I am a PhD student in Economics at University College London, Institute for Fiscal StudeisPhD scholar, previously at Bocconi University. My research interests are political and development economics, with a focus on long-run growth, violence dynamics, and organized crime. One strand of my research explores the importance of formal institutions for economic development by examining the behavior of criminal organizations. Another strand looks at the interaction of these organizations with large international firms to understand how state formation is affected by their influence. By studying these large non-state actors, my goal is to investigate the determinants of state capacity, and how this affects the economic performance of weak countries.