I am a 5th year PhD student in Economics at the London School of Economics. My research is in spatial and environmental economics, with a focus on how cities adjust to climate shocks.
I will be on the academic job market in 2026–27.
Working Papers
Dynamic Costs of Resource Shocks: Evidence from Cape Town’s Water Crisis (Job Market Paper)
When cities face water scarcity, policymakers must decide how to allocate the burden of saving water between households and firms. We study Cape Town's 2016–2018 water crisis, during which water prices rose sharply. Using administrative tax records covering all formal employment in South Africa, we document two facts. First, water-intensive sectors in Cape Town experienced persistent establishment and employment declines. This divergence did not occur in control metros. Second, the effects are spatial: within Cape Town, locations with higher water intensity remain depressed even after prices return to lower levels, and this spills over to neighbouring non-water-intensive firms. We propose a mechanism: when firms exit, they undo historical accumulated productive capital that took years to build. If enough exits occur, the local economy crosses a tipping point to a permanently lower equilibrium. To formalise this, we develop a dynamic spatial model that allows for temporary resource shocks to permanently alter the equilibrium output of locations within a city. We use this model to evaluate counterfactual allocation policies that account for the welfare costs of these spatial spillovers.
Funders & Partners: STICERD, IGC, Weiss Fund.
Local Public Spending, Residential Sorting, and the Limits of Fiscal Redistribution: Evidence from London
In standard spatial economics, central-government redistribution across local jurisdictions accrues to landowners through capitalised rents, leaving worker welfare unchanged. That verdict assumes full mobility. In practice, many workers are anchored to particular places by public housing, place-based welfare, or family arrangements that moving would dissolve. Recognising these locked workers, the aggregate result survives but its meaning changes: capitalisation becomes a within-population redistributor whose destination is split between land rents and the welfare of those who cannot move. In a two-type spatial-equilibrium model of London's 33 boroughs, a spatial regression discontinuity on the 2010 austerity reform documents substantial capitalisation of public spending into house prices. An evaluation of the 2025 Fair Funding Review shows the implied transfer is regressive, because housing expenditure shares are structurally larger for institutionally-constrained workers.
Work in Progress
Productivity and the Grid: The Welfare Cost of Spatially Unequal Electricity in Accra
Electricity supply in Accra is spatially unequal and unreliable. The central business district enjoys near-perfect reliability, while peripheral neighborhoods face frequent and unpredictable outages. I build a quantitative spatial equilibrium model in which electricity is a constrained production input and firm entry is dynamic: forward-looking firms choose where to locate based on the supply they expect each neighborhood to receive in the future. I estimate the model using nine years of feeder-level outage data from the Electricity Company of Ghana and use it to evaluate counterfactual policies. Because firms make location decisions based on expected future supply, credible announcements of future reliability generate welfare gains before any new capacity is built.
Funders & Partners: STEG, IGC.
Climate Security and Informal Settlements: Evidence from Sierra Leone
Funders & Partners: IGC, STEG, GSOS, STICERD, OPEC Fund, Weiss Fund, KCAI
