Georgiy Syunyaev is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at Columbia University and a Research Fellow at J-PAL Global. His primary research interests lie in political economy of weak and non-democratic regimes with a regional focus on Post-Soviet Countries. Specifically, he is interested in government incentives for fiscal and political decentralization as well as the effects of mass media in framing responsibility across government hierarchy. In addition, he is interested in experimental evaluation of the political and economic effects of the introduction of new information communication technology (ICT) as well as the use of such ICTs to improve citizen-government communication in South Africa. He has also done extensive work on the effects of political instability on property rights protection, with a specific focus on Russian regions.

Previously he worked as a visiting scholar at the Harriman Institute for Russian, Eurasian and East European Studies and at the World Bank’s Development Group. Prior to Columbia, he received graduate education in Economics at Higher School of Economics, Russia.