I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame and a faculty fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. I am board member of the Argentine Panel Election Study and a research associate of the Center for the Politics of Development at UC Berkeley. Previously, I was a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow in Politics at Nuffield College, University of Oxford, and a Visiting Fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies.

I am a scholar of comparative politics, political behavior and political economy, with a regional expertise in Latin America. My research examines how citizens develop political preferences and strategies in developing democracies. In my work, I try to bridge the common micro-macro divide in social science by examining how political and economic environments condition individual preferences and actions. Empirically, I combine cutting-edge techniques of causal inference, such as natural and survey experiments, with deep understanding of context through extensive fieldwork. 

My book, Incumbency Bias (Cambridge University Press. Studies in Comparative Politics), offers a unified theory that explains why incumbents enjoy an electoral advantage in some political settings but suffer from an electoral disadvantage in other settings. The book marshals multiple sources of evidence collected across Argentina, Brazil, and Chile during twelve months of fieldwork, including extensive fiscal and economic administrative datasets, interviews with politicians and policymakers, and three original survey experiments. It employs an innovative nested multilevel research design that combines cross-country comparisons with subnational quantitative tests using causal inference techniques, such as natural experiments, regression discontinuity designs, and differences-in-differences designs.

My new ongoing book project (with Scott Mainwaring) explores the role of protection of civil liberties as a source of durable democratic commitment in Latin America. My other research has also been published at The Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Perspectives on Politics and University of Michigan Press.

I earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University and a B.A. in Political Science from Universidad Torcuato Di Tella.