Lava Jato, an unprecedented transnational corruption investigation that started in Brazil in 2014 and spread throughout Latin America, paralyzed economies, upended elections, and collapsed governments. What made ‘the largest bribery case in history’ possible in a part of the world where impunity for grand corruption is the norm? Why did it expand beyond Brazil and why did prosecutors prove effective in some countries but not in others? To answer this question, we trace the legacy of reforms that enhanced prosecutors’ structural capacity to combat white-collar crime.

Resource transfers from developed to developing countries to help prevent and adapt to climate change play a central role in international climate policy efforts. At the same time, countries are domestically grappling with how to provide these transfers, if at all. A growing literature explores the economic logics and efficiency of international climate finance, yet the politics are particularly difficult, partly because publics are often biased towards policy at home rather than abroad.

co-authored with Zachary C. Steinert-Threlkeld, UCLA

Joint work with: Sean Freeder and Justin de Benedictis-Kessner

While we know quite a bit about how individual-level factors affect citizens’ knowledge of party positions, less is known about the role the information environment plays in perceptions. In this paper, we argue that for citizens to learn about parties' issue positions, they have to be exposed to a sufficient amount of political information, and information should be unbiased. The implication of our argument is that citizens are better informed about parties’ ideological positions in election time, but that this information effect is conditional on a free media environment.

A vast literature on political cycles has shown that politicians often manipulate policy tools ahead of elections to win votes. Yet much less is known about the effects of policies designed to contain these cycles. I argue that legal constraints on politicians’ discretion over inputs like spending, debt, transfers, or hiring ahead of elections simply displace –and can even exacerbate– such cycles. I demonstrate these unintended consequences using large, monthly panels of Brazilian municipalities to measure cycles in public employment.

Joint work with: Erica Field, Ursula Aldana and Javier Romero