Link to my PhD thesis: https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/122110
Publications:
Sarkar, S., Somanathan, R. Career and family: Women’s Century-long Journey Toward Equity by Claudia Goldin. Ind. Econ. Rev. (2024). (https://doi.org/10.1007/s41775-024-00215-1)
Working Papers:
Votes and Policies: Evidence from Close Elections in India
Abstract:
In this paper, I use a close election regression discontinuity design to study the development effects of political alignment between local legislative constituency representatives and state governments in India. I analyze policy and outcome variables from sources of non-proprietary data available annually at a legislative constituency level for the last decade. Constituencies with elected representatives aligned to the ruling party have less growth of visible long term fixed investment goods like new administrative headquarters and educational institutes. However, there is little evidence of aligned constituencies having less receipts and implementation of different government schemes or less growth in night-time luminosity. My results can be rationalized by a theory of joint provisioning by multiple politicians. Such a theory implies the following prediction: aligned constituencies will get less of the policies which are entirely provided by a single politician.
Shorter Version in Ideas for India: link
Formation of New Administrative Units: The Case of India
Abstract:
I study the consequences as well as determinants of formation of new districts and district headquarters. First, I find that economic activity captured by the satellite night lights data increased by about 5 percent in the first five years around the newly created district headquarter following the split up of a district. The aggregate impact on the reorganized district is less clear. There is no statistically significant effect on satellite night lights, male and female wages, extent of non-agricultural land and area under high yielding variety seeds in the reorganized district. However, there is some evidence of a cessation of declining trend in economic infrastructure: net irrigated area, total length of roads and total number of markets in the reorganized district. Second, given these results, I investigate possible determinants of new district formation and headquarter placement. Consistent with the existing literature, more populous and heterogenous districts are more likely to be split. Moreover, new headquarters are more likely positioned in areas further away from the nearest existing headquarter, a fact that is consistent with a theory of increased benefit of being located closer to a district headquarter.
Impact of Size of Political Constituency: Theory and Evidence from a Government Welfare Program in India
PDF (link)
Abstract:
The relationship between size of political constituencies and per head provisioning is theoretically ambiguous. First, the relationship depends on the type of good provided and second, it depends on the relationship between size of constituency and demand for provisioning. The latest delimitation of electoral constituencies in India, the world's largest democracy, provides an exogenous source of variation in the size of constituencies. Using data at a fine geographic level, I study the dependence of various attributes pertaining to the rural employment guarantee scheme in India on the size of the electorate of parliamentary constituencies. Villages belonging to constituencies with a smaller electorate have higher amounts disbursed and sanctioned, higher labor and material expenditure and more persons who have demanded, been allotted and worked under the employment guarantee scheme. Since politically motivated variation in economic outcomes may be inefficient and socially unwarranted, my results can have important policy implications on the need for a greater frequency of delimitation of constituencies.