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, and social media in particular, 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.