Research

Flooding has become among the most prevalent and costly natural disasters globally, with 20 percent of the world’s population in flood-prone areas, 90 percent of which are in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). With economic activity concentrated in cities, urban markets represent the primary center requiring climate adaptation as well as a primary source for change. Evaluating climate impacts in rapidly growing LMIC cities requires incorporating vacant land expansion alongside a potentially large informal sector. I focus on Mumbai, a major urban center facing severe inland and coastal flooding that is projected to worsen. I employ a quantitative spatial general equilibrium model featuring individuals, formal and informal firms, and formal and informal housing to quantify how flooding reshapes economic activity in Mumbai. I document a formal-informal divide in urban housing market responses to flood risk. Flood exposure lowers the profitability of formal development, depressing formal prices and construction, while informal development expands onto lower-value, higher-risk land. I document these patterns empirically, showing how flooding affects formal prices, formal and informal development, and the informal share of the housing stock. I establish that slums are more likely to be located in areas with higher flooding and in places projected to have deeper floods; they are also larger and are growing into areas of increased flood risk. Formal amenities are correlated with flooding while informal amenities are not. Productivity in both sectors is negatively affected by flooding. Incorporating informal market dynamics and land availability is critical for analyzing climate impacts and policy in developing cities.

Previously titled Urban Informality in the Wake of Floods: Evidence from Mumbai

Global refugee crises have renewed interest in understanding the economic consequences of forced migration. While existing research focuses on the short-run effects of recent displacement episodes, less is known about the long-run impacts of refugee resettlement. We study the economic impacts of receiving refugees during Partition of India, one of the 20th century’s largest population displacements. Our empirical strategy exploits variation in Indian districts' transportation links to high-outflow Pakistani districts. We find that refugee exposure had positive long-run economic effects. Seventy years later, places that received more refugees have higher night-time luminosity, more employment and more large firms, especially in manufacturing. Households in refugee-exposed districts have higher consumption, asset ownership and schooling, and show greater intergenerational mobility in educational attainment. Our findings are not driven by population growth or refugees selecting fast-growing areas, but rather a change in the composition and location of economic activity.

Draft available upon request.

Draft available upon request.

I study a new topic in the growing literature on the economic impact of climate change: the impact of climate change on slum growth. In this paper I investigate how climate change contributes to slum growth through the main mechanism of climate induced migration, looking at urban areas in India from 2002 to 2012. I investigate how slum growth is related to climate change by looking at slum size and boundary changes in response to anomalous weather events and examine migration as a main mechanism. I find that migration is a driver of slum growth in India: specifically urban-urban migration. Among areas with slums, waterlogged slums grow the fastest, and are increasing in size, especially in areas of high, anomalous rainfall. These findings suggest that while traditional drivers of slum growth such as urbanization and migration exist in the Indian context, climate induced changes are also relevant.

Draft available upon request.