I am a Professor of Economics in the School of Economics and Finance at Queen Mary University of London. I am also a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), a Research Associate of the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at the London School of Economics and a Research Fellow of CESifo.

My main research interests are in political economy and development economics, with a focus on the political and economic impact of traditional and new media and on the institutional consequences of natural resource abundance.

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My research has been published in leading scientific journals, including the American Economic Review, Econometrica, the Annual Review of Economics and the Review of Economics and Statistics. I obtained my Ph.D. from Universitat Pompeu Fabra in 2012.