I am a PhD candidate in Economics at the CUNY Graduate Center. Prior to starting my PhD, I worked at the International Monetary Fund on public investment management.
I study why governments fail to build what they promise. In many developing countries, the same budget that delivers housing and roads in one district produces abandoned construction sites in another. These gaps between policy and implementation shape where people can afford to live, which neighborhoods get services, and whether cities grow or stagnate.
My current work focuses on Egypt's urban development - tracking how enforcement shocks affect informal construction, how local state capacity determines infrastructure placement, and how information frictions shape household decisions during policy changes. The empirical challenges have led me to develop new measurement approaches: building pipelines to extract structured data from Arabic administrative documents, combining satellite imagery with local records, and using LLMs to parse government PDFs at scale. These patterns - state capacity constraints, informal markets, implementation gaps - recur across developing countries, making Egypt a useful case for understanding broader questions about how states function when formal institutions are weak.
The core challenge is measurement. We know surprisingly little about what governments actually build versus what they budget for, and that gap matters for understanding why development happens where it does.
The Political Economy of Building Regulation
Combining administrative records with satellite imagery, I study Egypt’s nationwide building freeze to quantify how abrupt regulatory shocks shift formal and informal construction. The project documents adaptation margins under limited state capacity and speaks to the effectiveness and limits of enforcement-heavy regulation.
Methods: Administrative data, satellite imagery, causal inference
Institutional Reform and Public Sector Efficiency
Using contract-level procurement data and the staggered rollout of Public Investment Management Assessments (PIMAs), I estimate the causal impact of external diagnostics on procurement outcomes and efficiency, isolating changes attributable to the assessments rather than secular trends.
Methods: Causal inference, panel data analysis
Global Games and Coups
This theoretical and empirical project develops an estimable global-games model of coups d’état, separating feasibility (coordination) from desirability (payoffs). We bridge economics and political science and bring the model to data to quantify the mechanisms behind coup success.
Methods: Global games, structural estimation, political economy, econometrics
How to Improve Public Investment Management in Low-Income Countries
IMF How-To Note, 2024
Provides practical guidance for strengthening investment frameworks in resource-constrained settings. Identifies critical institutional bottlenecks and proposes a sequenced reform approach that accounts for capacity limitations, with concrete implementation strategies for effective infrastructure delivery.
Public Investment Management Bottlenecks in Low-Income Countries
IMF Working Paper, 2024
Identifies key institutional constraints limiting public investment efficiency using PIMA data and principal component analysis. Quantifies significant efficiency gaps and potential gains from targeted governance improvements.
Monitoring the Climate Impact of Fiscal Policy
IMF Working Paper, October 2021
Develops an archetype-based methodology (IMF Green Tracker) to categorize fiscal measures across sectors by environmental impact and discusses green budgeting frameworks and cross-country comparability.
Fiscal Monitor, October 2020: Policies for the Recovery
IMF Publication, October 2020
Contributor to Chapter 2, which applies the IMF Green Tracker climate-impact assessment framework.
Public Investment Management Assessment (PIMA) Reports
2020–2022
Public Investment Management Assessment (PIMA) reports for Grenada, Haiti, and Nepal.
The Journal of Developing Areas, August 2022
Provided research assistance for an empirical study examining the relationship between public and private investment in Pakistan, finding long-run crowding-in effects. Assisted with data collection and preliminary analysis.
Strengthening Public Expenditure Efficiency: Investment and Social Spending in Bulgaria
IMF (Policy/Working Paper), December 2021
Contributed research support focused on infrastructure and social spending. Assisted with data gathering for frontier analysis and international benchmarking, identifying efficiency gaps linked to PIM institutions.
Strengthening Infrastructure Governance for Climate-Responsive Public Investment
IMF Policy Paper, December 2021
Provided research assistance for a policy paper developing a framework to integrate climate considerations into infrastructure governance.
How to Manage Public Investment during a Postcrisis Recovery
IMF How-To Note, July 2021
Supported research on how capacity constraints affect the efficiency of scaled-up investment, contributing to a diagnostic framework for assessing implementation capacity.
Mastering the Risky Business of Public-Private Partnerships in Infrastructure
IMF Departmental Paper, May 2021
Assisted with research examining how institutional capacity affects PPP success in infrastructure.
STA 2000 - Business Statistics
Baruch College
ECON 4400 - Advanced Economics and Business Statistics
Brooklyn College