I am a Ph.D Candidate in Politics at Princeton University. I am also a graduate affiliate with the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance and a Graduate Fellow with the Princeton Sovereign Finance Lab. You can find a copy of my CV here.

I am broadly interested in the politics of government financing. My dissertation research explores the trade offs that governments make when selecting among financing strategies. My interests also include the politics of sovereign debt specifically, natural resource politics, and the political economy of climate change.

Previously, I was a Junior Data Analyst for the AidData Research Lab at William & Mary, where I conducted geospatial impact evaluations of development projects and also managed the AidData Geocoding team. I earned a A.B. in Economics from Washington University in St. Louis and an M.A. in Politics from Princeton University.

I have extensive teaching experience. I designed and taught courses in introductory and advanced programming and political methodology at William & Mary, and at Princeton have assisted in instruction for PhD-level coursework in political methodology and text-as-data and multiple undergraduate courses in International Politics. Additionally, I co-instructed the R for Public Policy course for the Junior Summer Institute Program (through the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs) each of the past three summers.

Journal Publications

Highway to the Forest? Land Governance and the Siting and Environmental Impacts of Chinese Government-Funded Road Building in Cambodia
Christian Baehr, Ariel BenYishay, and Brad Parks
Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Vol 122(1).

Linking Local Infrastructure Development and Deforestation: Evidence from Satellites and Administrative Data
Christian Baehr, Ariel BenYishay, and Brad Parks
Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, Vol 8(2).

Working Papers

Climate Exposure Drives Firm Political Behavior: Evidence From Earnings Calls and Lobbying Data (Revise and Resubmit)
With Fiona Bare and Vincent Heddesheimer.

Landmine Clearance and Economic Development (Under Review)
With Ariel BenYishay, Rachel Sayers, Kunwar Singh, and Madeleine Walker.

Teaching Experience

POL 392: American Foreign Policy (Fall 2024)

This undergraduate course analyzes the formation and conduct of foreign policy in the United States, focusing particularly on the causal role of the international system, public opinion, and the media in driving America’s foreign policy.

POL 396: International Organizations (Spring 2024)

This introductory course surveys the network of major international organizations and introduces undergraduate students to the political factors driving participation in, and behavior of, international organizations.

POL 504: Text As Data (Fall 2023)

This graduate-level methods course trains students to be practitioners of textual methods, spanning from the foundations of text-as-data to cutting-edge machine learning methods for analyzing text.