How did you come to choose your research topic?

My interest in inequality is both personal and professional. I grew up in Venezuela, where there are large social and economic differences. Later, I worked at the United Nations on inequality-related issues in Asia and the Pacific, which gave me a broader perspective on how these gaps vary across countries and persist over time.

These experiences led me to study the institutions and social norms behind inequality. During my PhD, I approached this question through three different settings to understand how historical arrangements and present-day policies shape people’s lives.

Can you tell us about the three papers that make up your PhD thesis? 

My first paper, “Concessions, Land Segregation and Spatial Development: Evidence from Mozambique”, studies the Mozambique Company, a private firm that governed a large part of central Mozambique between 1891 and 1942. I ask whether living under company rule affected people’s lives in the long run.

The key point is that the Company did not govern every part of its territory in the same way. It directed land, roads, and commercial activity towards areas occupied by white settlers and other smaller firms. At the same time, it created indigenous reserves that supplied African workers to public works and settler ventures.

I reconstructed these historical boundaries and combined them with present-day census and geospatial data. I then compared communities located on different sides of the Company’s external border, as well as settler and non-settler areas within its territory.

I find that people living in former settler areas are wealthier and more literate today. They are also less likely to depend on subsistence farming and more likely to have secure forms of employment. Former indigenous reserves, however, do not show the same gains.

The key takeaway is that private company rule created different local economies and long-run trajectories. The Company created growth in some places by concentrating investment there, while drawing workers and resources from others. Looking only at the average effect would hide who benefited and who bore the costs.

The second paper, “Linguistic Divides: Gendered Language and Gender Norms in India”, written with Nivedita Mantha and Balasubramanyam Pattath, asks whether the language people speak can influence women’s education and employment.

We focus on four related languages from the Dravidian family in South India. Telugu is distinctive because its grammar groups masculine (he) vs non-masculine (she/it) categories, while the other languages have a more common he, she, it distinction.

We compare women according to both their mother tongue and the main language spoken where they live. We also study communities near language borders, where people live close to one another but speak, and are exposed to, different language environments. This helps us separate the possible influence of speaking a language from the wider influence of the society in which it is spoken.

We find that women speaking Telugu tend to have lower educational attainment and weaker employment outcomes. The gaps are largest among women who both speak Telugu and live in a Telugu-speaking region. Telugu speakers also express stronger support for traditional divisions between men’s and women’s roles.

The key takeaway of the paper is that language and culture may reinforce each other, so disentangling one from another is important when studying gender inequality and the role of language in shaping gender norms.

Finally, my third paper, “Carbon Concessions”, written with Etienne Le Rossignol and Guy Pincus, studies privately managed carbon projects in sub-Saharan Africa. These projects aim to reduce global carbon emissions, often by placing limits on how land and forests can be used. We study where these projects are located and what happens to nearby economic activity after they begin.

We built a new atlas of certified carbon projects in sub-Saharan Africa and combined it with information on forests, agriculture, local communities, land ownership, and nighttime light. 

We find that carbon projects are often placed in forested and agriculturally valuable areas. They also frequently overlap with land inhabited by politically marginalised communities. After a project begins, local economic activity declines and remains lower. The decline is strongest for conservation projects, projects on public land, and places where forests were already under pressure.

The key takeaway is that these projects may produce genuine environmental benefits, but those benefits can come with local economic costs. The results therefore underline the need to consider how projects affect land access, livelihoods, and the distribution of benefits among local communities.

This paper has received substantial funding from the Wheeler Institute for Business and Development and ReCIPE. 

What could be the policy implications of your thesis?

A common theme across my thesis is that policies and institutions should not be judged only by their average results. For example, private investment can improve infrastructure and create economic activity, but those gains may be concentrated in particular places or groups. Environmental policies can generate global benefits while restricting local livelihoods. Cultural norms can also affect opportunities even when they are not written into law.

What bearing will your doctoral experience have on your career plans?

I will pursue an academic career in economics, with a focus on development economics and economic history. I am very excited to continue this work as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Sydney, where I’ve joined an ambitious project on the socioeconomic impacts of colonisation in Australia. The project examines how colonisation has shaped health, economic development, the environment, inequality, and culture, with particular attention to communities that have historically been excluded or disadvantaged.

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On 26 May 2026, Orlando Roman defended with honours his PhD thesis in Economics, titled “Essays on Culture and Private Institutions”. The committee was presided by Professor Jean-Louis Arcand and included Professor Martina Viarengo, Thesis Director, and Professor Elias Papaioannou, London Business School, UK.

Citation of the PhD thesis: 
Roman, Orlando. “Essays on Culture and Private Institutions.” PhD thesis, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, 2026.

Access to the PhD thesis:
An abstract of the PhD thesis is available on this page of the Geneva Graduate Institute’s repository. As the thesis itself is embargoed until June 2029, please contact Dr Roman for access. 

Check out the latest updates on Dr Roman’s research at https://www.orlandoroman.com/.

Banner image: Lourenço Marques Port and Railways Administration, Map of Portuguese East Africa, Published and Presented by The Lourenço Marques Port and Railways Administration, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Cartes et Plans, GE B-1436, 1931. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Interview by Nathalie Tanner, Research Office.