Hello! My name is Danilo Freire, and I am a Visiting Assistant Professor in the
Department of Quantitative Theory and Methods at Emory University and an Honorary Senior Fellow at the University of Lincoln. I hold a PhD in Political Economy from King's College London, an MA in International Relations from the Graduate Institute Geneva, and an MA in Political Science from the University of São Paulo. Before joining Emory, I was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Brown
University and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Lincoln.
My research focuses on the challenges developing countries face in solving collective
action problems and reducing political violence. I am particularly interested in public
service delivery, accountability, private governance, and state violence. Most of my work centres on
Latin America, where I use various methods including survey and field experiments, machine learning, and
administrative data analysis.
My research has appeared in journals such as the American Journal of Political Science,
British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Experimental Political Science,
Latin American Research Review, and Research & Politics. I am also an EGAP Fellow. You can find my publications here.
My full CV is available here,
and you can find my projects on GitHub. If you have any
questions or would like to discuss potential collaborations, please email me at danilo.freire@emory.edu. I am always keen to
connect with fellow researchers and students.
If your browser does not support PDFs, please download my CV here.
"Legislature Size and Welfare: Evidence from Brazil" (with Umberto Mignozzetti and Gabriel Cepaluni). Forthcoming, American Journal of Political Science, 2024. Replication files.
"Vigilantism and Institutions: Attitudes toward Lynching in Brazil" (with David Skarbek). Research & Politics, 2023, 10(1), 1-8. Replication files.
"The Effect of Legislature Size on Distributive Politics: A Meta-Analysis" (with Umberto Mignozzetti, Catarina Roman and Huzeyfe Alptekin). First view, British Journal of Political Science, 2022. Replication files.
"Institutional Design and Elite Support for Climate Policies" (with Umberto Mignozzetti and David Skarbek). First view, Journal of Experimental Political Science, Summer 2021, 172-184. Replication files.
"Bottom-Up Accountability and Public Service Provision: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Brazil" (with Manoel Galdino and Umberto Mignozzetti). Research & Politics, 2020, 7(2), 1-8. Replication files.
"congressbr: An R Package for Analysing Data from Brazil's Chamber of Deputies and Federal Senate" (with Robert McDonnell and Guilherme Duarte). Latin American Research Review, 2019, 54(4), 958-969. Software repository.
"Beasts of Prey or Rational Animals?: Private Governance in Brazil’s Jogo do Bicho". Latin American Perspectives. 2019, 46(4), 230-244. Media coverage: BBC Brazil.
"Evaluating the Effect of Homicide Prevention Strategies in São Paulo, Brazil: A Synthetic Control Approach". Latin American Research Review, 2018, 53(2), 231-249. Replication files. Media coverage: Valor Econômico.
"prisonbrief: An R Package that Returns Tidy Data from the World Prison Brief Website" (with Robert McDonnell). Journal of Open Source Software, 2018, 3(22), 361. Software repository.
"Lack of Preferences, Political Trust and Education Levels: Alternative Explanations for Invalid Votes in Brazilian Elections" (with Guilherme Arbache and Pietro Rodrigues). Encuentro Latinoamericano, 2015, 1(1), 29–50. Replication files.
Between Ballot Boxes and Guns: The Competitiveness of the Executive Branch and Civil Wars, 1976-2000. Revista Española de Ciencia Política, 2014, 36, 33–60. Replication files.
"Financial Incentives and Health Care Provision: Evidence from an Experimental Aedes aegypti Control Programme in Brazil" (with Umberto Mignozzetti). Under review.
"The Reliability of Replications: A Study in Computational Reproductions" (with Nate Breznau, Eike Mark Rinke, Alexander Wuttke and others). Revise and resubmit, Sociological Methods and Research.
"Legislative Outcomes and Malapportionment: Evidence from Latin America" (with Umberto Mignozzetti and Catarina Roman).
"Democratising Policy Analytics with AutoML".
"What Drives State-Sponsored Violence? Evidence from Extreme Bounds Analysis and Ensemble Learning Methods" (with Gary Uzonyi).
Natural Resources and Policy Choices in Latin America (with Giovanna França and Umberto Mignozzetti, editors). São Paulo: Konrad Adenauer Foundation, 2020.
Geopolitics of Renewable Energies in Latin America: A Survey (with Umberto Mignozzetti). 2019. Policy Report commissioned by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung.
"Prison Gangs" (with David Skarbek). In: Griffin, Hayden; Woodward, Vanessa (ed.). Handbook of Corrections in the United States. London: Routledge, 2017, 399–408.
"Peering at Open Peer Review". The Political Methodologist, 2015, 23 (1), 6--11.
"A Nova Gestão Pública e a Qualidade da Democracia". In: Erkens, Rainer (ed.). Nova Gestão Pública. São Paulo: Instituto Friedrich Naumann, 2010, 9–15.
pinochet: Data about the victims of the Pinochet regime, 1973-1990 (with Lucas Mingardi and Robert McDonnell).
congressbr: Downloads, unpacks and tidies Legislative data from the Brazilian Federal Senate and Chamber of Deputies (with Robert McDonnell and Guilherme Duarte).
prisonbrief: R package that returns tidy data from the World Prison Brief website (with Robert McDonnell).
Instructor, QTM 350 - Data Science Computing (Undergraduate/Graduate). Emory University, Fall 2024.
Instructor, QTM 151 - Introduction to Statistical Computing (Undergraduate). Emory University, Fall 2024.
Instructor (with Rosario Aguilar, Jake Bowers, Luis Maldonado, and Julia Seither), EGAP Learning Days 15: Field Experiments in the Social Sciences. Evidence in Governance and Politics, Medellín, 2024.
Instructor (with Rosario Aguilar, Jake Bowers, Luis Maldonado, and Maarten Voors), EGAP Learning Days 13: Field Experiments in the Social Sciences. Evidence in Governance and Politics, Mexico City, 2023.
Module Coordinator, Lecturer and Seminar Leader (with Anthony Ellis and Baris Messina), Organised Crime in Global Perspective (Undergraduate). University of Lincoln, 2021-2024.
Module Coordinator, Lecturer and Seminar Leader (with Anthony Ellis and Elena Gaschino), Policing Crime and Deviance (Undergraduate). University of Lincoln, 2021-2024.
Lecturer and Seminar Leader (with Nick Cowen and Aris Trantidis), Human Rights (Undergraduate). University of Lincoln, 2021-2024.
Lecturer, Political Violence (Undergraduate). Brown University, Fall 2019.
Lecturer, Political Research Methods (Undergraduate). Brown University, Winter 2019.
Lecturer, Political Economy and Institutions (Graduate). Centro de Estudios Superiores Online de Madrid Manuel Ayau (OMMA) and Universidad Francisco Marroquín, 2017.
Teaching Assistant and Seminar Leader, Principles of Economics II - Macroeconomics (Undergraduate). King's College London, Fall 2017.
Teaching Assistant and Seminar Leader, Principles of Economics I - Microeconomics (Undergraduate). King's College London, Winter 2017.
Machine Learning for Political Science (Undergraduate/Graduate).
Latin American Politics (Undergraduate/Graduate).
Introduction to Comparative Politics (Undergraduate/Graduate).