Academic Career

Teaching Experience

Fiscal and Tax policy, Federalism & Decentralization, Subnational Politics, Structural Heterogeneity, Development, and Inequality in Latin America

My research is concerned with the interdependence of global economic processes and the re-production of social inequalities in Latin American federal states. The principal perspective applied to analyze this interdependence is to study the dynamics of the fiscal foundations of Latin American federations - either with a focus on the revenue collection side (tax policy), the expenditure side (fiscal and distributional policies), or the dynamics of subnational-national fiscal distribution regimes (fiscal federalism) in the light of a changing global economy. Most of my research draws on on a mixed-methodological research design, combining quantitative (econometric) analysis, as well as qualitative methododological tools.

Ongoing projects:

 The external dimension of subnational fiscal autonomy in Mexico and Argentina (book proposal)

 Global economic developments and sub-national fiscal capacity in Argentina and Mexico

 Fiscal policy and territorial inequality during the “commodity consensus”

 Asymmetries of knowledge in public finance (funded by E-Club, FU Berlin)

 Tax policy in and after the commodity boom in Latin America (with M. Valdés)

 Fiscal Policy Effects of Economic Crises (with Christian Ambrosius)

Selected Publications

2014: Mexikos Föderalismus im Wandel [Changing federalism in Mexico]; in: Schröter, B. (ed.): Das politische System in Mexiko, VS Verlag (191-212).

2014: Die Ambivalenz der Kontrolle: Mexikanische Bundesstaaten und Munizipien zwischen Ausgabenkontrolle und fiskaler Autonomie seit der Demokratisierung; in: Jahrbuch des Föderalismus 2014, EZFF, Nomos.

Review: 2013: Boundary Control, by E. Gibson, in: CROLAR - Critical Reviews on Latin American Research, Vol. 2(2).

Review 2013: Patients of the state, by J. Auyero; in: ERLACS, Nr.94/1.

Selected Presentations

2015

"State capacity and the re-production of inequalities in times of the commodity cycle", I Encuentro de Cooperación Académica USAL-FU Berlin, Salamanca, Spain (with R.Rodrigues-Silveira)

"Tax regimes in times of the commodity cycle: are Latin American countries finally "learning to tax“?" I Encuentro de Cooperación Académica USAL-FU Berlin, Salamanca, Spain (with M. Valdés)

“The external dimension of subnational fiscal autonomy in and after the commodity boom: insights from the Mexican case”, 8th Nordic Latin American Research Network NOLAN Conference 2015, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

“Global economic developments and subnational fiscal autonomy in Latin American federal states”; desigualdades.net Workshop, Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE), Bonn, Germany

2013

“Decentralization and inequality in subnational units”; VII CEISAL (Consejo Europeo de Investigaciones Sociales de América Latina) Congress, Porto, Portugal

2012

"Federalismo fiscal y distribución - centralización en Argentina desde 2001”, 54th ICA (International Congress of Americanists) Congress, Vienna, Austria

"Territorial inequality, fiscal federalism and international economic developments – Argentina in the Kirchner era", XXX Congress of LASA (Latin American Studies Association), San Francisco, CA

2011

„Federal Bargaining in (il-)liberal democracies. (Post-)Transition periods in Argentina and Mexico compared.” (with M. Braig), ECPR (European Consortium for Political Research) General Conference, Reykjavik, Island