Research
Working papers
Economic Ideas and Policy Implementation: Evidence from Malthusian Training in British Indian Bureaucracy (Job Market Paper)
Public officials often fail to implement government policy as directed, yet the role of economic ideas in shaping these implementation choices is poorly understood. This paper provides causal evidence that exposure to economic ideas can durably influence bureaucrat behavior. I study British colonial bureaucrats in India, exploiting a natural experiment created by the abrupt death of Thomas Malthus in 1834, replacing his economics instruction at a bureaucrat training college for that of a contemporary critic, Richard Jones. Whereas Malthus regarded economic distress as a natural mechanism for restoring equilibrium by reducing population growth, Jones disagreed with this view. Linking rainfall shocks to district-level fiscal responses, I show that officials trained by Malthus delivered less relief during droughts, providing 0.10-0.25 SD less aid across all major measures compared with officials taught by Jones. The results reveal that exposure to abstract economic ideas can shape real-world policy implementation for decades.
The Salt Shock: Scarcity, Substitution, and Surprising Health Spillovers (Working Paper with Ramiro Burga, Sisir Debnath, and Sheetal Sekhri)
We study the long-run health impacts of a 19th-century colonial tax that sharply altered salt prices across a fiscal border in British India. To enforce the salt tax, the British built a 2,500-mile customs line, the salt hedge, which raised salt prices and limited access in eastern regions for several decades. Using a spatial regression discontinuity design around the historical hedge, we show that individuals east of the hedge, who faced prolonged exposure to salt scarcity, exhibit lower rates of hypertension and heart disease today. Historical archival records confirm sustained salt price gaps during the hedge’s operation (1836–1879), and contemporary consumption data reveal persistent differences in salt use across regions. Our results uncover a surprising health spillover from an extractive institution, driven by persistent behavioral adaptation in consumption. We highlight a novel pathway through which fiscal policies can leave a long-lasting imprint on health, even after the policy itself has abolished.
Consequences of Elevated Fluoride Exposure for Cognitive Development (with Ryan Brown, Emily Gonzalez, Rajiv Gupta, Amzad Hossain, Thomas Kishore, and Sheetal Sekhri)
We establish causal links between elevated fluoride exposure in drinking water and the cognition and health of children by leveraging local geogenic factors that generate fluoride variation in household-level drinking water. We consistently find that elevated exposure generates an 8-10% deficit in the general intelligence of children. In addition, the children exposed to high levels of fluoride in their drinking water also have less human capital accumulation, as measured by math and language proficiency tests, worse dental health, and suffer from important physical limitations. We conclude that environmental exposure to elevated fluoride leads to a self-reinforcing cycle of poverty: exposure affects children’s cognition and health, leading to adverse inter-generational consequences, depressing economic mobility, and perpetuating inequality.