Working Papers

Gilded Apartheid: Market Access and the Forging of Afrikaner National Identity in Colonial South Africa (Job Market Paper, submitted).

Do markets make or break nations? I study the impacts of increases in market integration on rural white settlers’ national identity choice following the world’s largest mineral revolution in colonial South Africa. For causal identification, I exploit time and geographical variation in recentered local market access driven by the expansion of a transportation network designed to reach diamond and gold deposits located in ex-ante quasi-random locations. I find that higher local access to nonwhite markets increases white settlers’ marginal value of institutionalizing racial segregation—or Apartheid—prompting identification with the Afrikaner who support these policies. Conversely, higher local access to white markets raises the marginal cost of not identifying with the British who dominate world capital markets and outlaw segregation. These opposing effects likely stem from the racial composition of market access determining whether local economies remain labor-dependent or shift to capital-intensive production methods, with contrasting effects on white settlers’ relative racial status and, therefore, strategies to sustain the racial hierarchy: to either forge a new nation or join an existing one.

Work in Progress

Sowing Seeds of Resistance: Disenfranchisement and African Political Awakening in the Cape of Good Hope Colony (Work in progress, data collection completed, draft expected 2026). With Jonathan Schoots.

The Economic Origins of Freedom: From Slavery to Emancipation in the Dutch Caribbean Plantation Economy (Work in progress, data collection completed).

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Pre-Doctoral Working Papers and Publications

Forming State Through Land Reform Policy: The Dynamics of Baldío Allocation in Peripheral Colombia. Documentos CEDE 15433, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE. April 2017.

Pensando el campo colombiano: La política del desarrollo, las tierras y la vida del campesino en el diseño de la Reforma Social Agraria (1960-1961) [“Rethinking Colombian rurality: The politics of development, land, and the livelihood of agricultural workers in the designing of the Social Agrarian Reform (1960-1961)”]. December 2014.

¿Qué pasó en las áreas rurales entre 2010 y 2013? Contribución del acceso a tierras, choques negativos y programas estatales dirigidos al bienestar de los hogares rurales [What happened in the rural areas between 2010 and 2013? The contributions of access to land, negative shocks, and state programs to rural household welfare]. Colombia en Movimiento 2010-2013. With Ana María Ibáñez. 2014.

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