Research
Research Fields
Public Economics, Labor Economics, Organizational Economics, Public Policy
Topics: Gender, Health, Education, Public Finance
Google Scholar profile
Working Papers
Gender and third-party responses to transgressions, with Lata Gangadharan and Pushkar Maitra.
Gender differences in tertiary healthcare utilization: Evidence from India, with Natasha Jha and Revathy Surya Narayana.
Publications
Information Systems Research. Forthcoming, with Nishtha Langer.
The productivity of the Information Technology (IT) industry depends on the supply of high-quality human capital, especially managers who contribute to operational, finance, sales and marketing, and leadership roles. This study examines the influence of peers on the choice of management students to pursue careers in the IT industry. These choices may be informed and driven not only by own motivation and ability, but also by information gained through peers. Specifically, we analyze data on student networks at a leading business school in India, where students are exogenously assigned to peer groups, and link these to students’ choice of post-program careers in the IT industry. We find that being part of a group that includes peers who have worked in IT decreases the likelihood of receiving and accepting an offer in the IT industry. However, if a student has had no IT experience, having IT peers ameliorates this effect to a degree. We also find differential peer effects for male and female students. Our findings are consistent with IT peers providing more (discouraging) information on the IT industry to non-IT peers.
IIMA Research Spotlight
Journal of Asian Economics. 85, pages 101589, 2023, with Robert C. M. Beyer and Sonalika Sinha. Pre-print
This paper estimates how strongly COVID-19 containment policies have impacted aggregate economic activity. We use a difference-in-differences methodology to estimate how containment zones of different severity across India impacted district-level nighttime light intensity, as well as household income and consumption. From May to July 2020, nighttime light intensity was 9.1% lower in districts with the most severe restrictions compared with districts with the least severe restrictions, which could imply between 5.8% and 6.6% lower GDP. Nighttime light intensity was only 1.6% lower in districts with intermediate restrictions. The differences were largest in May during the graded lockdown, and tapered in June and July. Lower house-hold income and consumption corresponding to zone-wise restrictions corroborate these results. Stricter containment measures had larger impacts in districts with greater population density, older residents, and more services employment. The large magnitudes of the findings suggest that governments should carefully consider the economic costs of country-wide pandemic containment policies while weighing the trade-offs against public health benefits.
Summary on World Bank Let's Talk Development blog
Best paper award (3rd prize), 19th Macroeconomics and Finance Conference, IGIDR Mumbai
Data for paper
American Economic Review. 112(3), pages 899-927, 2022, with Diva Dhar and Seema Jayachandran. Pre-print
This paper evaluates an intervention in India that engaged adolescent girls and boys in classroom discussions about gender equality for two years, aiming to reduce their support for societal norms that restrict women’s and girls’ opportunities. Using a randomized controlled trial, we find that the program made attitudes more supportive of gender equality by 0.18 standard deviations, or, equivalently, converted 16% of regressive attitudes. When we resurveyed study participants two years after the intervention had ended, the effects had persisted. The program also led to more gender-equal self-reported behavior, and we find weak evidence that it affected two revealed-preference measures.
JPAL project summary and Policy brief (pdf)
ADB–IEA Innovative Policy Research Award, 2022 (Honourable mention)
IPA DG Shah Public Policy Best Paper Award, 2023
Press coverage in The Economist, The Hindu, Mint, World Bank Impact Evaluation Blog and El Universal
Interview on American Economic Association website
Breakthrough videos: Change starts young and Legion of stars videos
Replication by Lenka Fiala, Erlend Fleisje, and Tore Adam Reiremo
European Economic Review, 147, pages 104181, 2022, with Gautam Bose and Sarah Walker.
We examine how women's employment leads to household technology adoption in the context of mid-century United States. Using World War II factories and male casualty rates as an instrument for female labor demand, we find that the rise in women's labor force participation between 1940 and 1950 increased appliance ownership by 25 percent in the average county. This result holds in both panel and cross-sectional estimates, and for two different technologies. We find that increases in household income associated with women's employment is a salient channel and that the results are not driven by changes in the skill profile or employment outcomes of men, or migration patterns. Together, the evidence is consistent with a historiography that suggests that as women went to work, they adopted appliances with new purchasing and bargaining power.
Economic Inquiry. 60(2), pages 741-763, 2022, with Abhiroop Mukhopadhyay, Nishith Prakash and Raghav Rakesh.
We examine the association between studying science in higher secondary school and labor market earnings in India. Studying science in high school is associated with 22% greater earnings than studying business or humanities. Earnings for science students are further enhanced with some fluency in English. Science education is also associated with more years of education, completing a professional degree, returns to entrepreneurship and working in public sector positions. Primary survey of high school students shows no discernible differences in behavioral characteristics of science students compared to others.
Press coverage in Indian Express, Times of India, Careers 360
Interview on Faculti.net
PLOS ONE. 17(6), pages e0264077, 2022, with Diva Dhar, Vrinda Kapoor, Vrinda Kapur and Anita Raj.
We develop and test gender attitude measures conducted with a school-based sample of adolescents aged 14–17 years in India. We test a measure with survey items and vignettes to capture gender-based value and stereotypes, an Implicit Association Test (IAT) capturing gender-based value, and an IAT capturing gender stereotype. All demonstrate good internal reliability, and both IATs are significantly associated with our survey measure suggesting criterion validity, though not confirming it due to the lack of a gold standard measure on gender attitudes. Finally, construct validity is indicated from the measures’ positive significant associations with higher girls’ mobility and education. The gender-related IAT tools developed are consistent and valid, and modestly correlated with gender-related behavior outcomes such as mobility and school enrolment.
Japanese Economic Review, 73, pages 31-59, 2022, with Lata Gangadharan, Pushkar Maitra and Joseph Vecci. Pre-print
This paper highlights the contributions made by lab-in-the-field experiments, which are also known as artefactual, framed and extra-lab experiments. We present a curated sample of lab-in-the-field experiments and discuss how they can be conducted on their own or combined with conventional laboratory experiments, natural experiments, randomised control trials and surveys to provide unique insights into the behaviour of a diverse population. Using our recent research on gender and leadership, we demonstrate how lab-in-the-field experiments have offered new perspectives about gender differences in decision-making. Finally, we outline the ethical and implementational challenges researchers may face while conducting these experiments, and share some of the strategies we employed to address them.
Vikalpa, 46(1), pages 13-26, 2021, with Bijendra Nath Jain. Pre-print
In pandemics or epidemics, public health authorities need to rapidly test a large number of individuals without adequate testing kits. We propose a testing protocol to accelerate infection diagnostics by combining multiple samples, and in case of positive results re-test individual samples. The key insight is that a negative result in the first stage implies negative infection for all individuals. We show that this protocol reduces the required number of testing kits, especially when the infection rate is low. However, the protocol has costs in additional time for returning test results, as well as an increased number of false negatives.
Health Economics, 29(4), pages 464-474, 2020, with Sisir Debnath. Pre-print
Use of tertiary healthcare by socially proximate peers helps individuals learn about program and treatment procedures, signals that using such care is socially appropriate, and could support use of formal healthcare, all of which could increase program utilization. Using complete administrative claims data from a publicly financed tertiary care program in India, we estimate that the elasticity of first-time claims with respect to claims by members of caste groups within the village is 0.046, with smaller effects of more socially distant individuals. The point elasticity of in-patient care expenditure with respect to claims filed by same group in village peers in the previous quarter is -0.035. We find support for an information channel as peers increase awareness of the program and its features. Our findings have implications for the development of network-based models to determine healthcare demand, as well as in use of network-based targeting to boost tertiary healthcare utilization.
Journal of Development Studies, 55(12), pages 2572-2592, 2019, with Diva Dhar and Seema Jayachandran. Pre-print
This paper examines the intergenerational transmission of gender attitudes in India, a setting with severe discrimination against women and girls. We use survey data on gender attitudes (specifically, about the appropriate roles and rights of women and girls) collected from nearly 5500 adolescents attending 314 schools in the state of Haryana, and their parents. We find that when a parent holds a more discriminatory attitude, his or her child is about 11 percentage points more likely to hold the view. We find that parents hold greater sway over students’ gender attitudes than their peers do, and that mothers influence children’s gender attitudes more than fathers. Parental attitudes influence child attitudes more in Scheduled Caste communities and student gender attitudes are positively correlated with behaviours such as interacting with children of the opposite gender.
Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 164, pages 256-272, 2019, with Lata Gangadharan, Pushkar Maitra and Joseph Vecci. Pre-print
Using data from two sets of experiments conducted in rural India, this paper finds that relative to men, women assigned to be leaders contribute less than what they propose in a public goods game. We examine whether this behavior is influenced by the social environment. We find that female leaders deviate negatively from their proposals more frequently than males, when the gender of the leader is revealed and in villages with a female head assigned through an exogenous affirmative action policy. Women leaders anticipating lower economic and social costs for their actions compared to male leaders are potential explanations for observed gender differences in behavior. Our results suggest that the social environment can influence the behavior and the potential effectiveness of female leaders.
Economic Inquiry, 57(1), pages 141-161, 2019, with Nishtha Langer. Pre-print
This paper examines how students' network size, distance, prestige, and connections to influential individuals impact academic performance. Larger and closer networks facilitate information exchange, but may also increase distractions that decrease productivity. We resolve this ambiguity using administrative data from a business school that features random assignment of students to multiple overlapping sets of peers, allowing us to calculate degree, closeness, eigenvector, and Katz‐Bonacich centrality for each node. We find that increasing closeness centrality within the network negatively affects student performance measured by grade point average, suggesting that synergy reduction and information processing costs outweigh benefits from greater information access.
World Development, 114, pages 314-325, 2019, with Pushkar Maitra and Subha Mani. Pre-print
Skill development is viewed as an escape from the low education – high unemployment trap in developing countries. Despite investments in skill development programs, participation and completion rates in many programs remain low. We investigate factors that prevent individuals from acquiring spoken English, a skill with potentially high returns in the labour market. Using data from a field experiment in India, we find that offering subsidies increases the probability of participating in a spoken English training program. Simultaneously, distance to the training center, pre-existing knowledge of spoken English, and past enrolment in a similar course act as significant barriers to take-up. These findings suggest that multidimensional policy solutions are required to overcome barriers to skill development in developing countries.
Coverage on Hyderabad Hiccup
Journal of Economic History, 77(2), pages 473-510, 2017.
This article investigates the impact of official language policies on education using state formation in India. Colonial provinces consisted of some districts where the official language matched the district's language and some where it did not. Linguistically mismatched districts have 18.0 percent lower literacy rates and 20.1 percent lower college graduation rates, driven by difficulty in acquiring education due to a different medium of instruction in schools. Educational achievement caught up in mismatched districts after the 1956 reorganization of Indian states on linguistic lines, suggesting that political reorganization can mitigate the impact of mismatched language policies.
Press coverage in Mint, Times of India
Journal of Institutional Economics, 13(3), pages 673-697, 2017, with Ashima Sood. Pre-print
Relationship-based contract enforcement is commonly thought to limit market expansion. In contrast, this paper illustrates how relationship-based contract governance accommodates new entrants into market exchange using a case study of the cycle-rickshaw rental market in a city in central India. Migrants face a higher penalty for default that introduces a gap between the ex ante risk for out-of-network agents and the ex post risk. As a result, cycle-rickshaw owners are more likely to rent to migrants and migrants are more likely to participate in rental contracts. With primary data on multidimensional measures of migrant status, we confirm that migrant status is a significant predictor of rental contract participation, even controlling for other variables that moderate the rickshaw driver's ability to own a cycle-rickshaw. Our findings thus introduce a new perspective into current understandings of relationship-based contract governance.
European Economic Review, 90, pages 302-325, 2016, with Lata Gangadharan, Pushkar Maitra and Joseph Vecci. Pre-print
This paper uses data from artefactual field experiments and surveys conducted in 61 villages in India to examine whether men and women respond differently to women as leaders. We investigate the extent to which behavior towards female leaders is influenced by experience with women in leadership positions. We find evidence of significant male backlash against female leaders, which can be attributed to the transgression of social norms and in particular, a violation of male identity, when women are assigned to positions of leadership through gender based quotas. Increased exposure to female leaders reduces the extent of bias.
Review of Economics and Statistics, 97(1), pages 44-54, 2015, with Mudit Kapoor. Pre-print, JSTOR
This paper uses random assignment of students to investigate the impact of study groups and roommates on academic achievement. We find that informal social interaction with roommates has a significant positive impact on academic achievement, while study group peers have no discernible impact, a result driven by group heterogeneity in ability. We also find that lower-ability students benefit from high-ability students but not vice versa.
Journal of Public Economics, 111:17-28, 2014. with Klaus Abbink, Utteeyo Dasgupta and Lata Gangadharan. Pre-print
This paper examines the effectiveness of using asymmetric liability to combat harassment bribes. Asymmetric liability is a mechanism where bribe-takers are culpable but bribe-givers have legal immunity. Results from our experiment indicate that while this policy has the potential to significantly reduce corrupt practices, weak economic incentives for the bribe-giver, or retaliation by bribe-takers can mitigate the disciplining effect of such an implementation. Asymmetric liability on its own may hence face challenges in the field.
Press coverage in The New York Times, Rediff.com, India Together, Deccan Chronicle, Hindu Business Line and Economic Times
Journal of Human Resources, 49(2), pages 393-423, 2014. Pre-print JSTOR
This paper demonstrates that the social institutions of lineage maintenance, patrilocality, and joint families have a significant role in explaining sex differences in survival and health outcomes in rural India. Tests using panel data from rural households support this explanation, which accounts for 7 percent of excess female mortality in Haryana and Rajasthan and 4 percent in Punjab. An institutional explanation suggests limits on the role for public policy in addressing large sex differences in health and mortality outcomes.
Press coverage in Financial Express and ISB Insight
Reviews and industry reports
Central Square Foundation, 2024, with Atma Dinnie Charles and Gouri Gupta.
India Public Finance and Policy Report, Oxford University Press, 2020, with Arjun Bedi, Arpita Chakraborty, Sisir Debnath, Anagaw Derseh Mebratie, Pradeep Panda, E. van de Poel, Wameq Raza, Frans Rutten, Zemzem Shigute, Robert Sparrow, Revathy Suryanarayana and Getnet Alemu Zewdu. Edited by J. Jalan, S. Marjit and S. Santra.
Book review of S. Thorat and K. Newman (eds.) "Blocked by Caste: Economic Discrimination in Modern India"
Economic and Political Weekly, Feb 27, 45(9), pages 35-37, 2010.