Research and projects

Publications

  What Did They Say? Respondent identity, question framing and the measurement of employment (with Rosa Abraham, Hema Swaminathan and Rahul Lahoti). World Bank Economic Review 2026. 

Media Mention: The India Forum. View

Abstract: Using data from a primary survey conducted in rural India, we examine how two key survey design features - respondent identity and question framing - affect employment estimates. First, we assess the causal impact of (i) replacing single weekly employment question with a set of detailed activity-specific questions, and (ii) changing the reference period from a week to individual days. We find that the detailed module yields significantly higher estimates for women’s employment with no effect on men. Second, using spousal respondent pairs, we find that proxy reports by men significantly underestimate women’s employment. For men, there is no deviation between self and proxy estimates.  Within each type of employment, there are significant deviations for both genders. Intra-household analysis suggests misreporting is driven by asymmetric information and gender norms. These findings highlight the importance of self-reporting and detailed questions for accurately measuring employment with implications for improving survey design in resource-constrained contexts.

Using Laboratory and Field Experiments to Examine the Impact of Stereotypes (with Sujoy Chakravarty). Studies in Indian Politics. 2025.

Abstract: This paper offers a methodological exploration of the experimental approach in social science research, with a focus on studies that explore the economic impact of stereotypes. The latter are widely held but fixed and oversimplified images pertaining to social groups. The prevalence of such beliefs which may on average be incorrect, may lead to significant losses in economic efficiency and sub-optimal social and developmental outcomes. In this context, experiments provide a controlled environment to isolate causal relationships, enabling researchers to identify the effects of stereotypes on behavior and performance. In studies of stereotype threat, for example, laboratory and field experiments allow the manipulation of identity salience and other contextual factors to observe their impact on outcomes such as cognitive performance, effort, and decision-making. As real world micro data on behaviour of agents within institutions is difficult to capture and metricize, experiments allow scholars an easy and rigourous way to test theoretical models, and investigate mechanisms underlying complex social phenomena particularly in the study of inter-group discrimination in labour markets.

Working Papers

Colourism, confidence and productivity: Experimental evidence from India (with Sujoy Chakravarty and Takashi Kurosaki) Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5120351 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5120351. January, 2025 (Job Market Paper)

Abstract: Much of the developing world was colonized by Europeans and Central Asians who had lighter skin tone than the people whom they colonized. Cultural beliefs often change slowly and cultural stereotypes, even today, associate light skin colour with superiority, power, rationality, intellect, and beauty. We report that when skin colour is made salient in an experiment with 799 Indian undergraduate students, light-skinned students perform better, i.e., obtain a stereotype boost on a test considered to be diagnostic of verbal and analytical ability, compared to a control group of otherwise similar students. However, no complementary pattern of lowering of performance, i.e. stereotype threat, is seen among darker individuals when they are made conscious of their skin colour. Disaggregating participants by sample attributes, we find that the stereotype boost in productivity is stronger for lighter-skinned individuals of the upper caste, lighter-skinned women and those who consider themselves to be physically attractive. Darker men display increased task confidence, though this is not accompanied by an increase in task productivity. Finally, among individuals who perceive themselves poorer, we find that those with a lighter complexion experience a boost, while darker individuals experience a stereotype threat, which lowers task performance. 

Skin Colour Salience and Perceived Discrimination: An Experimental Study from India. (with Sujoy Chakravarty and Divya Vaid) Avilable at: GLO Discussion Papers

We explore the effect of making skin colour salient on the perceptions discrimination of a group of college students from Kolkata and Delhi in India. Besides perceptions of skin colour discrimination, we also ask our participants to self-report discrimination they may have felt pertaining to their appearance, caste, income, education and gender. We find that compared to the control group, both lighter and darker skinned participants report significantly higher instances of overall discrimination. For darker-skinned individuals these experiences of discrimination are driven significantly by skin colour and appearance. On the other hand, our lighter skinned sample who are more elite on average, perceive higher overall discrimination arising from being excluded from income and employment opportunities. 

Policy Writings

Looking beyond employment-unemployment: Labour utilisation and Time-related underemployment, evidence from labour market experiments in India. Measurement brief-NDIC Fellows Programme(2023-24), NCAER National Data Innovation Centre, New Delhi, 2024.

Measuring Women’s Employment. State of India's Livelihoods (2025): 125. (with Rosa Abraham, Hema Swaminathan and Rahul Lahoti)

Work In Progress

Unveiling Mobility Constraints: Financial Inclusion, Physical Autonomy and Female Labour force Participation in India (with Pallavi Choudhuri)

The effect of physical mobility on female labour force participation remains understudied due to the endogenous selection issue associated with it. This paper overcomes this identification challenge by exploiting a nationwide financial inclusion shock, initiated in 2014, the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), as an exogenous instrument for physical mobility. We employ an instrumental variable (IV) framework to examine the linkage between mobility and work participation of a longitudinal panel of ever-married women from the two waves (2011-12 and 2022-24) of the nationally representative India Human Development Survey (IHDS), matched with district-level banking data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The estimates indicate that a policy-induced expansion in physical mobility causally increases the probability of entering paid employment. Our Local Average Treatment Effect (LATE) estimates reveal a 77 percentage point increase in labor market entry strictly among the cohort of highly constrained compliers: previously unbanked, purdah (veiling)-observing women residing in high-density PMJDY districts by 77 percentage points. These employment gains concentrate for previously unbanked women residing in high density PMJDY districts, with effects concentrated among purdah (veiling)-observing women, where mobility constraints are most binding. Our results indicate that financial inclusion may act as a catalyst through which socio-economic change occurs, provided complementarities between banking access and investments in women's safety and structural mobility constraints are harnessed.

Where Credit is due: Evaluating the effect of SHG on interest rates and Women's empowerment (with Sonalde Desai)

This paper provides the first nationally representative causal evidence of the long-term impact of a government administered credit price shock on formal credit market integration and women’s economic agency in India. The SHG interest subvention program of the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) was designed to address the high informal cost of borrowing faced by poorer women who were historically locked out of organised lending. We study the impact of the NRLM scheme which administers the price of formal credit available to women's SHGs by providing interest subsidies. Using household panel data from various rounds of IHDS and a Difference-in-Difference design, we show that identified households in category 1 priority districts experience a significantly larger decline in annualised cost of borrowing and a greater shift towards formal share of credit compared to all other districts. Exploiting this policy-induced variation as an instrument, we find that reduction in the cost of borrowing causally increases women’s participation in non-farm business employment. We also find evidence for higher intra-household decision making, physical autonomy and political participation among policy-compliant women at the endline. Our identification goes beyond the existing SHG literature in highlighting a cost of borrowing or price channel which sheds light on how microfinance and financial inclusion policies interactively reshape women’s economic agency. 

Skin Colour Stereotypes, Emotional Affect and Economic Decision-Making (with Sujoy Chakravarty)

Abstract: In this study, we explore if emotions induced by evoking a skin colour stereotype affect self-confidence, task productivity and risk preference of an individual. Our experiment reinforces a polarizing skin colour stereotype using photographs of famous Indian actors in their glamorous light-skinned appearance and in roles where they darken their skin colour to play underprivileged characters. We find that lighter-skinned individuals who register higher positive affect after our stereotype elicitation exercise display higher confidence, task productivity, and appetite for risk-taking compared to their counterparts in the control group who have increased positive affect but are not taken through this exercise. Darker individuals in our treatment group who self-report negative affects display higher self-confidence compared to their counterparts in the control group. However, darker individuals in our treatment group with either positive or negative affects do not register significantly high productivity or risk appetite as compared with their counterparts in the control group. Our results suggest that reinforcing the superiority of a privileged group may lead to increases in productivity and risk-taking that is mediated through the affect channel.