Peer-reviewed publications

J. Rexer. 2022. "The brides of Boko Haram: Economic shocks, marriage practices, and insurgency in Nigeria." The Economic Journal 132 (645) 1927-1977.

Selected for special issue on the Economics of Conflict


Grossman, G., S. Kim, J. Rexer and H. Thirumurthy. 2020. "Political partisanship influences behavioral responses to governors' recommendations for COVID-19 prevention in the United States." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117 (39) 24144-24153Op-Ed in USA Today

Working papers

The local advantage: Corruption, organized crime, and indigenization in the Nigerian oil sector (Job Market Paper) Resubmitted to American Economic Review

Presented at: World Bank DECRG (2023), Brown (2023), UW-Madison (2023), Yale (2022), NYU (2022), Rochester (2022), World Bank (2021), NBER Summer Institute Political Economy (2021), Barcelona GSE (2021), GLaD (2021), MWIEDC (2021), WGAPE (2021), GSIPE (2021), NBER Development (2020), PACDEV (2020), NEWEPS (2020), YES (2020), AfDB Seminar (2020), CSAE (2020)

World Bank Development Impact, Penn Kleinman Center Insights, VoxDev, CEPR/PEDL Working Paper

Estimating the Economic Value of Zoning Reform (with Santosh Anagol and Fernando Ferreira) Revise and Resubmit at American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

Presented at: Atlanta Federal Reserve (2021), NBER Summer Institute Real Estate/Urban (2021), Wharton Urban lunch, EUEA (2021), Imperial College (2021), LACEA-LAMES (2021)

VoxDev, NBER Working Paper

Penalties and Premiums in Sovereign Credit Ratings (with Ethan B. Kapstein, Adityamohan Tantravahi, and Fangyuan Yi)  Under Review

Presented at: Princeton Development Finance Workshop (2023)

Pricing Conflict Risk: Evidence from Sovereign Bonds (with Ethan B. Kapstein, and Andrés Rivera) Under Review

Presented at: NBER Summer Institute (2023), UT Dallas (2023), Royal Economic Society (2023), LatAm Peace Science Conference (2023), DebtCon Princeton (2023), ESOC Lab (2022), WEFIDEV (2022), CESifo Political Economy (2022)

ESOC Working Paper

Violence and black markets: Evidence from the Niger Delta conflict (with Even Hvinden

Presented at: Hebrew University (2022), PACDEV (2021), ESOC annual meeting (2021), Max Planck Institute (2021), DEVPEC (2020), BI Norwegian Business School (2019), Penn Development Research Initiative workshop (2019)

Penn Kleinman Center Policy Brief, CEPR/PEDL Working Paper

Works in progress

Indigenization in the global mining sector (with Erik Katovich)

Draft in progress


Fuel subsidies with black-market leakage: Evidence from Nigeria

Draft in progress


Political instability and corporate board turnover (with Darin Christensen

Data collection ongoing