Ruben Enikolopov

Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Social & Behavioural Sciences

Ruben Enikolopov received his PhD from Harvard University in 2008. Before moving to Universitat Pompeu Fabra he worked in the New Economic School in Moscow and spent 2012-2013 academic year as a Member at the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton. His research interests include political economy, mass media, and economic development. He has published his research in leading academic journals such as American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Economic Studies, Proceedings of National Academy of Science, American Political Science Review, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Journal of Public Economics. His research was supported from the International Growth Center, Canadian International Development Agency, USAID, the UN's World Food program and the World Bank among others.


Research interests

My research interests are in political economy, development economics, and economics of mass media. In my work I use state of the art empirical approach to understand the effect of political institutions and information provision in mass media on various aspects of economic and political development. One of the main questions that I address in my work is how information affects political, economic, and financial outcomes. In a series of papers I investigate the causal effect of mass media on voting behavior in Russia, expressions of nationalism in Croatia, dictatorial support in Nazi Germany, as well as the impact of social media on political participation and corruption. In a series of field experiments conducted in Afghanistan I examine the effect of large-scale development program on the status of women, success of counterinsurgency efforts, etc. Using field experiment methodology I also show the extent of electoral fraud in Russian parliamentary elections.

Selected publications

- Beath A, Fotini C & Enikolopov R 2017, 'Direct democracy and resource allocation: Experimental evidence from Afghanistan', Journal Of Development Economics, 124, 199 - 213.


Selected research activities

- Editor of the Journal of Comparative Economics (since January 2017).

- Member of the editorial board of the Review of Economic Studies (since November 2017).

- Winner of the Fundación BBVA grant "Digital Technologies, Political Polarisation and Intolerance" (99,943 Euros).

- Co-organizer of the "Political Institutions" workshop at the Barcelona Summer Forum.

- Co-organizer of the 15th Annual Media Economics Workshop, Barcelona.

- Member of the Program Committee of the EEA-ESEM, Lisbon.

- Member of the Program Committee of the “Economic Governance of Data-Driven Markets”, Tilburg.

- Member of the Program Committee of the NES 25th Anneversary Conference, Moscow.

- Invited talks at the NBER Political Economy Meeting, Trinity College Dublin, Cambridge University, Hebrew University, Harris School -       University of Chicago, New Economic School.

- Teaching graduate courses on Political Economy and Applied Topics in Economics in Barcelona GSE.