Research

Working Papers

1. The Match Between `She' and `Her': Performance Gains from Gender Match in Higher Education (Revise & Resubmit at the Journal of Development Economics)

I use a novel and confidential administrative dataset from a highly rated economics program in Bangladesh to show that when matched with female teachers, female students perform better and are more likely to enroll in an economics master's program. Importantly, these gains come at no cost to male students. The quasi-random allocation of students to mandatory courses, where students cannot select either courses or instructors, alleviates the self-selection concerns. I rule out the explanation that the gain is driven by gender preference in teachers' assessment and, using theoretical insights from the literature, show that female teachers' effectiveness in teaching female students is an important channel. 

2. Risk Preference, Investment Decision, and Household Welfare: Evidence from a Microcredit Experiment in Bangladesh (with Sherry Li & Mohammad Abdul Malek) (Revise & Resubmit at the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization)

We propose a new perspective for low microcredit uptake and heterogeneous treatment effects observed in recent microcredit field experiments -- household risk preference. In a randomized field experiment in Bangladesh, we find that, in response to a microcredit intervention, household risk preference significantly influences microcredit uptake and its outcomes. Risk-seeking households are more likely to take microcredit, rent more land under fixed-rental contracts than share-cropping, adopt more technology, and expand businesses, enhancing total income. Conversely, risk-averse households showed no such gains. Our results underscore risk preference as a crucial factor in microcredit's success, suggesting why some people remain impoverished. 

3. Effects of Physician Supply on Health Outcomes: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Rural Bangladesh (with Nirman Saha) 

Abstract: While there has been a marked improvement in the health outcomes of the general population in developing countries in recent years, meeting people's health needs in remote and rural areas remains a key challenge. The shortage of qualified physicians in rural areas, a common feature in most low- and middle-income countries, has often been touted as one of the most important underlying factors. In this paper, we assess whether an increased supply of physicians in rural areas improves health outcomes. Under a unique intervention commenced in Bangladesh in 2013, the government recruited around 6,000 physicians through a highly qualified exam-- an increase of more than 25 percent of physicians' existing stocks. We use the variation generated by this program, one of the most massive such interventions globally, to estimate the effects of increased physician's supply on local general health outcomes and health care access. Since the increase in the number of physicians in an area is endogenous, we employ an instrumental variable approach to estimate the causal effects. We find an improvement in several health outcomes and other health care access proxies due to the intervention. However, the outcomes could be much better had there been a more equitable distribution of the newly recruited physicians.

4. Reinforcing Inequality: Consequences of Elevated Fluoride Exposure and Inequitable Mitigation (with Sheetal Sekhri, Ryan Brown, Emily Gonzalez, Rajiv Gupta, and Eric Robertson) 

 We establish causal links between elevated fluoride exposure in drinking water, cognition, and health of children. Chronic elevated exposure is deleterious for children, and severely affects poor children's human capital. At the same time, high exposure affects poor individuals' time spent on economic activities, household chores, and water collection. State institutions fail to implement adequate mitigation measures, and there is little evidence of mitigation by households. We observe minimal adaptation overall but none by the poor or the sick households. Environmental exposure leads to a self-reinforcing cycle of poverty: exposure affects cognition and health of children leading to adverse inter-generational consequences, and the poor are not able to offset the risk, depressing economic mobility and perpetuating inequality. 

5. Shocks and Brave Farmers: Evidence from a Randomized Agricultural Microfinance Experiment in Bangladesh (with Yasuyuki Sawada & Mohammad Abdul Malek)

Abstract: We examine the role of an agricultural microcredit program in facilitating farmers’ risk coping strategies when experiencing various shocks. We construct a simple two-period model of technology adoption to show consumption credit as an insurance mechanism. The standard balancing tests show that the treatments and shocks are both exogenously given and, thus, our regression results can be interpreted as causal relationships. Shocks considerably increase credit uptake among the treatment groups. We observe a significant impact of microcredit  on outcome indicators, such as,  credit use for farming, land use under share cropping and leasing condition, technology adoption, shifting day laboring to self-farming, and increasing farming income. (Draft available on request)

6. Credit Crunch and Human Capital: Evidence from Micro-Finance Regulation in India (with Yutong Chen and Sheetal Sekhri)

A large emergent literature highlights that wage-reducing economic shocks can have ambiguous effects on human capital accumulation. In our study, we theoretically propose and empirically establish that these effects are not homogeneous on children in all grades in the presence of dynamic complementarity in education. We utilize a 2010 micro-credit finance ban in Andhra Pradesh, India, that halted all micro-credit operations impacting loan recovery and liquidity in the state, to test our theory empirically in a synthetic differences-in-differences framework. We find an overall reduction in school enrolment of 6 percentage points due to the ban. However, this is driven by children in primary, middle, and secondary school. In sharp contrast, higher secondary school enrollment increased. This strategic behavior of the households is borne out in child labor decisions as well: younger children's likelihood of participating in wage-earning activities increased, while that of older ones fell.