Nico Ravanilla joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center as Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow for the 2015-16 year.  His research interests are political economy and governance, comparative politics and Southeast Asia. While at Shorenstein APARC, Ravanilla will research how political selection impacts governance, and evaluate possible routes for incentivizing capable and virtuous citizens to run for public office.

His project titled “Nudging Good Politicians” looks at the case of the Sangguniang Kabataan, a governing body in the Philippines comprised of elected youth leaders. Ravanilla aims to apply his research to develop and scale up programs for politicians, especially those at the onset of their careers, which would include specialized leadership training and merit-based endorsement.

Ravanilla is also a Southeast Asia Research Group (SEAREG) Young Southeast Asia Fellow for 2015-16.  He received his Ph.D. in political science and public policy from the University of Michigan in summer 2015.

Sarah Cormack-Patton received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh in August 2015. She is a political economist working at the nexus of comparative politics and international relations with a focus on European politics. Sarah is interested in how the cross-border movement of goods, capital, and people impacts the domestic policy-making process, and how domestic politics affect these cross-border flows. In her current research, Sarah examines these questions through the lens of international migration. Sarah's doctoral dissertation examined the ways in which varying bundles of migrant rights affect domestic preferences over immigration, the effect of these rights on the policy-making coalitions that form over immigration, and how these preferences aggregate in various institutional environments. In addition to her Ph.D., Sarah holds a BS in International Affairs and Modern Languages (French) and MS in International Affairs from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a MA in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh.

Zaira Razu is a research Associate and Project Manager at the Program on Poverty and Governance at CDDRL. She is currently working on the Governance of Public Health in Mexico project, focusing on the differences in mortality rates across income groups to analyze health disparities in the country. She is also collaborating in the design of impact and process evaluations of different interventions that seek to reduce youth violence in Mexico and the US, as well as to better understand the key dimensions of youth criminal careers: recruitment, incentives, training, and desistance. Zaira’s previous responsibilities at PovGov included a review on the current state of Political Economy scholarship in Mexico and the creation of a database of Oaxaca municipalities to analyze the relationship between community participation and the quality of public goods provision.

Zaira graduated from Stanford in June 2014 with an MA in International Policy Studies, concentrating in Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. She also holds a BA in Political Science from Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de Mexico (ITAM). Zaira is interested in applied research on youth, health, and poverty alleviation policies. She has experience in impact evaluation (at the Inter-American Development Bank), and in policy design and implementation (at Fundación IDEA and in the Center Mario Molina, Mexico).

Publications

Díaz- Cayeros, A., & Razú, Z. (2014). ¿ Hacia dónde va la economía política en México?. El Trimestre Económico, 81(324), 783-806.