Research

Papers:

Publication:

“Status of Women in Oklahoma”, United WE project, April 2022, (with Laura Ahlstrom)

I examine the socio-economic status of women in Oklahoma across five major categories, namely, employment and earnings, childcare, healthcare, poverty and social insurance and civic engagement. We find that gender gap in earnings is larger while participation is lower among women in Oklahoma against national average. Such disparities across genders were also witnessed in terms of availability/ accessibility to health insurance and poverty rates. The women in Oklahoma perform poorly in terms of representation in political arenas as well.

Dissertation Chapters:

“The Nexus Between Trade Liberalization, Women labor Force Participation and Child Health: The Case of Indonesia”, (Job Market Paper, Review and Resubmit at Economic Modelling)

In my job market paper, I try to gauge how trade openness affects a child’s health mediated via mother’s labor force participation using Instrumental Variables (IV) strategy. Trade liberalization is one of the factors that affect child health, and it can occur via changes in the parents’ earning opportunities---a channel not yet explored in the literature (as per my knowledge). If mothers are offered higher work opportunities, then long hours devoted to the place of job can guarantee higher wages and better nutrition for children, but it also comes with less time devoted to child-rearing responsibilities and higher incidence of diseases among children. Exploiting the regional variation in tariff reductions that occurred in Indonesia in the 1990s and 2000s following the adoption of liberalization of trade, I find that trade liberalization caused improvements in child health outcomes for children aged five years and below. Reductions in tariffs led to significant increase in the likelihood of females joining the labor force across the sample. Using the sample of only urban mothers and children, I find that there exists an unambiguous beneficial effect of tariff cuts on height-for-age z-scores that is mediated through mother’s participation decision. Such significant results also exist for children whose mothers are young and highly educated. These results lead us to believe that policymaking should be more inclined to promote better education among women and provision of childcare services should take centerstage.

"A relationship between Trade Liberalization and Economic Mobility under the Indonesian Context", (work in progress)

In this paper, I examine the impact of trade liberalization on both intergenerational and intragenerational economic mobility in Indonesia over the period of  21 years, namely 1993-2014. I achieve this by combining information on regional variation in tariff exposure with consumption expenditure data. Using Bartik instruments and rank-rank mobility measures on father-child pairs, I find that districts that faced higher exposure of tariff reforms also witnessed higher upward mobility among adult children. The effects are even more pronounced for adult children living in urban areas, among male children and among younger age cohort of children. Similar higher upward directional mobility is witnessed for the intragenerational study as well where one individual is tracked over the entire time period. Further I show that this improvement in mobility is caused to due to higher employment mobility in terms of greater employment in formal sector jobs. The results remain robust across various specifications of the outcome variable and across co-resident father-child pairs.

 “The Effects of Highway Removal in Monroe County, NY: Housing Prices and other Neighborhood Effects”, (work in progress with Rui Du and Brent Norwood)

In this paper, we estimate the impact of highway removal on housing prices and overall economic development of an area after removal. We find that with removal of a segment of a highway in Monroe County, New York, housing prices in the region increased. This might reflect the aversion of residents to bad air quality, noise pollution or congestion effects for being close to the highway. We also analyze other amenity effects stemming from highway removal that might have triggered housing prices. We notice that the hospitality industry (arts, entertainment and recreation), financial industry and healthcare industry have flourished in the area both in terms of greater number of establishments and also greater proportion of workers sorting into those industries. We also notice that the proportion of people who use bikes in the area have increased which might have longer term beneficial impacts on health due to reduction of air pollution. Another interesting finding in terms of economic significance lies in the fact that we notice that the number of black inhabitants in the area has increased. 

Mimeographed:

“Aspects of Informal Sector and Economic Development: A Brief Survey of Theoretical Models under General Equilibrium”, (with Kausik Gupta)

A theme-based literature survey on theoretical models on informal sector has been done in the present paper. The survey is confined to some important theoretical general equilibrium trade models in the context of the informal sector. We have started from relevant portions of Chandra and Khan (1993) model and have shown that how other models of informal sector differs from Chandra and Khan (1993). Next we have examined the validity of Brecher-Alejandro (1977) proposition in terms of various general equilibrium models of informal sector. We have also considered issues of informal wage and development policies in the context of informal sector  in order to examine the relevance of the issues in the context of a developing economy. The scope for future research has also been discussed in the paper. 

Other works in progress:

"An investigation into the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on US industries: The Case of Wholesale, Retail trade and Information Industry"

"Gender-specific effects of Trade in Zambia: The Case of African Growth and Opportunity Act"

"The Impact of Trade on Health: A close look at the Canadian provinces",(work in progress)

 "Conditional Cash Transfer and Child Marriage in India: Kanyashree Project in West Bengal", (work in progress)