Research 

Working Papers

The Effect of Electoral Competition on Candidate Selection: Evidence from Indian State Elections (Job Market Paper and Dissertation Chapter 2) [Link]

[Presented at APSA 2024, PolMeth 2024, Texas Methods 2025, SoWEPS-9 2025, and the Pre-APSA Workshop on Political Economy of Development in South Asia at Harvard University 2026]

Abstract: The paper examines the causal effect of electoral competition on the political selection of candidates by parties in Indian state-level elections. I study how the self-financing capacity of candidates interacts with electoral competition in influencing candidate selection (and allocation) choices of political parties in the world’s largest democracy. However, identifying the effect of competition is challenging due to reverse causality: politician and/or party activities before an election determine the competitiveness of a race. Also, the analysis may suffer from issues related to omitted variable bias because more wealthier candidates might be attracted to often run in more competitive constituencies than otherwise. Using a panel data of Indian State-level Elections (2009 – 2023), I address these challenges by first, running a z-score regression model (with both party and party-state fixed-effects) and then test its robustness to these sources of bias with a shift-share instrumental variables design. I find that incumbent parties respond strategically to competition prior to an election by selecting wealthier candidates and reallocating resources to swing constituencies. I consider implications on the impact of such selection decisions on the political strategies of non-incumbent parties and how inter party political competition shapes the quality of democratic institutions and political representation in Indian elections and first-past-the-post (FPTP) systems at large. 

Electoral Competition with Credible Promises and Strategic Voters (R&R at the Journal of Theoretical Politics) [Link]

[Presented at MPSA 2023, CPFT 2023, and the Stony Brook International Conference on Game Theory 2023]

Abstract: How can voters induce politicians to put forth more proximate (in terms of policy preference) as well as credible platforms (in terms of promise fulfillment) under repeated elections? I study how reputation and re-election concerns affect candidate behavior and its resultant effect on voters' beliefs and their consequent electoral decisions. In doing so, I reflect upon a crucial rider in the benchmark models of Downsian political competition, where the winning (moderate) candidate (in a two-candidate electoral system) can promise a platform that lies closer to his ideal point (and thus further from the median voter) and yet win an election while keeping his reputation intact. Voters in such a setup fail to push candidates to their maximal incentive-compatible promise, which would not only unanimously raise their utility but also protect the candidate's reputation. I term voters who engage in such behavior as naïve. Thus, I present a formal model where, instead of assuming voters to be naïve, I tackle the question by completely characterizing a set of subgame perfect equilibria by introducing non-naive (or strategic) voting behavior in the mix. I find that non-naïve voting behavior - via utilizing the candidate’s reputation as an instrument of policy discipline post-election - aids in successfully inducing candidates to put forth their maximal incentive-compatible promise (amongst a range of such credible promises) in equilibrium. Through the credible threat of punishment in the form of a loss in reputation for all future elections – non-naïve voters can gain a unanimous rise in their expected utility than when they behave naively. Comparative statics show that candidates who are more likely to win are more likely to keep their promises. In such a framework, voters are not only able to better bargain for more credible promises but also end up raising their expected future payoffs in equilibrium. Including such forms of strategic behavior thus reduces cheap talk by creating a credible electoral system where candidates do as they say once elected.

Party Switching and Candidate Wealth in Indian Assembly Elections (Dissertation Chapter 3)

Abstract: Why do candidates switch parties before elections, and how do private resources shape this mobility? This paper examines electoral party switching in Indian state assembly elections, defining switching as a candidate’s change in ballot-facing party label between consecutive contests. I develop a theory in which wealth can either enable mobility, by increasing candidate autonomy and attractiveness to rival parties, or discourage it, by improving nomination security within the current party. Using an original candidate-level panel of Indian assembly elections from 2004 to 2023, linked to legally mandated affidavit disclosures, I estimate how within-candidate changes in declared assets predict party switching. The results show little support for a simple resource-enabled mobility account. In linear models with state-by-year fixed effects, higher prior wealth and increases in wealth are associated with lower switching probabilities, consistent with a “ticket insurance” mechanism in which wealth stabilizes party ties. Incumbency is the strongest predictor of stability. However, binned and quadratic specifications reveal important nonlinearities: large positive and negative wealth shocks are both associated with higher switching rates. Robustness checks further show that results depend on whether switching is measured broadly as party-label change or narrowly as “turncoat” defection. The findings suggest that candidate wealth stabilizes ordinary political careers while enabling high-stakes mobility in exceptional cases. 

Incumbency and the Strategic Allocation of Special Interest Money: Evidence from India (Dissertation Chapter 4)

Abstract: The sworn asset statements politicians file to run for office are a one-sided record of political money. They show what a politician has kept and banked. They show nothing of what a campaign spends, because spent money leaves no trace on a balance sheet. This chapter uses that one-sidedness as a tool. Following the same politicians across their successive nominations—3,272 candidate–election transitions from Indian state assemblies across 31 states, 2004–2023, drawn from the linked panel built in Chapter 2 and the largest such record assembled for Indian state politics—I ask what winning office, and holding a safe seat, does to the wealth politicians declare. Three findings stand out. First, winning pays, and a safe seat pays more: among winners, each ten extra percentage points of victory margin is followed by about Rs. 4.3 million more in declared wealth over the next term, while losers show no such pattern at all—so the reward comes from holding the seat, not from being the kind of person who runs in safe ones. Second, the reward takes a specific form. Winners’ extra wealth goes into bank deposits, vehicles and jewellery, never into declared cash. The popular image of a politician’s cash “war chest” filling up as races tighten does not appear. Across seventy-two different ways of running the numbers, competition never predicts more declared cash, because that money is spent rather than stored. Third, a comparison of candidates who barely won against those who barely lost—where winning is close to a coin toss—recovers a deposit reward of about Rs. 1.0 million, which is what the first two findings predict for seats that close, since a photo finish is the least safe seat there is. The two approaches share no assumptions and agree where the argument says they should. That comparison has a limit worth stating: a politician’s wealth is only observed if they stand again, and winning makes standing again more likely, so the close-election test corroborates the pattern rather than certifying it on its own. Because a safe seat is worth more in personal wealth than a competitive one, and parties decide who gets safe seats, the internal party fight over nominations carries a price these figures begin to measure. That price is not evenly distributed: the enrichment value of a safe seat is concentrated among candidates of the two parties that contest nationally and is undetectable elsewhere, though the apparent differences in how parties allocate and protect safe seats prove sensitive to how parties are classified and are reported as such. The chapter extends Weschle’s account of money in politics to Indian state elections and shows how much disclosure records can reveal about where political money comes to rest.

Strategic Nominations and Party Organization under Maximal Voter Discipline

Abstract: Models of electoral promises usually treat candidate types as exogenous, even though nomination institutions and party organization jointly shape which promises voters can rationally trust. I develop an infinite-horizon model in which parties choose nominees, voters coordinate on maximal discipline, and party organizations sustain internal discipline through relational contracts. In contested states, maximal discipline is self-limiting: the more moderation voters require on path, the less valuable it is for nominees to remain trusted, so the credibility frontier contracts. When primaries become more permissive, parties therefore, substitute toward more extreme nominees, but only when reform-induced entry compresses the effective moderation frontier toward the base. Endogenous discipline qualifies that result. Stronger organizations choose the least costly sustainable discipline needed to preserve moderation, so permissive primaries lead them to tighten discipline rather than fully accept more extreme implemented policy. When only one party can do so, its organizational advantage shifts the weaker rival toward more extreme nominations. The framework yields a compact set of predictions about nominee types, credible promises, implemented policy, and the heterogeneous effects of primary reform.

A Formal Model of the Black Sheep Effect

Abstract: This paper develops a formal model of the black sheep effect in partisan politics. A one-shot signaling game provides a strategic foundation for costly sanctioning: observers punish deviant co-partisans, while an ingroup audience infers their commitment. The audience does analytical work because separating beliefs is pinned by the punishment schedule, so greater visibility raises sanctioning at fixed identity threat—something decision-theoretic identity repair rules out. Typical ingroup deviants are punished more harshly than outgroup deviants, and the hump in the ingroup-outgroup gap reflects a bounded punishment technology rather than identity content, which instead shows up in a typicality gradient at fixed harm and in responsiveness to symbolic threat. Institutional costs shift sanctioning between exclusion, condemnation, and primary challenges. Anticipated sanctions push public expression toward party prototypes without changing private preferences, and outgroup observers who read those signals naively can become affectively polarized. 

Works in Progress 

Disentangling Political Manifestos for Issue-Specificity in Indian General Elections (with Madhavi Devasher, University of New Hampshire) [MPSA 2026]

Political Networks and Campaign Fundraising in the US Congress