Working Papers

From Tribe to State: A Case of Nagaland  (link)

What happens when a state absorbs a historically stateless, tribal society? This paper uses a spatial regression discontinuity design to study the long-run effects of state exposure in a region in northeast India. In the late 19th century the British Empire in the eastern front of India drew an imperial border that divided a tribal people into administered versus un-administered regions. I find that regions falling within the former British administrative border have 14 percentage points higher rates of literacy and 13 percentage points lower share of their labor force in agriculture. Furthermore these gaps do not appear to be converging even into recent years. Looking at channels of persistence, I find that villages in the formerly administered regions also have better public goods provision as measured by road connectivity and school availability. In uncovering deeper channels, I find evidence of the emergence of pro-social traits: those formerly under the British state identify more strongly with non-kin members, reflecting an expansion of the in-group. This paper thus contributes to our understanding of the changes that occur in a society being exposed to a state at the extensive margin.

Consequences of Forced Urbanization via Village Groupings in Mizoram (link)  

This paper examines the impact of a forced urbanization program in Mizoram, India, in response to a guerrilla uprising. Over 500 villages were relocated into one of 103 existing villages called “Grouping Centers” (GCs), while about 110 remained ungrouped. Using a difference-in-differences approach, this study finds lasting population divergence and a reduction in agricultural employment in GCs, alongside increased labor-force participation, suggesting structural change. Furthermore, the availability of amenities in the GCs at baseline played a role in their capacity to absorb refugees, emphasizing the importance of pull factors in successful agglomeration. 

Is Geography Always Exogenous? Culture and Migration in Southeast Asia (link) 

Studies often trace the roots of various institutions to traditional livelihood practices, which in turn are shaped by the geography or ecology societies inhabit. This paper provides historical evidence in the opposite direction, that pre-existing agricultural practices may sometimes dictate the geography groups migrate to over time. In doing so, however, they also carry with them a bundle of institutions to these new locations. Thus an alternate way to interpret geography's role in historical institutional development is that rather than it being the root cause of endogenous, independent institutional formation, it might instead have an attractive force for pre-existing institutions developed elsewhere but with similar environmental features.  

Federally-Funded Science as Engines of Regional Innovation and Prosperity with Susan Helper and Daniel Shoag (link)

Can federal science funding jumpstart local clusters of innovation and prosperity? After World War 2 the federal government built sixteen national laboratories to conduct directed research in basic and applied science. The labs were largely built outside of pre-existing innovation hubs. We show that the locations where these laboratories were built, relative to both identified runner-up locations and synthetic controls, saw a sustained increase in innovation as measured by patenting both at the lab and by nearby unrelated innovators We find evidence of local spillovers in citations, and in a shift in research areas toward those of the labs.  Further, using newly discovered and digitized county-level national data on income and retail sales from 1937-1971 (which will soon be available to download), we quantify the aggregate economic impact relative to runner-up and statistical controls. The effects are large – well above what could be explained by traditional fiscal spending multipliers – though heterogeneous across locations. Using matched person-level records from the 1940-1950 Censuses, we show that these economic gains benefited both prior residents (“stayers”) and new residents.  These results may have implications for the design of future funding for science and for innovation eco-systems.  

Work in Progress

Chiefs, Customs, and Colonies  

Traditional ways of organizing society often interact with modern government policies in ways unexpected. This paper studies the heterogenous effects of a nationwide rural employment program in a state in Northeast India and finds economic divergence among tribes with a chief-based system of land ownership versus those with an individual/clan-based ownership system. In the former type, only one son of the village chief inherits land causing the other sons to set up villages of their own.  Preliminary findings suggest a mechanism linked to this aspect of spatial sorting among the former type as potential future chiefs face new incentives toward village creation.