Creating Cohesive Communities: A Youth Camp Experiment in India (with Prerna Kundu, Matt Lowe and Gareth Nellis)
Review of Economic Studies, Volume 93, Issue 1, January 2026, Pages 438–475
Religious Divisions and Production Technology: Experimental Evidence from India (SSRN Link)
Journal of Political Economy, Volume 133, Number 10, October 2025, Pages 3249-3304
Links and legibility: Making sense of historical U.S. Census automated linking methods (with Sam II Myoung Hwang and Munir Squires)
Journal of Business & Economic Statistics 42, no. 2 (2024): 579–90
Working paper version, with comparative evaluation of migration across linking algorithms: Main text, Tables and Figures, Appendix
Economic consequences of kinship: Evidence from US bans on cousin marriage (with Sam II Myoung Hwang and Munir Squires)
Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 138, Issue 4, November 2023, Pages 2559–2606
Identity Uncertainty (with Anujit Chakraborty, Matt Lowe and Gareth Nellis) (NBER Working Paper #35364)
Learning About Outgroups: The Impact of Broad Versus Deep Interactions (with Anujit Chakraborty, Matt Lowe and Gareth Nellis)
Identity Politics, Partisan Sentiment and Household Spending (with Aruni Mitra and Ronit Mukherji) (SSRN Link)
Revise and Resubmit, Journal of Public Economics
Industrialization and Integration in America: Evidence from Marriage Networks (with Sam II Myoung Hwang and Munir Squires)
Predictive Risk Scores in the Public Sector: Experimental Evidence from Child-Protection Investigations (with Jason Baron and Richard Lombardo)
Are Social Identities Substitutes? Evidence from the Introduction of School House Systems in India (with Matt Lowe, Meghna Sinha Ray, Gareth Nellis, Johny Tom Varghese) (Draft coming soon)
Abstract: Are newly created identities capable of supplanting traditional group attachments in places with entrenched social divisions? Many organizations, from state militaries to scouting movements, have attempted to advance social integration by encouraging individuals to identify with groups that cut across existing ethnic, gender, and religious lines. Yet, few studies rigorously assess the effectiveness of such efforts outside controlled laboratory settings or other artificial environments. We examine a recategorization approach to intergroup relations using a large-scale randomized evaluation of a House System implemented in 176 middle and secondary schools in Tamil Nadu, India. Half of the schools were randomly assigned to split students into four mixed Houses, bringing together children from different genders and social backgrounds; schools organized a range of academic, athletic, and extracurricular activities around these new affiliations. Twenty months after the system's introduction, we measured its impacts on identity formation, friendship networks, school climate, and outgroup attitudes, through surveys of 2,455 students. The intervention successfully generated awareness of---and attachment to---House identities among students, demonstrating that institutions are capable of cultivating new forms of collective belonging. At the same time, estimated effects on all downstream outcomes are small and statistically indistinguishable from zero. Overall, our results suggest that newly forged identities can coexist with longstanding group loyalties without replacing them, underscoring the limits of recategorization as a tool for building social cohesion in naturalistic settings.
Building Belonging: Evaluating the Impacts of Pre-Term Camps on School Social Climate and Student Outcomes in India (with Madeline McKelway and Gareth Nellis)
Abstract: This project evaluates whether short pre-term camps can help students begin secondary school with stronger peer relationships and a greater sense of belonging. The transition to secondary school is a brief window when friendships, classroom norms, and patterns of inclusion are still taking shape. Working with schools and implementation partners in India, we study a low-cost, non-residential camp model that brings students together before the school year begins through structured activities designed to build trust, collaboration, and respectful interaction. The evaluation randomizes access across schools and varies the gender composition of activity groups, allowing us to study how early peer interaction shapes school climate and relations across gender lines. More broadly, the project asks whether a light-touch intervention at a key educational transition can help create a more inclusive and supportive school environment.
Economic Shocks and the Politics of Media Attention (with Siwan Anderson and Debraj Ray)
Abstract: Media outlets play an important role in shaping which issues receive public attention. This project studies how news coverage responds to periods of economic stress, and whether unfavorable economic conditions shift attention away from economic news and toward social and identity-related issues. Using social media data, we compare patterns of coverage across outlets and over time. Preliminary evidence suggests that outlets more favorable to the state devote less attention to unfavorable economic news while increasing coverage of social and identity-related issues, and that this content often generates higher audience engagement. The project speaks to broader questions about media incentives and accountability, and how public attention is allocated across competing issues.
Zero-Sum Thinking, Complexity, and Scapegoating (with Ritwik Banerjee and Puja Bhattacharya)
Abstract: This project develops an experimental measure of zero-sum thinking—the belief that one person’s economic gain comes at another’s expense. Participants form beliefs about another person’s earnings under an allocation process whose underlying structure is known, allowing us to compare their beliefs with a rational benchmark. We then vary how complex and difficult that process is to understand, and test whether greater complexity leads people to interpret economic outcomes in more zero-sum terms. We also vary the social identity of the person with whom they interact. The project asks whether zero-sum thinking is shaped by opaque economic environments and whether complexity makes people more likely to attribute unfavorable outcomes to members of other groups.
"Prejudice in a pandemic: Covid rumours and factory labour supply", Ideas for India, 8th May, 2020