Beatriz Silva da Costa

I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia and a Predoctoral Fellow at the School of Foreign Service and Department of Government, Georgetown University. I am also a Research Associate at States and Institutions of Governance in Latin America (SIGLA), hosted by Georgetown's Center for Latin American Studies. In the spring of 2025, I was a Visiting Researcher at the Getulio Vargas Foundation's São Paulo School of Business Administration (FGV EAESP).

Working at the intersection of comparative politics and political economy, I examine how political institutions — bureaucracies, accountability institutions, electoral rules, and local governments — shape, and are shaped by, the politics of public goods provision. My research bridges quantitative and qualitative methods, combining causal inference, computational text analysis, and machine learning with fieldwork and interviews.

My work has appeared in Revista E-Legis and the Journal of the General Comptroller of the Union, as well as in edited volumes on democracy and anti-corruption policy. My research has been supported by the Carl Menger Fellowship at the Mercatus Center, the Bankard Fund for Political Economy at UVA, the Institute for Humane Studies, the UVA Center for Global Inquiry & Innovation, the Quandt Fund for International Research, the UVA Quantitative Collaborative, the Lemann Foundation, and the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq).