I am a PhD candidate at UC Berkeley, in the Business and Public Policy group at the Haas School of Business. I hold MSc in Financial Economics from HSE-ICEF and BA in Economics from HSE-NES joint program in Economics.
My research spans political economy, economic history, development and organizational economics. I am on the 2024–25 job market.
Job market Paper
Nomadic Pastoralism, Colonization and Conflict in Central Asia
[ Abstract ][ Draft_JMP ]
This paper studies how a sharp exogenous increase in land pressure resulting from massive land expropriations and in-migrations of peasant-settlers organized by the Russian colonial authorities in the late 19th—early 20th century affected social structures and economic activities of indigenous nomadic pastoralists in Central Asia. I assemble a novel household-level dataset constructed from two waves of Russian colonial censuses of nomadic population in 1896-1901 and 1908-1913 combined with hand-collected data from archival plot-level annual land expropriation reports that, together with landuse-based expropriation rule, allow me to use fuzzy regression discontinuity design to show that those nomadic households that experienced expropriations between ca. 1897 and ca. 1908 were more likely to partially sedentarize and intensify the use of the most fertile lands they were left with. Within extended households and beyond, an increase in land pressure facilitated the development of more individualized ownership and use rights for land, as well as gave rise to contractual labor market and rental market for land. Such a shift from pastoralism to semi-sedentary mode of production rapidly reduced the importance of top-level clan and tribe institutions traditionally regulating the use of common pastures. Instead, lower level sub-clan self-identification became more salient, households started to invest more in agricultural tools and construction of permanent buildings.
Working Papers
The Impact of Feudalism on Long-Run Development in Russia
[ Abstract ][ Draft ]
Feudalism was the dominant system of land ownership throughout medieval Europe, yet little causal evidence of its effect on agricultural productivity, labor markets, and welfare exists. This paper attempts to fill this gap by studying one of the largest late medieval land reforms, the feudal pomestie reform in Russia. In 1478, the Grand Prince of Moscow Ivan III annexed the Republic of Novgorod. By ca. 1488, he expropriated most of the landed properties there. More than half of them were eventually granted to several thousand Muscovite military class people as fiefs. Using data from 1478–1500 tax cadasters the paper shows that, compared to estates that remained under status quo (allodial or freehold tenure), properties that were feudalized by 1490 and granted to new proprietors experienced a sharp decline in levels of grain productivity and total grain yield by 1500. The study also demonstrates that feudalization caused outmigration of tenant households and workers from affected estates, and that feudalized estates generated lower per capita incomes by 1576/77, had higher incidence of sharecropping and lower levels of commercialized handicrafts by 1790.
Works in Progress
Political Economy of Usury Restrictions in Medieval Europe, 1200–1517
Serfs into Citizens: Enfranchisement, Local Public Goods, and Nation-Building in Congress Poland
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