esearch Interests:
Working Papers:
Paper(s) Under Review:
Publications:
Journal Articles:
Other Journal Articles:
Chapters in Books:
Policy Reports:
Media and Other Writings:
Future Research:
- Primary: International Trade, Innovation, and Development Economics
- Secondary: Finance and Labour
Working Papers:
- Do Lenders also Respond to Import Competition? Evidence from Bank-Firm Loan Level Data (with S. K. Ritadhi) [pdf]
- How do lenders respond to import competition? Using a novel bank-firm loan level database matched with balance sheet data, we study this question in the context of India following China’s accession to the WTO in 2001. We find strong evidence of endogenous financial constraints and heterogeneity in lender responses to higher import competition. Private banks connected to firms in high exposure sectors drop credit supply by around 25-57% with no effect for government-owned banks'. Drop in credit supply is overwhelmingly driven only by intensive margin. We also show that our results are not driven by other general equilibrium effects such as firm, industry, and geographical characteristics. Banks with a larger share of loans to firms in high exposure sectors suffer a drop in profitability and external borrowing thereby reducing their credit supply. The drop in credit supply also affects real outcomes of firms with economically meaningful implications in terms of sales, use of production factors (labour, capital, and raw materials), and stock of assets. To the best of our knowledge, ours is one of the first to show that shocks to the real economy can also have significant spillover effects to the financial sector.
- Broadband Policy and Firm Performance: Evidence from China (with W. Zhu) [pdf]
- Do broadband policies affect firm performance? Exploiting a quasi-experimental pilot program, which is a part of a bigger policy design to improve the broadband infrastructure and connectivity, implemented by the Chinese Central Govt. and a novel dataset for Chinese listed firms which provides detailed information of digital processes of firms, we investigate the effect of this policy on firms' digitalization or digital adoption of different processes, innovation, and other firm level performance for the years 2007-2019. We find that the program increased the digital characteristics of an average Chinese firm located in a city where the policy was implemented, compared to a firm in a city which was not part of the policy by 31%. We also find significant innovation effects - R&D expenditure and patent filings went up by 27% and 22%, respectively. All these led to increase in sales and value-added by 15% and stock-market valuation by 16%. Overall, our results underscore that broadband is a important factor for improved firm performance, especially in emerging economies.
- Globalization and Ethnic Politics: Evidence from the Rise in Caste-based Parties in India (with A. Aneja and S. K. Ritadhi)
- Does globalization affect ethnic politics? We examine this question in the context of India's extensive trade liberalization program initiated in 1991, and examine the rise of caste-based parties. We construct district-level exposure to trade liberalization to examine the effect on regional-level changes in vote share. Our empirical findings show that regions facing a larger decline in tariff exposure witnessed higher electoral support for caste-based parties. The increase in popular support for caste-based parties is concentrated in areas with low urbanization, low educational attainment, and a larger concentration of historically marginalized "low caste" citizens. On examining the mechanisms, we find that conditional on the loss in trade protection, daily wages were significantly lower for rural workers, non-secondary educated workers, and workers hailing from marginalized caste groups. The empirical findings are consistent with the explanation that the adverse effects of trade liberalization were disproportionately borne by historically marginalized citizens, who in turn voted for parties claiming to exclusively protect their interests.
- Import Competition, Knowledge Diffusion, and Innovation (with R. Ahsan)
- Successful innovation depends on the stock of knowledge that innovators have access to. Yet, empirical analysis of the impact of import competition on innovation abstracts from such knowledge diffusion. We address this gap in the literature by drawing upon the universe of Indian patent applications between 1995 and 2006, which we map to a spatially granular level. We use this original dataset to provide the first evidence of how knowledge diffusion shapes the innovation response of firms facing import competition. We find that, on average, import competition from China lowers innovation. However, firms with sufficiently high knowledge access innovate more: a firm with the 80th percentile value of knowledge access increases its patents by 3.28 percent after experiencing a 10 percent increase in Chinese imports. These results suggest that the pre-existing spatial distribution of innovators is an important determinant of how import competition will affect overall innovation.
- Bank Entry, Access to Credit, and Misallocation (with N. Mitra)
- Globalization and Domestic Outsourcing (with L. Castro and V. Tyazhelnikov)
Paper(s) Under Review:
- Chinese Import Competition and Prices: Evidence from India (with M. Henry and R. Singh) R&R (2nd Round - Minor) at Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics
- Trade Reform, M&A Activity, and Family Firms (with H. Yang) Revised & Resubmitted at IMF Economic Review
- Can a Trade Policy Change Increase Gender Equality? New Evidence from Chile (with U. Banerjee and L. Castro) R&R at Journal of International Economics
Publications:
Journal Articles:
- Import Competition, Formalization, and the Role of Contract Labor (with R. Singh and V. Soundararajan)
- The World Bank Economic Review, 2024 Forthcoming [pdf]
- Import Competition, Labour Regulations, and Firm Outsourcing (with D. Mitra and A. Sundaram)
- Journal of Development Economics 168: 103272, 2024 [pdf]
- Bank Ownership and Firm Performance
- Economica 91 (361): 238-267, 2024 [pdf]
- Cross-border Environmental Regulation and Firm Labor Demand (with A. Chakrabarti and C. Chatterjee)
- Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 117: 102753, 2023 [pdf]
- 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
- Research Policy 46 (5): 939-955, 2017 [pdf]
- 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
- Economic and Political Weekly 42 (19): 1669-1672, 2007 [pdf]
- 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
Media and Other Writings:
- Import Competition, Labour Market Regulation, and Outsourcing (with D. Mitra and A. Sundaram)
- VoxEU: 7th December, 2021 [https://voxeu.org/article/import-competition-labour-market-regulation-and-outsourcing]
- Intellectual Property Regimes and Wage Inequality (with S. Bhattacharya and C. Chatterjee)
- Ideas for India: 25th October, 2021 [https://www.ideasforindia.in/topics/productivity-innovation/intellectual-property-rights-and-wage-inequality.html]
- Inégalités: le délicat problème avec la propriété intellectuelle
- Intellectual Property Regimes and Wage Inequality (with S. Bhattacharya and C. Chatterjee)
- VoxEU: 20th September, 2021 [https://voxeu.org/article/intellectual-property-rights-and-wage-inequality]
- Import Competition, Formalization, and Role of Contract Workers (with R. Singh and V. Soundararajan)
- Ideas for India: 27th January, 2021 [https://www.ideasforindia.in/topics/trade/import-competition-formalisation-and-the-role-of-contract-workers.html]
- Is the Ban on BS-III Vehicles Really Bad? (with C. Chatterjee)
- livemint 11 (86): 15, April 11, 2017 [http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/BV8SwjKy9dM5V8eEMEkfSI/Is-the-ban-on-BSIII-vehicles-really-bad.html]
- Assure a Better Future for the Leather Industry (with R. Kher)
- The Financial Express: 7, Feb 17, 2005 [http://archive.financialexpress.com/news/assure-a-better-future-for-the-leather-industry/147818/1]
Future Research:
- R&D Tax Credit and Firm Performance: Evidence from a Quasi-natural Experiment (with S. Sircar, R. Verma, and S. Mathur)
- Creditor Rights, Bank Lending, and Product Variety (with S. K. Ritadhi and V. Tyazhelnikov)
- Does Gender Reform Affect Financial Behaviour of Firms? New Evidence from India (with S. Banerjee, U. Banerjee, S. K. Ritadhi)