Research
Publications
Polity size and local government performance: Evidence from India with Jeff Weaver
American Economic Review (2024), 114(11): 3385-3426. (lead article)
Developing countries have increasingly decentralized power to local governments. This paper studies the implications of a central element of decentralization – polity size – using population-based discontinuities that determine local government boundaries for over 100,000 Indian villages. Over the short and long-run, individuals allocated into local governments with smaller populations have better access to public goods. We provide suggestive evidence that these results are related to heightened civic engagement and stronger political incentives, without any observable evidence of other mechanisms such as elite capture.
Working Papers
The Limits of Political Representation: Evidence from India with Jeff Weaver
Conditionally Accepted at American Economic Review: Insights
Political inclusion is widely believed to improve governance, which has motivated the creation of elected representatives for highly localized constituencies. This paper studies 1.2 million “hyperlocal” representatives across 150,000 local governments in rural India. Exploiting discontinuities that determine the number and identity of these representatives, we assess how expanded representation affects governance outcomes. We find precisely estimated null effects on core functions, including public project management, intermediation in access to welfare programs, oversight of public finances, and the equity of benefit allocation. These findings highlight the limits of expanding political representation if representative capacity is weak.
The Road Not Taken (Anymore): Checkposts and Local Economic Development with Barthélémy Bonadio
Slides (New draft coming soon)
We examine the impact of a 2017 reform in India that eliminated interstate checkpoints and digitized the process of transporting goods across state borders. The reform generated a significant reduction in inter-state trade barriers and administrative burdens, resulting in a decline in the overall concentration of economic activity near state borders. More specifically, we show that this exogenous shock to location-based forces, generated an overall decline in local economic patterns, and we provide evidence on what characteristics enabled a market to sustain itself despite the removal of these traditional forces of attraction. This quasi-experimental approach provides insights into the dynamics of economic activity in response to policy changes affecting trade and transport.
The Labor Market Effects of GLP-1s: Evidence from Weight Management and Diabetes Cohorts with Christian Alemán-Pericón, Fane Groes, Raul Santaeülàlia-Llopis and Tetyana Surovtseva
Submitted
Using population-wide administrative microdata from Denmark, we provide the first comprehensive empirical evaluation contrasting the causal labor market effects of GLP-1 receptor agonists across their dual therapeutic tracks: a subsidized diabetic cohort (Ozempic) subject to public reimbursement, and a weight-management cohort (Wegovy) paying entirely out-of-pocket. Exploiting variation in individual prescription timing among eventual users, and validated by a battery of robustness checks leveraging treatment dropouts, alternative insulin baselines, and matched stacked designs, we find robust labor supply expansions that sharply differ by track. For the subsidized diabetes cohort, treatment initiation raises the probability of employment by 4.1 percentage points and quarterly hours worked by 19.5 hours. Conversely, for out-of-pocket weight-management cohorts, employment effects are flat, but intensive labor supply expands by 29.7 hours per quarter conditional on employment. Wage effects are statistically insignificant across tracks, confirming that labor earnings gains are quantity-driven. Integrating these micro-elasticities into a public finance accounting framework, we show that price regulations shrink the standalone diabetic deficit, while weight-management cohorts generate substantial, pure income tax windfalls that naturally stabilize public health budgets.
Work in Progress
Rural Development, Migration & Aggregate Growth: Evidence from India
(New draft coming soon)
This paper examines the effects of rural development policies on economic growth and rural-urban migration in developing countries, using a 1992 reform in India. Despite traditional economic models emphasizing urban migration, rural populations remain high in low-income countries. Using a regression discontinuity design for Uttar Pradesh, I analyze the impact of independent versus shared village councils on economic activity, infrastructure, and population growth. I find that villages with independeny councils witness improved economic activity, enhanced infrastructure, and heightened population growth. While rural-rural migration primarily drives this population surge, districts with more independent councils surprisingly show increased rural-urban migration. This suggests that local-level enhancements reduce migration barriers, thus boosting rural-urban shifts, and ultimately benefiting district-level GDP.