Working Papers
A Division of Laborers: Identity and Efficiency in India
with Guilhem Cassan and Tatjana Kleinberg
Conditionally Accepted, Econometrica
Sept. 2022 Draft
Workers' social identity affects their occupation, and therefore the structure and prosperity of the aggregate economy. We estimate a general equilibrium Roy model of this phenomenon in the Indian caste system, where work and identity are particularly intertwined. New data on occupation, wages, and caste’s traditional occupations and social status show that workers are over-represented in their traditional occupations and under-represented in socially higher or lower occupations. We consider counterfactuals removing castes' hierarchical and occupational links. Despite more efficient human capital allocation, aggregate output gains are small–in some counterfactuals negative–due to weaker caste networks and reduced learning across generations.
The Social Construction of Race during Reconstruction
with Anjali Adukia, Richard Hornbeck, and Ben Lualdi
Conditionally Accepted, Journal of Political Economy
Feb. 2025 Draft
We examine the social construction of race during the United States' Reconstruction Era, a critical juncture between slavery and Jim Crow segregation. We show that people with the same detailed skin tone, recorded by the Freedman's Bank (1865-1874), were more likely racialized as White or Mulatto by the 1870 Census if they were wealthier or literate. Our estimates reveal the construction -- or rather, reconstruction -- of race in a period of unfulfilled potential for social transformation, setting a path for racial segregation and continued racial stratification. The endogenous historical construction of race also has implications for analyses that compare individuals by race or include race as a control variable.
Riding to Opportunity: Geographic and Household Effects from the Orphan Trains
with Scott Abrahams
Sep. 2026 draft
Between 1854 and 1929, roughly 200,000 “orphan train” children were sent from East Coast cities to the American West to improve their lives via environmental change. Using quasi-experimental variation in placements and digitized records linked to census observations, we estimate intention-to-treat effects and the effects of the locations and households the children subsequently chose for themselves. Assigned characteristics poorly predict adult outcomes, whereas those of self-chosen destinations and households significantly predict later adult income, with an intergenerational elasticity of about 0.13. Digitizing records for children not sent, we find by comparison that the program achieved its proximate aim of ruralization, but no evidence that it improved economic prospects. Instrumental variables estimates indicate about a 30% decline in adult income, concentrated among older children. For young adults with low barriers to movement, initial environments may matter less than the opportunities individuals actively seek in communities aligned with their capabilities and aspirations.
Dynamics of a Malthusian Economy: India in the Aftermath of the 1918 Influenza
with Dave Donaldson
Sept. 2021 draft
The 1918 influenza epidemic struck India when the subcontinent was mired in its long-term Malthusian equilibrium of low population growth and stable per-capita con-sumption. Its terrible death toll left survivors with additional agricultural land, which we show they rapidly put to agricultural use with no decrease in yields. We explore the extent to which this increased per-capita wealth gave rise, over the ensuing decades, to heightened investments in both child quantity as well as child quality. Consistent with most Malthusian unified growth theories, we find that individuals in heavily affected districts had more children in the aftermath of the influenza. We also find that these children were taller and better educated. Our results suggest that the preference for child quality existed even in societies that appeared Malthusian both to contemporary observers and modern historian
Bargaining and Welfare: A Dynamic Structural Analysis of the Autorickshaw Market
January 2017 Draft
Bargaining for retail goods is ubiquitous in developing countries, where traders spend substantial amounts of time haggling over purchases. Would welfare be higher if trade was conducted at fixed prices instead? The answer is theoretically ambiguous: if bargaining is a low cost form of price discrimination, it may lead to greater trade and welfare and even approximate the optimal incentive compatible outcome. However, if bargaining imposes large utility costs on the participants, then a fixed price may be preferable. I develop the tools to resolve this question, specifying a model of repeated trade with hidden valuations adapted to the context of bargaining, and developing a dynamic structural estimation technique to infer the underlying parameters of the market. I then apply these techniques to bargaining data I collected from the market for local autorickshaw transportation in Jaipur, India.