Research
Fields:
Development Economics, Labor Economics
Papers:
- Where there is a will: Fertility behavior and sex bias in large families, Revise and resubmit at Journal of Development Economics
I propose and test an explanation for sex differences in survival and health outcomes in India. In a patrilocal society, family heads bequeath land to claimants with more sons to retain it within their lineage. Claimants, who are their adult sons, compete in the number of sons to maximize their inheritance. This fertility behavior implies that girls live in systematically larger households, generating differences in outcomes even if parents do not treat boys and girls differently. Tests using panel data from rural households confirm this hypothesis and account for 7 percent of excess female mortality in Haryana and Rajasthan. Bibtex
- Common Tongues: The impact of language on economic performance, Under review
Language is an important social institution that has potentially large impact on economic performance. I use the reorganization of Indian states on linguistic lines as a natural experiment to estimate the impact of speaking the majority language on educational and occupational outcomes. I find that districts that spoke the majority language of the state before reorganization enjoy persistent economic benefits after reorganization. I present evidence that these benefits accrue through the channel of lower transaction costs, as evidenced by higher educational achievement and employment in communication intensive sectors. After reorganization, historically minority language districts experience greater growth in educational achievement compared to previously majority language districts, indicating that reassignment could reverse the impact of history.
- Incentive to discriminate? An experimental investigation of teacher incentives in India (with Tulika Narayan, Abt Associates)
This paper uses laboratory experiments to address the challenge of effectively designing performance based pay schemes for school teachers. We develop a theory of ``strategic discrimination'' where, due to imperfect information in a society with pervasive prejudice, teachers disproportionately help high-status students as a result of incentive design. We test this theory with experiments conducted in India with future teachers as participants. Preliminary findings confirm strategic discrimination on the basis of social identity against Scheduled Caste students, but not against Muslim students. Bibtex
- Degrees of migration: Relationships and participation in the cycle rickshaw rental market (with Ashima Sood, Economic and Political Weekly)
This paper considers informal contract governance in India in the context of the cycle-rickshaw sector. Cycle-rickshaws are a ubiquitous form of non-motorized transport that employ a sizable number of workers, including a significant proportion of rural migrants. The majority of drivers hire cycle-rickshaws from garages that supply rental and repair services. The rental contract is thus central to the cycle-rickshaw economy. We address the question of who owns and who rents in an environment with pervasive migration. While traditional explanations in this sector have ascribed the lack of ownership among cycle-rickshaw drivers to credit constraints, we argue that migration patterns play an important role in determining the distribution of owners versus renters in the cycle-rickshaw market. Rather than relying on price discrimination to distinguish between owners and renters on the basis of migration patterns, we develop a theoretical model highlighting the relational basis of the rental contract. Using qualitative and quantitative primary fieldwork data from the central Indian city of Bilaspur, we test the role of seasonal and commuter migration in determining the probability of ownership. Our results confirm that migration status is an important driver of ownership. While all types of migrants are more likely to be renters compared to residents, the preliminary results are strongest for cyclical migrants from within the state. Drivers who regularly visit their home within Chhattisgarh state are less likely to own their rickshaw compared to drivers from outside the state.
Reviews:
- Book Review of "Blocked by Caste: Economic Discrimination in Modern India" by S. Thorat and K. Newman (eds.), for Economic and Political Weekly 45(9), Feb 2010