I examine whether female leadership reduces violence. In Colombia, female mayors reduce guerrilla attacks by up to 60% after close elections. New data on commander gender reveal complementarities between female leaders: the effect more than doubles where the local guerrilla leader is also female. The decline reflects de-escalatory behavior on both sides, with female mayors organizing more peace-oriented initiatives and female commanders retaliating less after crackdowns. Campaign manifestos and observed behavior reveal underlying gender gaps in preferences for de-escalation as the main mechanism. Finally, I develop a bargaining model with gender-specific commitment credibility that rationalizes these findings.

Digitizes maps of Catholic missions, presidios, and settler routes in California, Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico to examine the economic and cultural legacy of Spanish colonialism. Documents initial evangelization success that later dissipated, agricultural practices transitioning to manufacturing and urbanization, and persistent effects on schooling as well as on liberal perspectives among educated populations.

Examines the impacts of US foreign policy on Central American conflicts, focusing on the United Fruit Company's interests and on the role of the School of the Americas in training officers involved in the Guatemalan Civil War. Digitizes UFC operational data and SOA graduate records, and uses spatial regression discontinuity designs to document significant relationships between these institutions and conflict-era violence patterns.

Studies the economic consequences of adopting indigenous governance ("Usos y Costumbres") in Mexican municipalities after 1995. Larger institutional deviations correlate with greater poverty reduction but higher inequality, with no detectable effect on public services. The "Sistema de Cargos" (communal service system) and the removal of voting transparency emerge as the key drivers, suggesting that enhanced community accountability benefits ethnically diverse municipalities most.

Examines whether colonial Catholic exposure correlates with contemporary gender-based violence in Mexico, combining indigenous-population and mission distribution data with victimization surveys. Uses the 1705 convent system reform for causal identification. Finds a positive correlation between historical Catholic influence and present-day gender violence, suggesting that Christian norms integrated with indigenous customs persist in contemporary patterns of violence.

Surveys the historical and contemporary literature on regional economic disparities in Latin America. Documents national and sub-national patterns of income inequality, and examines the role of colonial institutions, slavery, land reform, education, and elites. Includes replication exercises extending seminal papers in the literature to incorporate inequality measures.

Develops a model of political competition that studies the welfare effects of campaign-finance policy when contributions fund voter mobilization rather than advertising. Social costs are measured through reductions in the quality of public works. Public subsidies combined with contribution bans are welfare-improving only under low mobilization productivity, whereas contribution taxes that fund public projects prove welfare-improving under all technological conditions considered.