Research
I study how culture and institutions shape economic and political development, using large-scale historical data and field experiments.
Publications
How Cultural Diversity Drives Innovation: Surnames and Patents in U.S. History
Using a surname-based measure of cultural diversity in U.S. counties from 1850 to 1940, we show that rising diversity increased both the quantity and quality of innovation — by expanding the range of ideas available for recombination and fostering the social interactions that spread them.
The Political Economy of Propaganda: Evidence from U.S. Newspapers
Can racial outrage in the media be manufactured by elites for political gain? Using high-frequency newspaper data from the late nineteenth-century U.S. South, we find evidence consistent with Democratic elites orchestrating a racist propaganda campaign through local newspapers — and benefiting from it at the polls.
Working papers
On the Importance of African Traditional Religion for Economic Behavior
Beer sellers in the eastern DRC overestimate the risk of theft and hold too little inventory as a result. Randomly-timed access to commonly-used protective rituals corrects these beliefs among sellers who believe in their efficacy — raising inventories, sales, and profits.
Doux Commerce: Markets, Culture, and Cooperation in 1850–1920 U.S.
As railroads integrated American markets between 1850 and 1920, counties gaining market access developed more universalist, tolerant, and trusting cultures — with more impersonal cooperation and less reliance on kin-based support.
Do Disasters Affect the Tightness of Social Norms?
Combining data on conflicts, epidemics, and natural and economic disasters with global survey data, I show that disasters tighten social norms — an effect that can persist for decades and is transmitted to the next generation.
Work in progress
Cultural Change: Evidence from Three Centuries of U.S. Local Newspapers
Innovation and the Medieval Church
Press
- Forbes — “Immigration and Diverse Populace Made America an Innovation Superpower” (October 2023)
- Marginal Revolution — on Doux Commerce (July 2025)
- National Affairs — on Doux Commerce
- Broadstreet — on The Political Economy of Propaganda
- Becker Friedman Institute — research summary of On the Importance of African Traditional Religion for Economic Behavior