Research
Research
Access to Technology and Foundational Math Proficiency among Students: Empirical Evidence from India, (with Valentina Rotondi and Ridhi Kashyap), Humanities & Social Sciences Communications (Nature) 12, 1015, 2025
Featured: Scienmag (Science Magazine)
Digital resources such as laptops have the potential to improve access to educational resources and provide personalized and uninterrupted learning opportunities for students. The impacts of these technologies may be especially salient in contexts where classroom sizes are large and schooling quality poor. Here, we study the impacts of access to laptops on foundational math proficiency of students in one such context, i.e. India, exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in the implementation of the Tamil Nadu Free Laptop Scheme (TFLS). Introduced in 2011, the TFLS was one of the largest and targeted free laptop programmes in the world distributing over 5 million laptops. Using data from the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) and India Human Development Survey (IHDS) within a double and a triple-difference design, we show positive effects of access to laptops on foundational math proficiency of students, with the largest improvements experienced those in economically disadvantaged households. We further find that these positive effects on foundational math proficiency are complemented by improvements in other education related outcomes of students, such as, more time spent on learning, better comprehension of language, and a reduction in private tuition. We provide evidence that laptops are able to close economic and gender divides in education. Our results remain robust to a variety of falsification and sensitivity checks.
Women's Empowerment and Intimate Partner Violence: Evidence from a Multidimensional Policy in India, (with Somdeep Chatterjee), Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol 72 (2), 2024
In this paper, we study a multidimensional women’s empowerment program from India to estimate its effects on intimate partner violence faced by women. We exploit plausibly exogenous geographical variation in the implementation of the program and cohort-variation generated by eligibility rules to estimate our effects. Using a reduced form difference-in-differences design, we find evidence of lesser-reported emotional and physical violence for women potentially exposed to the program. Overall, women reported lesser intimate partner violence and controlling behavior on account of the empowerment intervention. We conjecture that improved anthropometric outcomes, higher literacy, and better labor market opportunities serve as potential mechanisms causing this effect.
From Safe Motherhood to Cognitive Ability: Exploring Intrahousehold and Intergenerational Spillovers, (with Somdeep Chatterjee), Economica, Vol 88, 2024
(Earlier Version: GLO Discussion Paper No: 332, Global Labor Organization, Maastricht)
Empirical evidence on Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) in the education domain suggest increases in school participation but minimal effects on learning. In this paper, we find strong spillover effects of a CCT program on children’s academic performance, but interestingly the CCT was not conditioned on education. We study a flagship health and safe motherhood program from India and by exploiting plausible exogenous variation in exposure to the program, show positive effects on reading, writing and math test scores for elder children in the household whose parents or uncles/aunts were potentially exposed to the policy. Our results can be viewed as inter-generational effects of CCTs because the estimated benefits accrue to the future generations of the potential recipients of the transfer payments. We identify higher expenditure on private tutoring as potential short term mediating channel for the effects. We also find changes in fertility preferences of women, suggesting a longer term mediating channel applicable in a standard quantity-quality trade-off setting.
When left is ‘right’! The impact of driving-side practice on road fatalities in Africa, (with Vijaya Singh), Transport Policy, Vol 114, 2021
In this paper, we try to understand the impact of a traffic convention, rule of the road, on road fatality rate in Africa. Using the country level panel data on road fatality rates provided by World Health Organization, we try to find whether left side driving rule has any differential causal impact on road fatalities. To address issues related to endogeneity, we instrument ‘Left Side Driving Rule’ with the measure for ‘British Colonization’. Our estimates suggest that the left side driving rule results in lesser road fatalities when compared to the right side driving rule. The illegal usage of ‘Right Hand Drive’ vehicles in right side driving countries and functional superiority of left side driving rule are the potential channels causing this effect. With Africa bearing the highest ‘disease burden’ of traffic fatalities in the world, our research provides a preliminary empirical insight into the role that ‘rule of the road’ traffic convention can play in this regard.
Moving up the energy ladder: does socio-religious status matter? (with Debdatta Pal and Somdeep Chatterjee), Population and Environment, Vol 42, 2021
This paper investigates the role played by socio-religious categories in determining primary cooking fuel choices among Indian households. We study this role in the broader context of climbing up the energy ladder. Our estimates based on a sample of 601,509 households and using multinomial probit regression suggest that socio-religious status along with economic status is critical in the choice of modern eco-friendly fuels. We find that belonging to a marginalized community in Hindu religion significantly dampens a households’ likelihood to move up the ladder when compared with upper caste households. While intra-religion differences among Hindu castes in terms of their probability of using modern fuels are wider, differences among Muslims appear smaller. Also, though Muslims perform worse than Hindu upper castes in terms of probability of using modern fuels they are much better off in comparison with other Hindu castes. Our results remain robust to alternative specifications and several robustness checks.
Innovation and Corruption: Dissecting causal linkage using Patent Application information from India. (with Sanjay Singh), Singapore Economic Review, Vol 67, 2022
Using World Bank Enterprise Survey data on bribery and patent applications, we try to study the causal linkage between firm level innovation and corruption in India. Specifically, we try to understand if corruption impacts innovation at the firm level. Since we find that innovation and corruption are jointly determined, we propose instrumental variables regression approach to identify this causal effect. We instrument bribery by exogenously determined external audit parameter and then use a recursive bivariate probit model combined with industry-fixed effects to reach our results. Our findings suggest that bribery has an adverse impact on innovation. The results of our study are much in contrast to the existing literature, which largely supports a positive relationship between innovation and corruption.
For the love of God? Proselytization, Religious Restrictions and Social Conflicts in India, Revise & Resubmit
I study the social effects of religious restrictions in the context of proselytizing activities which form an important part of some religions. To establish causality, I exploit plausible exogenous variation from the `Freedom of Religion' legislations that were enacted in several Indian states during the period 1964-2005. These legislations primarily restricted conversions that were `forced or fraudulent' or were done through `allurement or inducement', with the judiciary also ruling that the right to propagate religion provided under Indian Constitution does not necessarily include the right to `convert' a person's religion. Using administrative data on riots, I find that the introduction of these legislations resulted in reduced social conflicts. The finding suggests that putting `reasonable' restrictions on religious freedom, i.e., regulating `unjust' conversions in a religiously diverse country like India can have an unintended positive consequence in the form of reduced rioting. The results of the paper remain robust to a variety of sensitivity checks.
Do ‘Women Hold Up Half the Sky’ in Fuel Choices? Revisiting the role of Adolescent Empowerment in a Developing Country Context, (with Somdeep Chatterjee), Revise & Resubmit
In this paper, we estimate the causal impact of women's empowerment on choice of cooking fuel within the household. For this purpose, we study a multidimensional empowerment programme for adolescent girls in India, known as SABLA, that provided support to women across a multitude of dimensions. We exploit plausibly exogenous geographic and cohort variation generated in the implementation of SABLA programme using a difference-in-difference identification design. The results of our study based on this quasi-experimental methodology suggests that women potentially exposed to the SABLA empowerment programme were more likely to use cleaner and efficient modern cooking fuels post-marriage. This high usage of modern cooking fuels is matched by fall in likelihood of using inefficient transitional and traditional cooking fuels. We also show that change in place of cooking, improved awareness regarding healthy kitchen practices coupled with improved intra-household bargaining power on account of exposure to the programme are likely mechanisms causing these effects. Our results remain robust to a variety of sensitivity checks and analysis.
Perverse Effects of Doorstep Contraceptive Delivery : Evidence from India, (with Somdeep Chatterjee and Shreya Mishra), Under Review
Distance to health centers often act as a barrier in availing health care services. Evidence suggests that improved access tend to increase the use of family planning measures in developing countries. We study a unique policy from India where home delivery of contraceptives replaced the practice of acquiring contraceptives from village health centers. Using a quasi-experimental estimation framework, we find that this intervention led to households substituting away from home delivered modern contraception methods. This is primarily on account of patrilocal residence that makes women conscious of availing these services provided by local ASHA workers. The results remain robust to a variety of sensitivity checks.
Drowning the sorrow? Impact of a cyclonic disaster on consumption of intoxicants, Revise & Resubmit
Empirical evidence on the impact of natural disasters has generally found an increase in the consumption of intoxicants post-disaster. This is largely on account of change in individual’s attitude towards life or simply because intoxicants serve as a way of dealing with psychological trauma. In this paper, I attempt to test this conjecture and try to understand the short-term impact of a cyclonic disaster on households’ consumption of intoxicants. The disaster that I focus on is the Hudhud cyclone which struck India in late 2014. Using the comprehensive survey data of over 160,000 households and employing a difference-in-difference design, the results of the study suggest that the short term consumption of intoxicants go down on account of the disaster. This result remains robust to alternative specifications and sensitivity checks. I also find evidence of increase in health expenditures post-disaster which suggests a potential substitution away from intoxicants towards more `urgent needs’. The study adds to the literature on coping strategies employed by households faced with a natural disaster and also provides an alternative account for change in households expenditures on temptation goods, such as intoxicants, in wake of a natural disaster.