My current research work involves randomized controlled trials in field settings, as well as evaluation of policy experiments. The focus is on issues related to gender inequality, early life health and intra-household decision making in low income countries. As a researcher, I look forward to doing work that can help bring objective evidence into policy discussions.

Working Papers

Birth Endowments and Intrahousehold Resource Allocation: Structural Estimates from a Collective Household Model (Job market Paper)

The fetal origins literature has long-established a causal link between children's endowments in early life and their later-life health and economic outcomes. Given the magnitude and persistence of these endowment effects, recent work has tried to investigate the potentially important role of parental behavioral responses to children's initial endowments. This in turn has prompted a series of questions. Do parents' investment responses reinforce endowment shifts or compensate for them? Are the parental responses driven by parental preferences and in particular, the degree to which parents have an aversion to inequality among their children? Do these investments come at the cost or to the benefit of other siblings? In this paper, I attempt to answer each of the aforementioned questions in a structural framework using a uniquely advantageous measure of parental response- level of children's resource shares, that is, the fraction of the household’s total expenditure consumed by each child.

Impacts of Skilling and Employment Opportunities on Female Rural-to-Urban Migrant Workers and their Families: A Randomized Controlled Trial, with Achyuta Adharvyu, Anant Nyshadham and Huayu Xu.

The Impact of Prenatal Stress on Child Development: Evidence from an Earthquake in Nepal, with Navin Kumar and Sajala Pandey

Evaluation of a pilot program imparting life skills, digital skills and financial skills to adolescent girls, with Achyuta Adharvyu and Anant Nyshadham

Tuition Regulation and Private School Response, with Tarun Jain

Electoral Gender Quotas and Local Public Health: Evidence from Indian Village Councils