CV

Publications

Institutions and National Development: A Comparative Study – We review the theoretical and empirical literature leading to the “institutional turn” in the economics of development. Sociologists have welcomed this turn as a vindication of their own ideas, but have overlooked two major shortcomings in the economics literature: First, a failure to define “institutions” rigorously and to distinguish them from the real-life organizations that they govern; second, a tendency to use nations as units of analysis in cross-national studies, neglecting intra-national differences. We tackle these limitations through a comparative study of institutions in Latin America and Southern Europe. In total, twenty-nine existing institutions were subjected to year-long study in six countries. Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), we examine the combination of causes leading to institutionally adequate and developmentally effective organizations. Differences across countries and among institutions are highlighted and discussed. Implications of the complex causal set leading to effective developmental institutions, as identified by QCA methodology, are examined.

A version of this paper will also appears as a chapter in Why Latin American Nations Fail: Development Strategies in the Twenty-First Century.

Values, Institutional Quality, and Development in Portugal is a study on developmental institutions in Portugal funded by the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation. The purpose of this study has been to arrive at an authoritative and nuanced assessment of the functioning and quality of Portuguese institutions through an intensive analysis of organizations and agencies deemed emblematic of the nation’s Institutional framework. For this purpose, the project drew on prior theoretical work that sought to arrive at a rigorous and measurable definition of “institution” and prior empirical research that developed a methodology for analyzing real existing institutions and assessing their bearing on national social and economic progress. Given the impossibility of investigating all Portuguese institutions, the study selected a sample of organizations of national scope, public and private, that are both intrinsically important and capable of casting light on the character on the broader national institutional universe.

The data for this project is available here on the ICPSR website.

Working Papers
A Hispanic by Any Other Name is also a Latino: Multiple Meanings of Latinidad/Hispanism in Major American Newspapers, 1985-2017
Past research on Latino media construction has argued that two portrayals dominate media representations of Hispanics. Either Hispanics are an invading force that threatens the US criminally, economically, politically, and culturally, or Latinos are an untapped source of political and economic power. To explore these and other potential portrayals of Latinos in popular news media, I use a structural topic model to extract latent themes from articles published in NYT, WSJ, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune. Focusing on a subset of these articles and latent themes, I analyze the different understandings of Latinos/Hispanics that arise in these articles. I find that, while the narratives discussed in past literature appear in these newspapers, they appear in subtler ways, and other narratives not previously discussed arise. Moreover, the type of narrative discussed is dependent on the latent theme/topic. Finally, I find that Latinos are often discussed in relation to other ethnic groups, a finding that past literature has not discussed. Latinos are often closely tied to Blacks culturally, economically, and politically, suggesting that they share a narrative.