Embedded Files
Working papers
Where a household live shapes almost everything we care about: education, labour, health, environment, public services. With a majority-minority dynamic and frictions between them, identity could play a role in where people get to live and what they have access to. In the presence of discrimination, households' choice set may be limited. When Hindu and Muslim households live in different parts of a city, it is usually read as a choice. In the housing market, that reading requires something that hasn't been well tested in the literature: that the households who live apart could have lived together, and chose not to. I measure what households want and what the market will let them have, on the same people and the same neighbourhoods, using randomised experiments fielded on 3,290 residents and 619 rental brokers in Delhi and find three main things. First, changing an applicant's name from Hindu to Muslim cuts the chance of acceptance by around 24 percentage points, and essentially all of that is outright refusal: under one percentage point of it is a higher rent. Second, brokers report that a Muslim applicant could rent 24 of 100 properties in their area, against 86 for an upper-caste Hindu, and that resident associations bar Muslim tenants in 27 percent of areas against under 1 percent for Hindus. Third, when told that every option is available and affordable, half of Muslim respondents choose a mixed or majority-Hindu neighbourhood, far more than they can reach one. Where a household lives in this market is therefore not a clean reading of what it wanted. The constraint is concentrated in a small number of identifiable intermediaries, and it operates on whether a household is accepted rather than on what it pays.
Funders: International Growth Center (IGC), STICERD, Hub for Equal Representation
Power to Progress: Electricity Supply, Inequality, and Development in Rural India
Electricity access is widely viewed as essential for economic development, yet evidence on its causal effects remains mixed. This paper examines the impact of electricity reliability on development outcomes in rural India, focusing on marginalized Scheduled Caste communities in Bihar. I exploit the structure of electricity distribution networks to construct an instrumental variable for electricity supply, using the caste composition of electricity feeders as an instrument for supply hours. The results suggest that more reliable electricity supply primarily affects agricultural production. Villages predicted to receive greater electricity supply exhibit higher shares of irrigated land and greater cropping intensity. Electricity reliability is also associated with increased adoption of clean energy and higher nightlight intensity, indicating greater economic activity. However, the results provide limited evidence of short-run effects on health, education, or non-farm employment. These findings highlight the importance of electricity reliability, rather than access alone, in shaping rural development outcomes.
Funders: The Weiss Fund, STICERD
Ideological Alignment and its Impact on Conflict
This paper looks at the effect that ideological alignment between different levels of government has on instances of political conflict in India. Using the parliamentary constituency results as an instrument for assembly constituency results, for all of India from 2016-2021, I find that ideological alignment towards the right wing has a significant and positive impact on instances of political conflict. This effect is more pronounced closer to the elections.
Work in progress
What Happens to Convicted Politicians? Evidence of a Sentence for Electoral Crimes
with Luiza Aires
This project studies how electoral regulations affect the careers of politicians convicted of electoral crimes in Brazil. Using judge randomization as an instrument for the likelihood of a guilty sentence in electoral crime cases, the research examines the consequences of electoral crime convictions for political survival and career trajectories.
Funders: International Growth Center (IGC), STICERD
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