I am a Ph. D. candidate in Political Science and a Master's student in Statistics at the University of Michigan.

My research primarily focuses on the politics of inflationary surprise, using methodological approaches that incorporate causal inference and formal modeling.

Other academic areas of interest are probability theory and mathematical analyses.

Working Papers

1. 1. Economic Origins of Out-Group Hostility
   Abstract Request
   A wealth of recent empirical studies show that experience in economic hardship fosters anti-immigrants attitudes and shifts voters' preference towards the right-wing parties with isolationist platforms. Extending this literature, I argue that these attitudinal shifts are a special case for exclusionary attitudes generally observed in times of economic difficulty and this dynamic can be moderated by policy interventions. Using exchange rate shocks as an instrument for household real income in Indonesia between 2014 and 2015, I replicate analogous findings in this literature for the case of inter-religious group dynamics. I observe that individuals experiencing a negative income shock express more hostility toward others from different religious groups and more preference to vote for politicians from the same religion. The evidence also suggests that the government cash transfer subsidies moderate the political in-group bias and religious hostility effects of income level. Expanding the theoretical frameworks in this literature, I propose a formal model of club goods to establish the micro-foundation of these attitudinal shifts.
2. 2. Endogenous Central Bank Reform in Autocracies
   Abstract Request
   Existing studies suggest that autocracies with a higher degree of Central Bank Independence (CBI) perform relatively better in managing inflation compared to their peers. Even when the CBI does not contribute to mitigate inflation, the question remains as to why this reform was implemented in the first place in autocracies. The current literature predominantly attributes the reform to external pressures, yet its domestic origins remain largely unexplained. Building upon literature on authoritarian politics and bargaining theory, I demonstrate that the level of CBI across autocracies is an equilibrium consequence of the internal power struggle between the dictator and their ruling coalition. I argue that the dictator introduces the CBI as a strategic initiative to expand their personal power from an initially weak bargaining position. I show that dictators personalize their regime through the reform when their ruling elite coalition is capable of collective action, but personalizing by weakening this monetary institution when their ruling coalition is fragmented. I corroborate this claim and its mechanism on a sample of autocracies in the post-war global economy. Cross-validation through parameteric and semiparameteric inferences on this sample yields supportive evidence on this counterfactual claim. Multiple validation checks also show that this empirical finding is robust.