Research

Projects

Persistent effects of Colonial Land Tenure Systems: Village-level evidence from India, Journal of Development Economics, 2024. Link

This paper estimates the causal impact of land revenue institutions on long run rural development using a Geographical Regression Discontinuity framework on a new village level data set from colonial India. An early 19th century historical quirk meant that villages in close geographical proximity were assigned to different property rights systems - some falling under landlords and others under the government. Villages that were assigned to landlords in the colonial era are shown to have lower developmental outcomes into the 21st century, including lower per capita consumption and mean light intensity. This paper provides evidence that a part of this divergence occurred in the colonial period. However, historical differences during the colonial period laid the foundation for greater divergence in the post-independence period, driven primarily by the differing potential to benefit from the Green Revolution.

Risk, uncertainty and development in India and Taiwan, 1900-1939 (with Chung-Tang Cheng & Maanik Nath), Asia Pacific Economic History Review, 2024. Link

Environmental conditions significantly affected development in the Asian tropics. This paper investigates the relationship between weather risk and agriculture in four regions with distinct climatological features in colonial India and colonial Taiwan. Using new data, we estimate the scale of crop output sensitivity to rainfall shocks across these regions.

Drivers of Agricultural Growth in Colonial India (with Maanik Nath), under review

This paper investigates the effects of climate, market access and irrigation on agricultural income growth across Indian districts during British rule. Imperial policy prioritized railways over irrigation. Initial railroad expansion had a positive impact on growth in select districts though railway access did not affect agricultural incomes between 1891 and 1931. Districts with access to canal irrigation saw increasing incomes. Seasonality-imposed constraints on production that were inadequately addressed explain net stagnation in the rural economy.

Commercialization and conservation: Variations in colonial forest institutions in South Asia (ongoing)

Other work

The political economy of housing in England, New Political Economy (2017), 22:1, 31-60, available at https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2016.1195346 (with Miguel Coelho & Sebastian Dellepiane-Avellaneda)

Problems of housing affordability have been afflicting parts of the UK, especially the South East of England, for a number of years. The problem is closely related to shortages in housing supply, which are, in turn, largely associated with constraints imposed by the English land planning system.We find that there is a tendency for owner-occupiers to express greater opposition to local house building and that, in the decade to 2011, the housing stock grew significantly less in local authorities with higher proportions of owner-occupiers among local households. The results suggest the risk that planning decisions might have been distorted in favour of current homeowners is real and economically significant. We discuss a range of historical, socio-economic and policy trends that help explain why successive governments of various stripes have been reluctant to address head-on problems in housing supply and put a curb on house prices.