Younger Children and Mothers’ Labour Supply in Rural India: Evidence from Fertility Stopping Behaviour (Published at Journal of Population Research)
This paper estimates the causal effect of having young children aged 0 to 5 years on mothers’ labour force participation in rural India. In order to address the potential endogeneity in the fertility decision, I exploit Indian families’ preference for having sons. I leverage exogenous variation in the gender of older children aged 6+ years as an instrumental variable for having younger children aged 0 to 5 years in the family. IV estimates show that the mothers’ participation is significantly reduced by 9.9% due to the presence of young children aged 0 to 5 years in the household, with the negative effect mostly driven by mothers belonging to the highest income quartile; mothers with high education; and mothers residing in nuclear families.
Kerala’s silent crisis: Educated youth, but locked out of work (Ideas For India)
Despite performing well in terms of educational access and attainment, the southern state of Kerala exhibits very high rates of youth who are not in education, employment, or training. Based on qualitative interviews with a range of stakeholders in the state, Isha Gupta this note seeks to unpack this paradox. It highlights the mismatch between youth aspirations and available jobs, which causes several well-educated young persons to out-migrate in search of better prospects.
What The GST Tax Notices To Gaming Companies Tell Us About India’s ‘Friction Factor’ (Inc42)
The news article discusses how recent GST tax notices issued to gaming companies in India highlight the regulatory “friction” — ambiguity, enforcement gaps, and evolving tax interpretations — that digital and platform-based firms face. It argues that these notices reflect broader systemic challenges in aligning taxation policy with rapidly evolving business models in sectors like gaming, and calls for clearer regulatory frameworks to reduce uncertainty.
The Role of Social Identity and Perceived Discrimination in Human Capital Formation: Evidence from India (R&R at Journal of Development Studies)
I examine the role of caste and parents’ perceived social discrimination on human capital development in India. I investigate the age at which gaps across castes in children’s cognitive outcomes and parental investments in children’s education originate and how they evolve over time from the age of 5 years to 15 years. I find significant and persistent differences in test scores as well as parental investment between children belonging to lower vs. upper Hindu castes. These gaps cannot be completely explained by the differences in SES across castes. Parents’ perceived social discrimination hampers parental investment throughout the childhood, but it negatively affects children’s outcomes only at later ages.
Prenatal Sex Detection Technology and Mothers’ Labour Supply in India (joint with Marco Bertoni and Guglielmo Weber) (Submitted)
The advent of prenatal sex diagnostic technology (PSDT) in India in mid-eighties has made it easier for women to identify the sex of the children before their birth, giving them an option to abort unwanted female foetuses and attain desired sex composition of children without having to undergo repeated pregnancies. In this paper we investigate the impact of this technology on mothers’ labour supply using triple differencing. Our strategy combines supply-driven changes in ultrasound availability with plausibly exogenous family-level variation in the incentive to sex-select and son preference at the regional level which captures variation in proclivity to sex-select at the regional level. We find a significant reduction in mothers’ labour supply subsequent to wider availability of PSDT in India post 1995. We further investigate various underlying channels linking prenatal sex selection and mothers’ labour supply and identify two important channels- changes in fertility and reduction in postnatal discrimination against firstborn girls.
Investor Sentiment in the Indian E-commerce Landscape (Joint with Kamlesh Kumar, Piyasha Majumdar)
This paper explores the intricate relationship between regulatory frameworks and investor sentiment within India’s e-commerce industry, which has experienced significant growth since the mid-2010s. The study uses qualitative interviews with twelve investors to assess the impact of various regulations on investor sentiment. While investors remain optimistic about India’s long-term economic potential, regulations that distinguish between domestic and foreign capital generate moderate concerns. Additionally, regulatory uncertainty and over-regulation have been found to negatively affect investment sentiment. Next, using detailed investment data from Tracxn, the paper quantifies the association between key e-commerce regulations and investment in the e-commerce sector highlighting the negative influence of certain regulations. The paper emphasizes the need for balanced regulatory strategies to foster growth in the sector and underscores the importance of stable, clear regulatory policies in maintaining investor confidence. It calls for careful management of regulatory impacts to avoid unintended negative consequences and identifies areas for future research on how regulatory dynamics shape investor behaviour in the evolving e-commerce landscape.
Malaria and Economic Development in the Short-term: Plasmodium falciparum vs Plasmodium vivax (joint with Michaela Kecskesova and Stepan Mikula)