Research Work

We estimate the causal effects of judges’ exposure to communal violence during early childhood on pretrial detention rates by exploiting novel administrative data on judgments and detailed resumes of judicial officers born during 1955–1991. Our key result is that judges exposed to communal violence between ages 0 and 6 years are 16% more prone to deny bail than the average judge, with the impact being stronger for the experience of riots between ages 3 and 6 years. The observed judicial stringency is driven by childhood exposure to riots with a higher duration of state-imposed lockdowns and low riot casualties. 

Abstract: Barriers to justice perpetuate poverty and economic inequality. We study the impact of a large-scale expansion of access to legal representation: the establishment of legal aid clinics in prisons across India. We collect the opening dates of over 750 prison legal aid clinics and match these to (i) data on over 13 million criminal cases and (ii) prison population statistics. Our empirical strategy exploits the staggered roll-out of clinics in a difference-in-differences design. We find that defendants with access to legal aid are more likely to receive a definitive judgement, more likely to get a favorable outcome, and face a higher chance of acquittal relative to conviction. The rise in acquittals is driven by an increase in the share of cases that are dismissed early in the trial. In line with the increasing acquittal rate, we find a reduction in the number of convicts at the prison level. The welfare gain is considerable: 31,055 individuals are spared prison time each year and a return of 7.6 dollars on every dollar spent on legal aid.

Abstract: In this paper, we examine long-run human capital accumulation as an explanation for the growing economic divergence between China and India witnessed from the 1980s onward. By integrating a wide array of historical and educational reports and surveys, we have compiled a novel dataset covering the past 120 years, detailing trends in human capital accumulation in both countries. Utilizing this comprehensive dataset, we establish a comparative framework to analyze the educational development strategies of China and India and evaluate their long-term impacts on inequality and economic development. We show that the development of modern education in China and India diverged along several key dimensions. China adopted a bottom-up approach, prioritizing quantity over quality. Conversely, India implemented a top-down strategy, gradually expanding its educational system while also seeking to maintain quality. Additionally, compared to India’s educational system, China’s system features more diversified secondary and tertiary education, with a strong emphasis on vocational education, teacher training, and engineering. As a result of these divergent strategies, educational inequality is much higher in India, accounting for one-quarter of observed wage inequality, compared to 5-12% in China. Ironically, India has a larger share of tertiary-educated graduates in combination with a significant illiteracy rate, whereas China has a much larger share of primary, secondary, and vocational graduates. High illiteracy in India hinders structural transformation by trapping many in low-productivity agriculture, while tertiary education in the humanities and accounting has tended to foster service sector growth. Conversely, China's better mix of engineering and vocational graduates has produced human capital well-suited for manufacturing sector growth. 

Abstract: We combine national income accounts, wealth aggregates, tax tabulations, rich lists, and surveys on income, consumption, and wealth in a consistent framework to present long run homogeneous series of income and wealth inequality in India. Our estimates suggest that inequality declined post-independence till the early 1980s, after which it began rising and has skyrocketed since the early 2000s. Trends of top income and wealth shares track each other over the entire period of our study. Between 2014-15 and 2022-23, the rise of top-end inequality has been particularly pronounced in terms of wealth concentration. By 2022-23, top 1% income and wealth shares (22.6% and 40.1%) are at their highest historical levels and India’s top 1% income share is among the very highest in the world. In line with earlier work, we find suggestive evidence that the Indian income tax system might be regressive when viewed from the lens of net wealth. We emphasize that the quality of economic data in India is notably poor and has seen a decline recently. It is therefore likely that our results represent a lower bound to actual inequality levels.

Abstract: This paper constructs a new global historical database on public expenditure and revenue and their components—particularly education and health expenditure covering all world regions over the 1800-2025 period. We document a large rise of human capital expenditure (as % of GDP) in all parts of the world in the long run, but with enormous and persistent inequality between regions. Public education expenditure per school-age individual in Sub-Saharan Africa is about 3% of the level observed in Europe and North America in 2025 in PPP terms (versus 6% in 1980 and 4% in 1950). We also find a large impact of human capital expenditure on productivity growth over the 1800-2025 period, especially for public education and for poor countries. Estimated returns using our macro-historical database are around 10% or more, in line with micro studies. Finally, we present simulations based on alternative human capital expenditure trajectories over the 2025-2100 period. In particular, we analyze the conditions under which convergence in human capital expenditure could lead to global productivity convergence by 2100 (around 100€ per hour in all regions in our benchmark scenario).

Abstract: While many developing economies have made progress in providing access to education, the provision of quality education that delivers life-long learning, learning-how-to-learn, and developing the ability to apply knowledge to unfamiliar circumstances is essentially absent. In collaboration with the Agastya Foundation, we conducted a randomized controlled trial in public schools in Uttar Pradesh (India) to evaluate an intervention that provides -- discovery-based pedagogy in science topics -- in 68 "treatment" schools, which are then compared to 64 "control" schools. We find that treated students show remarkable improvement relative to control students: intrinsic factors (curiosity, self-confidence, aspirations, self-efficacy) improved in the range of 0.12 - 0.18 sd, and simultaneously, the perception of barriers reduced by 0.22 sd. Student engagement in science increased in the range of 0.17 - 0.20 sd, and their general engagement in school increased by 0.22. Finally, we find that test scores improved by 0.22-0.31 sd. Our results highlight the importance of adopting child-centric pedagogical practices as an important tool to improve educational quality. 

Abstract: Educational institutions are considered an essential instrument of socio-economic change; however, whether it affects the traditional norms of social inter-mixing remains an empirical question. Caste endogamy, i.e., individuals marrying within the same caste, continues to remain the strongest pillar of the caste system, as the rate of inter-caste marriages (ICM) increased marginally from around 10% in the 1980s cohort to 14% in the 2020 marriage cohort. We study whether historical dynamics of school expansion in rural India had any causal impact on the increase in ICM exploiting variation in school openings across different locations at different times. Using geospatial information from three large-scale datasets, the District Information System for Education (DISE), the Indian Census 2011, and the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 2014-15 and 2019-21, we find one 1 standard deviation (SD) change in school openings (per village) increases ICM by 6%. Exploring the underlying mechanisms, we do not find completed years of education to be the driver, suggesting contact theory to be the likely mechanism. The results suggest that modern educational institutions can be a driver of breaking the rigid traditional norms in India, albeit their relevance may be lower than in other low- and middle-income countries.

Abstract: The increasing level of privatization has been a predominant feature observed in the post-liberalization period in India. We do two things in the paper. First, using nationally representative NSS datasets from 1985 to 2018, we highlight insights into privatization trends by stages of education. For example, privatization in recent years is strongest at the primary level, undeterred by 12 times more expensive private schools on average. The share of enrollment at the primary stage jumped by 20pp (20% in 1985 to 40% in 2018). Second, we estimate the causal effect of the quasi-exogenous change in the share of public primary schools during the parents' school-going age on the decision to send their kid to private school. We find that a 1sd increase (decrease) in the share of public primary school translates into a reduction (increment) of 8.14% probability of sending his own kid to private primary school. We conjecture that it is due to distrust among parents towards the public primary schools due to decades of neglect of primary schooling by the government.

Description: Under the new National Education Policy 2020, Bihar state is implementing project-based learning (PBL) for science in 29,000 middle schools, covering 7 million students. Several potential bottlenecks impede implementation of such large-scale programs, such as imperfect information (teachers lack content and technological knowledge) and moral hazard (risk of teachers shirking without monitoring). We partner with the state government, and education partner NGO (Mantra4change), to test two interventions, targeting improvement of the implementation of PBL. Central to our evaluation methodology is the deployment of a large-scale randomized control trial (RCT), carefully crafted to identify causality within the intricate educational environment of Bihar. We identify two specific treatment interventions: mentoring and monitoring. While mentoring endeavors to provide targeted support and guidance to teachers, nurturing their capacity to implement PBL effectively, monitoring assumes a supervisory role, ensuring adherence to prescribed practices. Through this dichotomous lens, we aim to discern the differential impacts of these interventions, unraveling the optimal pathways for fostering educational transformation.

Status: The baseline survey with 900 teachers and 15K students was completed in Sep'24; Intervention is ongoing; endline survey is scheduled in Sep'25.

Abstract: This research makes two main contributions. First, I combine data from wealth surveys (NSS-AIDIS) and millionaire lists to produce wealth inequality series for India over the 1961-2012 period. I find a strong rise in wealth concentration in recent decades, in line with recent research using income data. E.g. the top 10% wealth share rose from 45% in year 1981 to 68% in 2012, while the top 1% share rose from 27% to 41%. Next, I gather information from censuses and surveys (NSS AIDIS and consumption, IHDS, NFHS) in order to explore the changing relationship between class and caste in India and the mechanisms behind rising inequality.