Job Market Paper
Protected Land Rights, Misallocation, and Dead Capital
Protected Land Rights (PLRs) for marginalized communities encompass a quarter of land resources across 90 countries. Yet, the impact of PLRs on structural transformation and economic development is poorly understood. Theoretically, protection could support local entrepreneurship and industry. On the other hand, such measures might lead to the economic isolation of targeted areas. Drawing on newly collected historical and high-resolution data in the context of a spatial regression discontinuity design, this paper studies the long-run impact of PLRs. Land transfer restrictions between targeted and out-group members led to 17% higher agricultural income share, 15% lower firm density in non-primary sectors, and 8% lesser housing capital in PLR areas relative to adjacent non-PLR areas. Higher transaction costs in land markets led to land misallocation and impeded efficient land use conversion and agglomeration economies. Reducing constraints on market transactions for marginalized groups may thus foster entrepreneurship and growth
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Working Papers
Bridges, Market Access, and City Growth
This study uses a two-way fixed-effects model to explore how bridge connectivity influences city growth and the spatial distribution of economic activity across 8,000 city clusters in India. By constructing a counterfactual market access measure that removes bridge connections from the transportation network, I isolate the marginal impact of bridges. Preliminary analysis with a newly geocoded dataset of 1,172 large bridges suggests that bridge connectivity contributed to approximately 12% of built-up area growth in the post-liberalization period.
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Work in progress
- NIMBYism, Eminent Domain, and Infrastructure Growth (with Devesh Kapur)
- Development at Crossroads: Impact of Road Development in Afghanistan (with Ritwiz Sarma)
- MENA Digital Ecosystem Assessment Report: A case study of Morocco
- Comparative Political Economy of Infrastructure Land Development in China and India
Published Policy Papers
- “Tracking Reforms In Land Leasing And Change In Land Use: Evidence from Gujarat and Karnataka”, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, August 2021
- “The Legal Regime And Political Economy Of Land Rights in Scheduled Areas of India”, (with Namita Wahi), Centre for Policy Research, March 2018
- “Land Acquisition in India: A review of Supreme Court cases from 1950 to 2016”, (with Namita Wahi and Pallav Shukla) Centre for Policy Research, March 2017
- “Building smart cities in India: Allahabad, Ajmer, and Visakhapatnam” (with Shamika Ravi, Adie Tomar, and Joseph Kane) Brookings Institution, August 2016
Popular Commentary/ Digital Projects
- “Mapping 1000 Land Laws” (https://landlawsofindia.org/), Centre for Policy Research, August 2022
- “Policy Winds, Land Rights, and Wrongs” LongShorts, Transfin, Audio Podcast, July 2019
- “Municipal Bond Market Could Be The Answer To Smart Cities” (with Shamika Ravi), The Wire, 2016
- “For Smart Cities To Succeed, Local Governance Is A Must” (with Shamika Ravi), The Wire, 2016
- “A Governance-First Approach To India’s Smart Cities” (with Adie Tomar), Brookings Institution, 2015