Research Interests:
Working Papers:
Paper(s) Under Review:
Publications:
Journal Articles:
- Primary: International Trade, Innovation, and Development Economics
- Secondary: Finance and Labour
Working Papers:
- Bank Entry, Access to Credit, and Misallocation (with N. Mitra)
- How do banking reforms affect the real economy? By utilizing a unique policy change regarding the entry of new domestic private and foreign banks in India, we examine the effect on the manufacturing firms' access to credit, performance, and misallocation using unique firm-bank matched data. We find robust evidence of cherry-picking: entry of new banks resulted in higher loans, but only for the big firms by 4.8-10%. More credit resulted in improvements in physical or within-firm productivity for the big firms, and no improvement in allocative efficiency or between-firm allocation of resources, keeping them at least as constrained as before. Counterfactual exercises show that the entry of banks accounted for at least a 5-7% gain in manufacturing output. Our findings underscore the fact that unilateral policy change can limit the effect of the reform if other reforms, such as labour or input market or incentives for banks to extend loans to small firms in our case, are not simultaneously undertaken in tandem.
- Broadband Policy, Adoption of Digital Processes, and Firm Performance: Evidence from China (with W. Zhu) [pdf]
- Do Lenders also Respond to Import Competition? Evidence from Bank-Firm Loan Level Data (with S. K. Ritadhi) [pdf]
- Trade Reform, M&A Activity, and Family Firms (with H. Yang)
- Can Globalization Affect Ethnic Politics: Evidence from the Rise in Caste-based Parties in India (with A. Aneja and S. K. Ritadhi)
- Globalization and Domestic Outsourcing (with L. Castro and V. Tyazhelnikov)
Paper(s) Under Review:
- Import Competition, Knowledge Diffusion, and Innovation (with R. Ahsan) [pdf]
- Successful innovation depends on the stock of knowledge that innovators have access to. Yet, empirical analysis of the impact of trade 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 lowers innovation. However, firms that are close to other patenting firms (knowledge access) innovate more: a firm with the 80th percentile knowledge access increases its patents by 3.28% after experiencing a 10% increase in imports. These results suggest that the pre-existing spatial distribution of innovators is an important determinant of how import competition will affect overall innovation.
- Can a Trade Policy Change Increase Gender Equality? New Evidence from Chile (with U. Banerjee and L. Castro) [pdf] Revised & Resubmitted at Journal of International Economics
- 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 matched with customs data 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 increased by 10% for new exporters exporting to Mexico due to the FTA or complete elimination of tariffs. This happened through a substitution effect from male to female high-skilled workers caused primarily due to higher use of technology, high-skilled non-productive tasks, and reduction in discrimination in hiring of female white-collar workers. Our results are driven by domestic firms producing final goods. We also show that re-organization of labour force led to about 14% increase in labour productivity. Overall, we underscore that trade policy can play an important role in addressing gender gap in employment.
Publications:
Journal Articles:
- Chinese Import Competition and Prices: Evidence from India (with M. Henry and R. Singh)
- Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Forthcoming [pdf]
- 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]
- 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
- 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)