I am a PhD candidate in economics. My research interest is in the microeconomics of development. I use observational data and experimental methods to study how social context interacts with economic incentives to affect behavior. Currently, I focus on two topics: religion and social networks.

On religion, I study how religion may influence social cooperation. In my job market paper, I combine IFLS4 dataset with other national datasets to investigate how religion influences generalized and particularized trust, as well as religious tolerance in Indonesia. I also examine how community heterogeneity and social institutions may have contributed to these attitudes.

Meanwhile, my research on social networks presently focuses on network formation. In this paper with Juan Carrillo, we use a laboratory experiment to test theories of network formation when link formation requires mutual agreement, but not its deletion. The game studied in the paper can be applied to certain forms of risk-sharing networks.

Before graduate school, I worked as a policy researcher in Indonesia. Throughout my professional career, I mainly worked for two institutions: as a policy researcher at CSIS (this Indonesian one, and not this one) and as a monitoring and evaluation consultant at the World Bank in Jakarta. I also briefly taught economics at Prasetiya Mulya Business School, also in Jakarta.

I also used to write opinion pieces and book reviews for Indonesian newspapers, mainly for this (English-language), this, and this (Indonesian-language) newspapers. An archive of some of my columns in English can be found here (or via Google).