphries and Winnie van Dijk on a series of eviction-related projects.
I am interested in the ways economic research can inform the design of policies and institutions to mitigate socioeconomic inequality, promote economic growth, and strengthen the rule of law. Previously, I have conducted research with the Stanford Human Trafficking Data Lab and the Brazilian Federal Labor Prosecution Office, the Development Impact Evaluation Research Group at the World Bank, and the Center for Excellence and Innovation in Education Policy at Fundação Getúlio Vargas.
I graduated in Economics with Honors from Stanford in 2022.
Differential Treatment of Politically Connected Labor Traffickers: Evidence from the Brazilian Dirty List of Slave Labor. May, 2022. Stanford Thesis Repository
Over 40 million people worldwide were victims of modern slavery in 2016, 369,000 in Brazil alone. As part of an ambitious anti-trafficking agenda, the Government of Brazil implemented the Dirty List of Slave Labor, a name-and-shame policy that imposes financial and reputational sanctions on traffickers. Despite its relevance, there have been no attempts to identify sources of bias in the listing criteria nor to evaluate the influence of rent-seeking on the List's outcomes. Using novel data on campaign finance of traffickers from 2004 to 2018, I document compelling evidence that politically connected perpetrators are not less likely to be listed unless they are large donors, but they benefit from early removal and stay in the List 5.5 fewer months than non-connected exploiters. Being linked to ruralist legislators intensifies these effects, long-term connections matter, and there are increasing marginal benefits to donations. Tests that consider variation in the List's visibility support the hypothesis that campaign finance is used as evasion tactics. Money-giving is significantly more generous and frequent in election cycles leading up to inspection and listing years, but it drops afterwards. Although the present results are not causal, they inform a comprehensive research agenda and policy design and evaluation.
- Media coverage: Brazilië jaagt op grote bedrijven in strijd tegen moderne slavernij, Het Financieele Dagblad. April 2, 2023.
- Awarded the David M. Kennedy Honors Thesis Prize in the Social Sciences and the Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research (2022).