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I am a Ph.D. student in the Department of Economics at IIT Bombay, India. My doctoral research primarily focused on the product quality of manufacturing firms and industrial policy in India. Broadly, I am interested in firm performance, trade, and the implications of industrial policy. My ongoing work examines the impact of small-scale industry policy on firm performance and the effect of foreign direct investment on the product quality of domestic firms. I am also keen on exploring research questions in international trade and labor economics.
Education:
M.Sc. Economics, Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune, India
B.A. Economics, Fergusson College, Pune, India
Research Areas
Research Areas
Industrial Economics, Industrial Policy, International Economics
Topics: Firm behavior, Product quality, Productivity, SSI dereservation, International trade, Minimum wages
Working Papers
Working Papers
Removing Small-Scale Reservations and Product Quality Upgradation: Evidence from India (with Vidhya Soundararajan). CAFRAL Working Paper pdf
We study the impact of dismantling product reservation for small-scale industry production in India on product quality, shedding light on the relationship between firm size constraints, competition, and quality improvements. Exploiting the Indian government’s phased dereservation of previously reserved products between 2000 to 2007, we find that dereservation incentivized incumbent firms to produce better quality products. The effect is predominantly driven by large and productive firms. Firms constrained by the SSI policy (within the range of 5-10 million rupees investment in plant and machinery) also experienced an increase in quality, indicating a firm-size expansion effect. Large firms that improved the quality after dereservation also experienced an increase in capital intensity and skill intensity. We also observed the decline in quality-adjusted prices, indicating an improvement in consumer welfare. The quality results remain consistent across different variants of quality measures and alternate quality measures based on variable markups. To estimate heterogeneous treatment effects arising from the staggered treatment setup, we employ the De Chaisemartin and d’Haultfoeuille (2022) estimator. Our results are robust to a range of fixed effects and trends, including industry-year fixed effects, industry-time trends, state-year fixed effects, state-time trends, and product-specific time trends.
Foreign Direct Investment and Firms' Product Quality Response: Evidence from India (with Vidhya Soundararajan and K. Narayanan).
We investigate the causal effect of foreign direct investment liberalization (FDI) on the product quality of domestic firms. Our empirical strategy leverages the plausibly exogenous liberalization of select manufacturing industries in India during 2001 and 2006. The analysis reveals that industry-level FDI liberalization leads to a reduction in the quality of products manufactured by domestic firms in liberalized industries. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis that increased competition from foreign entrants adversely affects domestic firm performance. We also document significant positive upstream spillovers from the FDI liberalization of downstream sectors. Finally, we find no evidence of adjustments in firms’ product scope or in the entry and exit of products at the firm level. Our results are robust after controlling for the firm and industry-level variables and accounting for heterogeneous treatment setups using recent staggered DID estimators.
Minimum wages and product quality adjustment by Indian Manufacturing Firms (Work in progress).
Environmental Regulation and Firm Performance (Work in Progress).
Import Competition and Product Quality: Evidence from India ( Work in Progress).
Conferences and Workshops
Conferences and Workshops
SERI Annual Conference, Shiv Nadar University, 2025
Amitava Bose Memorial Annual Workshop, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, 2025
Pacific Conference for Development Economics (PacDev), 2025
2nd Meeting of Young Minds in Frontiers of Economics, IIT Bombay, Institute of New Economic Thinking (INET), 2025
6th Annual Economics Conference, Ahmedabad University, 2025
19th Annual Conference on Economic Growth and Development, ISI Delhi, 2025
Delhi Winter School, Delhi School of Economics, Econometric Society, 2024
2nd ISID National Conference on India’s Industrial Transformation, Institute for Studies in Industrial Development (ISID). 2024
7th IGIDR Ph.D. Colloquium, 2024
Teaching Assistantship
Teaching Assistantship
International Economics I (Instructor: Prof. Vidhya Soundararajan), Autumn 2022
Economics (Instructor: Prof. Rama Pal), Autumn 2023
International Economics II (Instructor: Prof. Radeef Chundakkadan), Spring 2024
Economics (Instructor: Prof. Tara Shankar Shaw), Autumn 2024
Indian Economy (Instructor: Prof. K. Narayanan), Spring 2025
Technical Skills
Technical Skills
STATA (Advanced); R (Intermidiate); Latex (Advanced); MS-Office
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