Research

Abstract: I examine whether industrial policy components are complementary in the context of Operation Flood, a large-scale agro-processing industrial policy in India that sought to address multiple interacting market failures. I construct a novel district-by-year map of the two program components – farmer cooperatives and dairy processing plants – by digitizing the implementing agency’s annual reports. I find that in districts that receive both components, farmgate milk prices increase by 33% during the flush season. This increase in prices is larger than the sum of the effects of individual components. A stylized model explains this complementarity.  Cooperatives alone may saturate local markets, while plants alone may not transmit their added value upstream. The bundle of both policies routes surplus milk to processing and passes value back to farmers. Moreover, I find that the industrial employment share increases by 1.7 percentage points in bundle districts. This increase is driven by employment gains in non-food manufacturing, and input-output linkages account for approximately 80% of these gains.

Abstract: Can temporary wartime mobilization change the long-run development trajectory of an economy? We study how mobilization for World War II in colonial India influenced its subsequent long-run economic development. From 1939 to 1945, the British colonial government purchased massive amounts of war materiel within India. We study long-run impacts on Indian structural transformation – the transition of employment from agriculture to the modern sectors (industry and services) – in Indian districts. Causal identification takes a shift-share approach, exploiting variation across industries in war-related government orders, and variation across districts in their pre-war industrial structure. Our analysis covers nine decades (1921-2011), and makes use of a wide array of newly digitized data. We find that World War II economic mobilization (procurement of war materiel) had a positive and significant impact on long-run structural transformation in Indian districts. More than six decades later, Indian districts that experienced higher demand for war materiel during the war experienced higher structural transformation from agriculture towards industry and services. We find substantial spillovers across economic sectors, particularly towards services sectors that were not directly subject to the initial World-War-II-related demand.

Abstract: How does being connected to a local elected leader affect property tax compliance? Using a close election difference-in-discontinuities design with novel administrative data from an Indian district, we examine whether citizens who share their surname with winning candidates face different tax liability and compliance outcomes. We find that surname-sharing citizens face 804 INR higher annual property tax assessments and pay 832 INR more. These effects are concentrated among wealthier property owners. Complementary household survey data reveal that citizens who report social connections with leaders receive more visits and enforcement from the Gram Panchayat office. They also believe they will receive help finding jobs, assistance with Gram Panchayat-related work, and better public goods maintenance when their connected leader is in office, suggesting reciprocal expectations play a role in increasing compliance.

Abstract: Can place-based policies generate spillovers beyond the places they target? We study this question in the context of India's 2005 Special Economic Zones Act. We reconstruct each zone's regulatory history over the last two decades, assemble a dataset of exact zone boundaries, and link it to India's 600,000 villages and towns and to the geocoded addresses of 2.9 million firms. We compare locations near zones that became operational with locations near zones that had not yet become operational. Operational zones generate substantial local activity: exports and employment inside them grew more than twentyfold. Sales rise by about 30 percent for firms inside a boundary and 8 percent for incumbents within ten kilometers. In host villages, population rises by 13 percent and nonfarm employment by 31 percent over a decade, and the nonfarm employment share by 5.8 percentage points, while agricultural employment is unchanged; employment in the villages' establishments rises by two fifths. Units do not leave when their tax holiday expires.The expansion has the signature of a local demand multiplier rather than of a supply chain: host establishments grow alike in industries upstream, downstream and unrelated to the zone, new firms enter within a kilometer of the boundary in unrelated industries, and consumer and producer services expand with the population, which arrives as whole households. Spillovers extend beyond the zone but fade within ten kilometers, through the demand the zones' workers and firms bring to local services; five to thirty kilometers out, small establishments are a tenth fewer.

Abstract: This chapter surveys the implications of some studies in network economics research for economic development. We focus on information flow and risk-sharing—two topics where work in theory, empirics, and policy analysis have been especially intensive and complementary. In analysing information, we distinguish models of information diffusion and aggregation, highlight how different models imply very different guidance regarding the right way to seed information. In discussing risk-sharing, we look at the key frictions that impede efficient informal insurance, and some potential unintended consequences when policymakers intervene to help. Throughout, we stress practical insights that can be used with limited measurement of the details of networks

Abstract: This paper documents, using a newly-constructed data set, the evolution of the characteristics of employer-sponsored DC schemes. The features we focus on are their match schedules, vesting schedules, and the extent of ‘auto-features’ (i.e. presence of auto-enrollment, the level of any default contribution, and presence and details of auto-escalation). The data we construct is formed by hand-coding the details in narrative plan descriptions attached to plan filings. Our data covers approximately 5,000 plans, covering up to 37 million participants annually, for the period 2003-2017. We document that matching schedules, when they are offered, have become more generous over time. However, the proportion of firms offering a match fell sharply during the Great Recession and the proportion offering one did not recover to its pre-financial crisis level for almost a decade. Vesting schedules for DC plans have remained essentially unchanged since 2003, while the proportion of plans with auto-enrollment has increased dramatically over the same period. We find that the vast majority of plans that offer auto-enrollment have a default rate that is substantially lower than the level that would fully exploit the match offered by the employers.