Research

Single mothers, a growing global demographic, face unique labor market challenges, yet their outcomes remain understudied compared to the well-documented motherhood penalty. On the one hand, fewer opportunities for household specialization might facilitate their labor force participation. Conversely, they face the same constraints with respect to childcare as married mothers. While aggregate data suggest that single mothers' labor market participation rates are usually higher than those of unmarried women, we argue that this realized labor market equilibrium masks potential demand-side discrimination. To study this, we conduct a correspondence study experiment that involves applying for real jobs using fictitious resumes. We show that equally qualified single mothers are much less likely to receive interview callbacks than unmarried women without children, married without children, and married mothers. For every interview callback, a single mother has to apply to about 30 jobs, whereas an unmarried woman receives more than two callbacks for as many job applications. The callback probability for single mothers is 0.034 p.p. lower in low-DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) firms and 0.048 p.p. lower in high-DEI firms. A key mechanism, the relocation cost channel, where callback differentials are more pronounced for jobs farther from applicants’ home locations, suggests statistical discrimination, which is further corroborated by a vignette study. 

Despite considerable economic growth and development over decades in large developing economies, there remain substantial intra-country regional disparities. An increasing body of literature suggests that improving aggregate state capacity is critical in delivering efficient and effective development outcomes and last-mile delivery of public services. However, the role of enhancing local state capacity targeting such regional imbalances and activating a catch-up effect, in terms of economic development, is understudied.  We examine this in the context of India's ``Backward Regions Grant Fund" (BRGF) policy, an intervention aimed at enhancing the capabilities and effectiveness of local governments and village councils. We use a synthetic difference-in-differences (SDiD) econometric technique to estimate the causal effects of this policy on average luminosity density and growth in total night-time lights. We find that there is a 5-7 percent increase in the average nighttime lights and a 3-4 p.p. growth in total nighttime lights. We provide supportive empirical evidence that improved provision of public goods, such as the availability of schools and road infrastructure, and enhanced local state capacity, serve as a potential mechanism causing this effect.

Can place-based industrial policy strengthen the fiscal capacity of local governments? I study India’s Section 80-IA program, which granted tax incentives to firms in economically backward districts, using a regression discontinuity design based on district eligibility scores. Treated municipalities experience significant fiscal expansion, with per capita revenue rising by approximately 13 percent. I show that these gains do not arise automatically from economic growth but depend on local institutional capacity. While industrial activity increases broadly, fiscal gains are concentrated in municipalities with stronger pre-existing fiscal capacity. This pattern suggests a process of fiscal conversion, whereby local governments differ in their ability to translate economic activity into public revenues. Fiscal expansion operates through intergovernmental transfers that respond to local fiscal activity and activity-linked own-source revenues, with no response in property tax revenues or borrowing. This indicates that gains require active fiscal engagement rather than arising from passive expansion of the tax base. These gains translate into improvements in public goods provision, with no evidence of crowding out between administration and service delivery, and measurable gains in electricity, schooling, and health concentrated in outcomes under municipal control. In towns, employment expands through in-migration and reallocation out of marginal agricultural labor, while in rural areas, the same policy improves employment stability and non-farm work without generating fiscal gains. The results show that place-based industrial policy can generate a public finance dividend, but only where local governments possess the institutional capacity to capture the resulting economic gains.

Hiring decisions in organizations are based both on objective signals of employability as well as subjective signals from the candidates. Objective signals are often based on education, certification, and core competencies. Subjective signals, including non-merit factors such as hard work and collaborative efforts, are often open to interpretation and are less verifiable in general. We theorize that these signals are an input in the hiring decision process, where the eventual outcome is the recruitment. However, the model is mediated by evaluator perceptions of these signals. While for objective signals, these perceptions are relatively straightforward, we argue that for subjective signals, this mediation is further moderated by two factors. One, the signal verifiability, such as through reference checks, and two, the social identity of the applicant, viz, caste, race, or religion. While the verifiability usually augments the recruitment decision more efficiently by allowing the evaluator to correctly gauge the subjective signal's strength, the existence of the second moderator can create heterogeneous effects. We hypothesize that the mediation works fine under verifiability for forward and upper castes, whereas the backward or marginalized castes face an inherent disadvantage due to social institutions, priors, or implicit discrimination. We provide empirical evidence in support of this theory by conducting a primary survey of 120+ working executives in India, who collectively make around 2000 simulated hiring evaluations through a vignette within the survey. Our results from these 2000 choices indicate that candidates belonging to the upper caste and discreet (not explicitly lower caste) categories are more likely to benefit from sending a subjective signal in the labor market, whereas those from marginalized communities do not get this advantage. 

This paper examines an efficiency-based, place-based policy as a potential solution to the challenge of agricultural commercialization. We focus on India’s Agricultural Export Zones (AEZ), introduced between 2001 and 2005 to promote crop exports, and exploit their staggered rollout using a generalized difference-in-differences design. We find that the policy led to a reallocation of land from oilseeds to fruits, while cereals and millets remained largely unaffected. This crop switch reduced fertilizer intensity, consistent with the lower nitrogen and phosphorus requirements of horticulture. We show that the effect is not driven by minimum support price (MSP) incentives; rather, the increase in fruit cultivation is concentrated in districts with low MSP awareness. The shift is also stronger in districts with relatively small landholdings, suggesting welfare gains. Furthermore, we look at potential spillovers, and we find AEZ generated labor market spillovers: treated districts experienced an increase in main workers, particularly in household industries, alongside a reduction in marginal workers. Overall, our results suggest that efficiency-based, place-based policies can facilitate agricultural commercialization by reshaping cropping patterns and generating positive rural spillovers.

Can an urbanization push generate economic gains while mitigating its associated environmental costs? We study a unique place-based policy in India, the Rurban Mission, launched in 2016, that created 300  "rurban" clusters of contiguous villages, with the objective of extending the agglomeration benefits of urbanization, while explicitly emphasizing the preservation of rural institutions at its core. Exploiting the staggered rollout of the policy, and drawing on satellite data on nighttime lights and PM2.5, we implement a synthetic difference-in-differences design. We find that the program increased regional economic activity while modestly reducing air pollution, with stronger environmental gains in tribal clusters where local institutions reinforced sustainability objectives. Our findings indicate that place-based policies that leverage the existing institutional setup of rural settings can achieve the economic gains from urbanization with minimal environmental costs.

A persistent problem in developing economies is the prevalence of early and adolescent marriages, which often result in adverse consequences in terms of later life choices of women, including their fertility preferences and human capital accumulation. One reason for early marriages is the higher costs involved with marrying later. In this paper, we study the Rupashree policy from the Indian state of West Bengal, which subsidized the costs of marriage by providing a cash transfer to the brides' families. This effectively relaxes the financial burden, and using a quasi-experimental estimation design, we find that the average age of marriage and the probability of completing higher education rise for women in response to this policy. Our reduced form estimates suggest that women's fertility preferences are affected by this program. At the extensive margin, they have a stated preference for childbearing, whereas at the intensive margin, their estimates of the ideal number of children reduce. We argue that the marriage subsidy increases the risk tolerance of households that hedge against future higher costs of marriage and invest in the human capital of their daughters. 

This paper examines the intergenerational effects of parental exposure to compulsory English education on household educational investments and children’s learning outcomes in India. Our identification strategy relies on the generalized difference-in-differences approach that leverages the differential timing of state-level mandates to make English compulsory in the primary academic curriculum, leading to differences in parents' years of exposure between 1979 and 2004. We find that parental exposure to compulsory English significantly increases educational investments: the probability of children attending private schools rises, and households spend more on out-of-school tutoring. However, these investments do not translate into better learning outcomes. Instead, children of treated parents experience declines in reading and math scores. We provide evidence that this paradoxical effect is explained by a substitution mechanism: compulsory English reduced parents’ own likelihood of completing schooling, weakening their capacity to provide educational support. As a result, parents substitute household inputs with private schooling and tuition of heterogeneous quality. Our findings highlight how well-intentioned language policies can generate unintended intergenerational trade-offs between aspirations, investments, and actual learning.

Royal Economic Society (RES) 2026 Annual Conference, University of Newcastle, UK (Selected)

LEO Conference, Plaksha University

7th Annual Economics Conference, Ahmedabad University

35th Annual Conference on Contemporary Issues in Development Economics, Jadavpur University

Fifth International Conference on Issues in Economic Theory and Policy, Presidency University

20th Annual Conference on Economic Growth and Development, ISI Delhi

Behavioral Research in Economics Workshop– ESA Conference, MDI, Gurgaon, India 

62nd Public Choice Society Conference (Selected), USA 

Royal Economic Society (RES) Conference 2025, University of Birmingham, UK 

10th Research Scholars Workshop, Calcutta University

6th Annual Economics Conference, Ahmedabad University, Gujarat, India 

34th Annual General Conference on Contemporary Issues in Development Economics, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India

International Conference on "Reflections on Development Economics", Presidency University, Kolkata, India

19th Annual Conference on Growth and Development, Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi, India

Behavioral Research in Economics Workshop– ESA Conference, Ashoka University, Sonipat, India 

Conference on Empirical Issues in International Trade & Finance (EIITF), IIFT, Kolkata

9th Research Scholars’ Workshop, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India

Conversations on Research (CoRe) PhD Colloquium, IGIDR, Mumbai, India 

Jobs and Development Conference, The American University, Cairo, Egypt 

IIM Calcutta Doctoral Conference on Research in Economics, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, India