Working Papers:

"Economics of Non-Democracies: Market Power, Protests, and Regime Survival" (Job Market Paper) 

The prices citizens pay shape their material welfare and can influence how they evaluate the government. In non-democracies, these prices often emerge from markets whose structure is itself shaped by political power. I develop a model of how political bargains between rulers and firms shape entry, competition, and consumer prices, and how these market outcomes feed back into protest and regime survival. A ruler can grant an established firm exclusive market privilege in exchange for a share of the resulting rents. Privilege limits entry and gives the firm market power, but higher prices intensify protest and threaten the regime on which the firm’s future rents depend. The firm therefore sets a price below the monopoly benchmark, though not as low as the ruler would prefer, because it can continue operating after political transition, whereas the ruler loses office. This asymmetry also shapes rent division: rather than extract the maximum share consistent with the firm’s acceptance, the ruler may leave additional rents to the firm to strengthen its stake in regime survival and induce a lower price. As anti-regime sentiment rises, alignment becomes less attractive, and the firm eventually rejects all privilege offers. Once the market is open, greater political fragility attracts entry from firms anticipating a lower extraction burden after transition. Entry lowers current prices and partially offsets the direct destabilizing effect of political fragility. Political fragility can therefore open markets before regime change, even without deliberate market liberalization by the incumbent.


"The Protest Dilemma: The Effect of Threat of War in Sustaining Non-Democratic Regimes" (with Mariam Malashkhia) (Second Job Market Paper) 

In non-democratic regimes protests serve as the primary means of voicing political discontent. While a growing literature examines protests, the role of external factors remains underexplored. To fill this gap, we develop a formal model of how the enemy’s war decision and the incumbent’s use of propaganda influence citizens’ protest choices. We show that even when the incumbent is undesirable, the threat of war deters mobilization, offering a novel explanation for why grievances do not always translate into protest. Thus, protest outcomes depend critically on the circumstances faced by the enemy. Citizen mobilization under such conditions also hinges on the opposition being perceived as significantly more capable than the incumbent. Finally, when the adversary is more likely to invade if the opposition is expected to come to power, heightened war threat through propaganda can sometimes paradoxically fuel mobilization. Thus, propaganda is not a universally effective tool for protest suppression.


“Politics of Non-Democracies: Fraud, Post-Election Boycotts, and Protests” (with Mariam Malashkhia) [Under Review]

Non-democracies are often characterized by electoral manipulation and contested results. Despite a growing literature on these regimes, opposition strategies remain underexplored. To address this gap, we develop a formal model analyzing the interactions among the incumbent’s, the opposition’s, and the citizens’ decisions. We show that a boycott — forfeiting parliamentary seats — can serve as a powerful signal of the opposition’s ability, thereby mobilizing large-scale protests. This new information explains why citizens may support the regime one day but protest the next. Thus, in contexts where the opposition faces public outreach constraints, a post-election boycott becomes one of the few available and effective strategies. Moreover, our model offers a new perspective on the strategic role of fraud — shaping post-election dynamics by affecting the challenger’s incentive to boycott and subsequent protest. Additionally, we argue that peaceful transitions arise when credible threats of protests are coupled with parliamentary elections.


"The Role of International Support in Facilitating Non-Democratic Regime Change" [Under Review]

International support is often expected to help oppositions challenge non-democratic incumbents. I develop a formal model showing that such support can backfire when it subsidizes an action that citizens interpret as a costly signal of opposition strength. By lowering the private cost of this action, support makes it more common but less informative. I illustrate this mechanism in the context of post-election boycotts. A pro-change donor prefers boycotts to remain rare but informative: costly enough that only relatively strong challengers boycott, but not so costly that boycott never occurs. By contrast, a pro-regime donor may fully support the opposition, making boycotts common but uninformative. Consequently, observed support for the opposition does not necessarily reflect pro-change intentions, rather it may reflect precisely the opposite. Finally, I show that although pro-change international support can help facilitate a peaceful transition, it can also, under some conditions, lead to higher levels of fraud.


"The Effect of Internal Displacement on Political Attitudes" (with Mariam Malashkhia) [Under Review]

War affects lives long after it ends. While much research focuses on violence, the effects of displacement remain underexplored despite more than 120 million people living in forced displacement worldwide. Using a natural experiment setting created by the unexpected postwar shift in the Administrative Boundary Line after the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, we examine displacement as a distinct form of wartime victimization and argue that it has lasting effects on political attitudes. Similar to findings from the violence literature, displacement generates perpetrator-directed hostility without producing generalized hawkishness. This suggests that political effects commonly associated with violence exposure may not be unique to violence, but instead reflect a broader process through which wartime victimization shapes postwar political attitudes. At the same time, when displacement is accompanied by violence, it is associated with stronger solidarity toward analogous victims and higher reported voting. Thus, displacement and violence can reinforce each other in specific domains.



Selected Work in Progress:

"Leading to the Revolution: Signaling Dissent through Illicit Activities" (with Mariam Malashkhia) [Slides]

Citizens in non-democracies often express dissatisfaction through underground actions before turning to open protest. We study participation in the shadow economy as both an economic choice and a political signal. Citizens who view the regime as extractive or illegitimate are more willing to leave the formal economy, so the scale of informal activity contains information about otherwise hidden anti-regime sentiment. The ruler must therefore decide whether to monitor and suppress this activity. Enforcement increases state revenue, but it can also generate public information about the extent of informal activity, making widespread dissatisfaction more visible and facilitating protest. The model shows that monitoring is most attractive to regimes of ex-ante intermediate strength. Very strong regimes have relatively little informal activity to suppress, whereas very weak regimes may not survive long enough to benefit from the recovered revenue and face even greater political risk from revealing the level of dissent. Dictators may therefore tolerate a large shadow economy because efforts to suppress it can threaten their political survival. 


"The Survival and Collapse of Corrupt Coalitions under Public Scrutiny" (with Justin Fox) 

Groups engaged in organized wrongdoing often survive the exposure of individual members. The central question is therefore not simply when wrongdoing is exposed, but when the exposure of one insider produces systemic collapse rather than isolated punishment.  This paper develops a formal model in which an outside actor — such as a prosecutor, a media organization, or an opposition actor — chooses which member of a corrupt coalition to investigate. The coalition then decides whether to protect or sacrifice the exposed insider. Insiders differ in their centrality: more central members are harder to expose, but abandoning them is also more dangerous because they are more likely to possess information that can implicate other members and trigger a cascade of disclosures or defections. Public scrutiny makes protecting an exposed insider more costly, initially pushing the coalition to sacrifice increasingly central members and raising the likelihood of coalition collapse.  When scrutiny becomes sufficiently intense, however, visible punishment, even if the coalition itself survives, becomes valuable for the outside actor, as exposing and punishing any insider may generate political, reputational, or institutional rewards. This leads the outside actor to shift toward less costly, peripheral targets. Greater public scrutiny can therefore increase individual punishment while reducing the probability of systemic collapse. Thus, the model explains why societies may observe highly visible arrests, dismissals, or exposures without the organization behind the wrongdoing collapsing.


"Political Incentives for Health Insurance Provision" 

Adverse selection in private health insurance markets generates well-known welfare losses and is a standard rationale for government intervention. Yet such intervention is shaped by electoral incentives: voters care deeply about health care, and political parties compete on promises of coverage and subsidies. This paper develops a formal model of strategic interaction between political parties, private insurers, and voters. Parties compete over the level of mandatory social insurance, financed through income taxation, while individuals can purchase additional coverage in the perfectly competitive private market. The analysis yields two main results. First, when the private market is already inefficient due to adverse selection, mandatory public insurance can either mitigate or exacerbate this inefficiency by altering the composition of the private risk pool. Thus, once political constraints are accounted for, intervention is not necessarily welfare-enhancing, even when market failure is present. Second, I characterize the welfare gap between the politically chosen and socially optimal levels of coverage and show how it varies with key economic and political parameters.