Research

Job Market Paper

1. A High-Resolution View of the Hinterland: Local Government Centralization and Rural Development in Turkey
   Studies the 2012 Turkish metropolitan municipality reform as a centralization shock for thousands of villages. Reconstructs high-resolution rural administrative boundaries and combines them with VIIRS night lights, population outcomes, and driving distances to administrative centers. Implements a contiguous-border difference-in-differences design to estimate development effects and quantify distance-related penalties in service reach.

Working Papers and Work in Progress

1. Birthplace Favoritism Revisited: Replication, Modern Evidence, and Crisis Dynamics
   UQ School of Economics Discussion Paper Series, 2025 (working paper).
   Replicates and extends classic evidence on leader birthplace favoritism using open-source data, modern VIIRS night lights, and high-dimensional fixed effects. Uses monthly temporal resolution to study leadership transitions and crisis dynamics, with falsification and robustness exercises.

2. Measuring Cognition at Scale: The Association Between Ramadan Exposure and Chess Performance
   Builds a move-level panel from 800,000 online games (16 million moves), benchmarks performance using the Stockfish engine, and estimates changes in move quality, speed, and timing using difference-in-differences with player and period fixed effects.

3. A Novel Integerisation Procedure for Population Data (with P. Wohland-Jakhar)
   Develops an integerisation method for IPF-based small-area estimation that reconciles integer and marginal constraints in sparse geographies, motivated by Indigenous population estimation in Queensland.

Notes

Slides and draft links can be added here paper-by-paper as they become public.