About Me

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I am a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Economics at the University of California, San Diego. In my research, I combine machine learning, NLP, systematic qualitative coding, and econometric methods to answer complex empirical questions and bring analytical structure to ambiguous problems.

At UC San Diego, my research won the Walter Heller Memorial Prize for best third-year paper. I was also awarded the Dean's Koenigsberger Fellowship.

Before joining UC San Diego, I spent two and a half years at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, DC, conducting research on macroeconomic and fiscal issues with a focus on Latin America and the Caribbean.

I am originally from Chile, and I hold a Master's in Economic Analysis and a B.S. in Economics from the University of Chile.

Research

Doctoral Research

  • Cleavages, Political Parties, and Polarization (Job Market Paper 1, draft available).
    Abstract

    Why do some societies become more politically polarized and susceptible to populism? In this paper, I explore the hypothesis that these processes depend on how political parties respond to recent drivers within patterns of political competition that developed much earlier. Foundational political science theories argued that the dimensions along which political parties compete often originate in major conflicts that occurred in the period leading up to the emergence of mass politics. The societal divisions triggered by these conflicts became politically organized and shaped the creation of the modern party system, influencing political competition over the long run. I focus on the Carlist Wars (1833–1876) in Spain as an example of such conflicts and estimate their political effects using an instrumental variable exploiting variation in wartime logistical conditions combined with a novel dataset spanning three centuries to trace these effects over time. I find that areas more exposed to the wars exhibit lower political polarization today and weaker support for parties using populist rhetoric. Evidence on mechanisms suggests that the Carlist Wars helped form an additional axis of political competition that, insofar as it does not overlap strongly with the left-right divide, reduces incentives to intensify political polarization and weakens the conditions populist leaders often exploit. The findings remain after including a rich set of controls, and are not explained by the leading alternative hypotheses. Violations of the exclusion restriction would need to account for around 60% to 90% of the reduced-form effects to explain away the results, while placebo tests provide no evidence that the empirical strategy captures confounding factors. The results shed light on the role of historically rooted structures of political competition in shaping societies’ susceptibility to polarization and populism.

  • Social Norms and Media Prejudice: How Legislation Restricting Minority Rights Affects Media Portrayal (Job Market Paper 2, draft available).
  • Property and Political Control: Evidence from Chile's Agrarian Counter-Reform (draft available).
  • Approaches to Land Restoration and Ethnic Conflict (preliminary draft available; further analysis in progress).

Pre-Doctoral Research

  • Social Capital, Modernization, and Meritocracy in an Unequal Society: Long-Term Evidence of Class-Based Labor Discrimination in Chile (draft available; joint with Javier Núñez and Pedro Leiva).
  • Merit, Gender, and Class: Long-Term Evidence on Wage Discrimination in a Modernizing Economy (draft available; joint with Javier Núñez and Pedro Leiva).

Teaching

I have over seven years of teaching experience across undergraduate and graduate courses. In my teaching, I emphasize conceptual understanding, clear explanations of complex ideas, and learning beyond memorizing procedures for an exam. I also work to create a comfortable classroom environment where students feel included, supported, and willing to participate.

Teaching Experience

University of California, San Diego

La Jolla, CA

  • Teaching Assistant: Econometrics A.
  • Instructor: Spanish B.

University of Chile

Santiago, Chile

  • Teaching Assistant, undergraduate courses: Introduction to Macroeconomics, Introduction to Statistics, Introduction to Finance, Political Economy, Econometrics I, and Stata Workshop.
  • Teaching Assistant, graduate courses: Macroeconomics in Small and Open Economies, Economic Growth, Integration and Technological Development, Microeconomics Leveling, Applied Microeconomics (Master's in Economic Analysis), Labor Markets and Pension Systems (Master's in Public Policy), and Microeconomics (MBA).

Selected UC San Diego Evaluations