Research

 Publications

"Shoppre’s dilemma with marketplace launch – Do it sooner, delay for later or dismiss forever?" (with Ann Mary Varghese, and Gopalakrishnan Narayanamurthy) - Emerald Emerging Markets Case Studies, 2024. Vol. 14, No. 1. 

"Cracking the conundrum of e-cargo logistics: curious case of LoadExx" (with Ann Mary Varghese, R. Sai Shiva Jayanth, Abhishek Srivastava, and Rudra Prakash Pradhan) - Emerald Emerging Markets Case Studies, 2023. Vol. 13, No. 3. 

"Is Rural Household Debt Sustainable in a Financially Included State? Evidence from Three Districts of Kerala" (with Rudra Sensarma and Gopakumaran Nair) - Oxford Development Studies, 2022. 50(4), 389-405. 

"How effective is Theory Based Learning of Ethics in India?" (with Kausik Gangopadhyay and Reddy Sai Shiva Jayanth IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review, 2020. 9(1), 55-61.

Job Market Paper

Does knowledge empower? A story of debt literacy and credit usage in rural consumer finance  (with Rudra Sensarma)

A short post on this paper is published on the World Bank's All about Finance blog. 

Abstract: We study the role of debt literacy as an empowerment device in accessing credit in rural India. We use primary data collected from 600 rural households in the state of Kerala in India, that include measures of credit usage and debt literacy drawn from the literature. Using Instrumental Variable regressions, we find a positive and significant effect of debt literacy on credit usage. We find similar results in sub-samples comprising of agricultural households and female respondents. This finding is in contrast with prior studies that found a negative relation between debt literacy and debt. Our finding that individuals with higher debt literacy tend to hold more debt underscores the importance of debt literacy in their ability to avail of credit. We obtain similar findings when we repeat the analysis with a national level dataset and use treatment effects based on inverse probability weighting with regression adjustment. Our findings could help financial institutions to use debt literacy training as a part of responsible lending and could also inform the design of financial education policies to address the informational and capability limitations of households.