[Research Interests:
  • Primary: International Trade, Innovation, Environment, and Development Economics
  • Secondary: Industrial Organization and Finance

Work in Progress: 
  • ​Can a Trade Policy Change Increase Gender Equality? New Evidence from Chile (with U. Banerjee and L. Castro) [pdf]
    • Do firms reorganize gender composition of their employment in response to a trade shock? Using novel data on gender composition of employment across several occupational groups for Chilean manufacturing firms for 1995-2007, a developing country with low gender equality, and utilizing the 1999 Chile-Mexico Free Trade Agreement (FTA) as the quasi-natural shock, we document the first evidence that the share of female white-collar workers increase by 3% for exporters (as opposed to non-exporters) after the trade agreement. This increase happens through a substitution effect from male to female high-skilled workers caused primarily due to higher use of technology and non-productive tasks by an exporter: technological adoption (both foreign and domestic), innovation, and publicity and promotional expenses. We also show that around 4% of the productivity increase due to the FTA can be attributed to the reduced gender-gap in white-collar employment. Lastly, this increase in female white-collar workers holds for (a) both ex-ante and new exporters, and (b) firms with both male and female owners. Overall, we show that trade can play an important role in addressing gender gap in employment.
  • ​​Trade and Credit (Re)-Allocation (with S K Ritadhi)
  • Trade Reform , M&A Activity, and Family Firms (with H Yang)
  • Chinese Import Competition and Prices: Evidence from India (with M. Henry and R. Singh)
  • ​Trade and Outsourced Jobs (with L. Castro and V.  Tyazhelnikov)
  • Trade and Networks (with D. DeSilva, M. Chen, and H. Yang)
  • ​Trade and Innovation (with R. Ahsan)​​

Paper(s) Under Review:
  • Cross-border Environmental Regulation and Firm Labor Demand (with A. Chakrabarti and C. Chatterjee) Revise and Resubmitted at Journal of Environmental Economics and Management
    • In 1994, due to environmental concerns, Germany banned a chemical called `Azo-dyes', a primary input for the leather and textiles firms in India (a key exporter). Exploiting this as a quasi-natural experiment, we examine the effects of this cross-border regulatory change on labor compensation, particularly managerial, for both Indian upstream (dye-producing) and downstream (leather and textile) firms. We find that the regulation increased compensation of managers by 1.3--18% in dye-producing firms compared to other chemical firms. This is due to the combination of changes such as investing in R&D, product churning, import of high-quality intermediates, due to the ban, which led to this change in within-firm labor composition. This increase in overall compensation is driven only by fixed component (wages), consistent with the effects of a long-run shock. We find no such effects for downstream firms. We believe, our study is one of the first to show that just like tariff, non-tariff barriers (NTBs) can also significantly affect within firm labor composition.
  • ​Bank Ownership and Firm Performance Submitted
    • Does a bank's ownership matter for a firm's performance (to which it is connected)? Especially, in the event of a crisis? I study this question through the effect of 2008-09 crisis on Indian manufacturing firms to provide evidence on a new channel that can matter significantly for a firm's performance - bank ownership. I find that firms connected to private (domestic and foreign) banks earn around 10% and 25% less from sales and exports, respectively during the crisis as compared to firms' having banking relationships with public-sector banks. This happened as private banks were differentially affected in terms of credit supply from the Central Bank and withdrawal of deposits. Firms connected to private banks also laid-off more workers, and imported less capital goods. Lastly, these effects are significant across the size distribution of the firms (except the smallest firms) and for firms producing intermediates.
  • ​Import Competition, Labour Regulations, and Firm Outsourcing (with D.  Mitra and A. Sundaram) Submitted
    • Using unique information on firm level domestic outsourcing of manufacturing jobs by Indian firms, we propose two channels and their interaction as determinants of the fragmentation of production: import competition and labor market regulation. We find that greater import competition from China is associated with a significant increase in domestic outsourcing of manufacturing jobs - a 10-percentage point increase in the import penetration ratio leads to a 11--14% increase in the ratio of outsourcing expenses to the wage bill of a firm. This effect is driven by multi-product firms operating in states with pro-worker labor laws. We find a corresponding increase in the likelihood of sub-contracting among informal sector firms. Our results are consistent with a model where forward-looking firms outsource more in response to a trade shock that raises import competition, when there are also future firing costs that can be avoided through such outsourcing. We thus are the first to highlight that labor market regulation and its interaction with international trade can determine the organization of production. Our findings have significant development implications that take the form of movement of manufacturing production towards the informal sector (and possible subsequent impoverishment of workers) as a consequence of a major trade shock.
  • Import Competition, Formalization, and the Role of Contract Labor (with R. Singh and V. Soundararajan) Submitted
    • ​Exploiting plausibly exogenous variation from Chinese imports, we show that higher import competition increases the share of India's formal manufacturing enterprise employment. We observe a rise in formal-enterprise employment, driven by the high productivity firms, and a fall in informal-enterprise employment. The labor reallocation is enabled by the hiring of contract workers, who do not carry firing costs. Overall, Chinese import competition led to a 4.1 percentage points increase in formal share between 2000-2001 and 2005-2006. Accounting for differences in prices and worker characteristics across sectors, we find that aggregate productivity rose by 3.19% in response. 
​
Publications: 
Journal Articles:
  • Intellectual Property Regimes and Wage Inequality (with S. Bhattacharya and  C. Chatterjee)
    • ​Journal of Development Economics 154: 102709, 2022  [pdf]
  • Chinese Competition and Product Variety of Indian firms (with M. Henry) 
    • Journal of Comparative Economics 47 (2): 367-395, 2019 [pdf]
  • Input-trade Liberalization and the Demand for Managers: Evidence from India (with O. Raveh)
    • ​​Journal of International Economics 111: 159-176, 2018 [pdf]
  • The Great Trade Collapse and Indian Firms
    • ​​World Economy 41 (1): 100-125, 2018 [pdf]
  • Environmental Standards, Trade and Innovation: Evidence from a Natural Experiment
    • Environment and Development Economics 22 (4): 414-446, 2017 [pdf]
  • ​Does Environmental Regulation Indirectly Induce Upstream Innovation? New Evidence from India (with C. Chatterjee) 
    • Research Policy 46 (5): 939-955, 2017 [pdf]
      • Top three 2017 articles w/the most social media attention @ResearchPolicy  
  • Judicial Quality and Regional Firm Performance: The Case of Indian States 
    • Journal of Comparative Economics ​44 (4): 902-918, 2016 [pdf]
  • Does Openness Affect Inequality? A Case Study for India (with A. Barua) 
    • Review of Development Economics 14 (3): 447-465, 2010 [pdf]

Other Journal Articles:
  • Effect of Environmental Regulation on Firm Performance: Evidence from a Policy Experiment
    • Economic and Political Weekly 51 (24): 104-111, 2016 [pdf]
  • Standards or Hazards: Environmental Compliance and Market Access Concerns for India’s Marine and Agricultural Products
    • Asia Pacific Journal of Environmental Law 12 (1): 85-116, 2009 [pdf]
  • Environmental Regulations and Indian Leather Industry (with D. Chakraborty)
    • Economic and Political Weekly 42 (19): 1669-1672, 2007 [pdf]
      • ​Reprinted in N. Kumar and V. V. Ramani (eds.), Indian Industry and Environment: Policies and Practices, pp. 216-222, ICFAI University Press, Hyderabad, 2008
  • India's Exports in the post-WTO Phase: Some Exploratory Results and Future Concerns (with D. Chakraborty)
    • Foreign Trade Review 40 (1): 3-26, 2005 [pdf]

Chapters in Books:
  • Trade Reform, Managers, and Skill Intensity: Evidence from India [pdf]
    • in M. Bacchetta and M. Helble (eds.), Trade Adjustment in Asia: Past Experiences and Lessons Learned, pp. 229-275, 2019
  • Trade and Industrial Performance since the WTO Reforms: What Indian Evidences Suggest? (with A. Barua and D. Chakraborty) [pdf] 
    • in R. M. Stern and A. Barua (eds.), India and the WTO: Issues and Negotiating Strategies, pp. 121-144, 2010 
  • Environmental Service Negotiation and India: Priorities and Concerns (with O. De) [pdf]
    • in B. DebRoy et al. (eds.) the trade game: negotiation trends at WTO and concerns of developing countries, pp. 203-214,  2006

​Policy Reports:
  • Spatial Gaps in Management Quality: Evidence from a Lagging Region in Croatia (with A. Grover and L. Iacovone) [pdf]
    • ​World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 9213, World Bank: Washington DC
  • Mainstreaming Gender in Trade Policy – A Case Study on Bhutan [link]
    • UNCTAD 
  • ​Asian and African Development Trajectories: Revisiting Facts and Figures (with G. Carbonnier and E. Dalle Mulle) [link]
    • International Development Policy Brief, Graduate Institute (IHEID), Geneva 
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Media and Other Writings:
Future Research: