Working Papers

1. Labour Provisions in PTAs: A Text Mining Approach to Assessing Mobility Implications (with Rupa Chanda).

Abstract: Bilateral Labour Agreements (BLAs) and the associated mobility provisions aim to facilitate the flow of people while allaying several concerns related to migration by ensuring temporariness. This paper contributes to the existing literature by assessing the impact of these provisions and agreements on bilateral labour flows or mode 4-based services trade. This paper studies the effect of BLAs on annual bilateral migration flows and addresses several endogeneity concerns using a PPML estimation technique with three-way fixed effects, dynamic panel estimation, and controlling for unilateral liberalization of immigration policies. We additionally examine the impact of labour provisions in Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) on mobility between the signing countries by using a new method to measure the ‘breadth’ and ‘depth’ of PTAs. To our knowledge, this is the first paper to measure breadth and depth of labour provisions using content analysis of PTAs. Using content analysis techniques, we seek to evaluate the impact of not only the existence of labour provisions but also the content of labour provisions. Lastly, we decompose the labour provisions in a way that allows us to isolate the true effect of labour liberalization policies from other labour provisions, like labour rights. The findings of this study highlight the need for deeper agreements with more labour liberalization policies, as they have a greater impact on labour mobility compared to provisions on labour rights. 


2. Impact of Deeper Trade Agreements on Bilateral Services Trade  (with Rupa Chanda).

Abstract: This paper examines how trade agreements enhance services trade and explores the mechanisms driving this impact. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, it complements existing literature by demonstrating that broader and deeper service provisions within trade agreements have a stronger effect on promoting services trade.  Using a novel framework to account for trade-creation effects of agreements, it addresses simultaneity bias and establishes that only past changes in service provisions drive trade, with no evidence of anticipation effects.  Second, the paper examines the impact of services provisions within trade agreements by accounting for the role of goods trade as a channel through which exports of enabling and supporting services increase along with goods exports. The findings confirm that service provisions in trade agreements significantly enhance bilateral services trade, even after accounting for the effects of goods trade. 


3. Bilateral Agreements as an Instrument to Regulate Mobility of Healthcare Professionals, a case study on India (with Rupa Chanda). Available as an IIMB Working paper.


4. Bridging the Gap: Addressing the Lack of Sectoral Data in Bilateral Remittances by Indian Health Workers



Scholarship

Mirae Asset Scholar 2022-23 for Ph.D research work.


Publications

Book Chapter

Invited Talks

Guest Speaker as a part of the Panel titled "The Missing Gender in Global Trade" by India SME Forum, Bengaluru, 2024.


Media Coverage


Conferences

1. Bay of Bengal Economic Dialogue 2021, South Asian Network on Economic Modelling (SANEM) Dhaka, Bangladesh, Feb 2021

2. Indian Academy of Management (INDAM), Indian Institute of Management Rohtak, India, Jan 2022

3. Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE) Annual conference, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India, April 2022

4. Annual SITES Conference 2022, Università Parthenope, Naples, Italy, Sept 2022

5. Eighth International Conference on Empirical Issues in International Trade & Finance (EIITF), New Delhi, India, Dec 2022 

6. Asia-Pacific Conference on Economics and Finance (APEF), Singapore, Dec 2022

7. 2nd Society for Economics Research in India – Doctoral (SERI-D) Annual PhD students Conference 2022, Dec 2022 

8. Meeting of Young Minds in Frontiers of Economics Conference, IIT Bombay, Feb 2024

9. Indian Diaspora: Paving the Path of VIKSIT BHARAT by 2047, JNU New Delhi, Feb 2025 (accepted)

10. 11th World Conference on Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences and Education, Bangkok, Nov 2025

11. Emerging Markets Finance and Trade Conference (EMFT), IIT Bombay, Dec 2025

12. ISLE Annual Conference, Symbiosis School of Economics (accepted for Jan 2026)


Academic Service

Referee service for IIMB Management Review (ABDC-B), International Journal of Energy Sector Management, and Indian Growth and Development Review (ABDC-C).