WORKING PAPERS
15. Talk Therapy in Adolescence: Experimental Evidence on Take-Up, Mental Health, and Schooling (with Eric Edmonds, Priya Mukherjee, Nikhilesh Prakash, and Shwetlena Sabarwal)
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We examine the impact of a randomized therapy intervention on Nepalese adolescents at risk of school dropout. Our study is the largest of its kind (N = 1,707) and is novel in that participation does not require a preexisting diagnosis. Ninety percent of those offered therapy participated, with younger adolescents demonstrating higher compliance. Among those who complied, therapy significantly reduced psychological distress, improved emotional regulation, and enhanced life perspective, even in individuals without baseline mental health issues. However, these improvements in well-being did not lead to increased school attendance or better cognitive performance, suggesting that additional interventions may be necessary to enhance educational engagement in low-resource settings.
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14. When Kids Teach Parents: Impact of Environmental Education on Household Behaviors (with Shubhro Bhattacharya, Sara M. Constantino, Nirajana Mishra, Shwetlena Sabarwal, Dighbijoy Samaddar, and Raisa Sherif)
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This study evaluates how environmental education shapes household behavior through intra-family transmission of knowledge and norms. We implement a novel, activity-based program tailored to the local context in Patna, India, and designed to engage both children and adults. Leveraging a randomized field experiment with 1,545 child–parent pairs, we assess both direct effects on participants and indirect spillovers to non-participating family members. The experiment assigns households to one of three treatment arms—child-only, parent-only, or joint child–parent participation—or a control group. We find that direct participation increases pro-environmental behaviors, as measured through incentivized behavioral tasks. Spillover effects are present but asymmetric: while both children and parents influence one another, only children shift their parents’ attitudes toward climate change and perceptions of environmental risk. Notably, joint participation does not produce stronger outcomes than targeting either group individually, suggesting that interventions focused on children may offer a more scalable and cost-effective approach to promoting sustainable household behavior.
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Policy Writings and Interviews
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13. Shaping Minds: The Transformative Effects of Theater‑Based Learning (with Ritam Chaurey, Sara M. Constantino, Shantanu Khanna, Abhiroop Mukhopadhyay, and Raisa Sherif), accepted at The Journal of Development Economics (based on pre-analysis plan)
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Despite progress in addressing barriers to human capital in the last two decades, significant learning gaps persist. A new line of research suggests that holistic skills are associated with positive impacts on later life outcomes. However, there is little evidence supporting the effectiveness of existing traditional classroom-based instructional strategies in improving non-cognitive and socio-emotional skills. In this study, we conduct a randomized control trial in 96 schools in Uttarakhand, India to estimate the causal impacts of an experiential learning pedagogy in secondary schools. The curriculum consists of a total of 15 hours of arts and theater-based instruction delivered over 10 sessions across a six month period. We measure the impacts on socio-emotional skills, cognitive abilities, and learning outcomes.
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12. Entrepreneurial Mindsets at Scale: Evidence from a Curriculum Expansion in India (with Sofia Amaral, Aakash Bhalothia, Ritam Chaurey, Isis Gaddis, Gaurav Khanna, Samreen Malik, Abhiroop Mukhopadhyay, Nishith Prakash, and Raghav Rakesh)
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The importance of entrepreneurial skills extends beyond individuals who aspire to enter the business world. With the evolving nature of most high-return jobs, there is a growing need for an entrepreneurial mindset that encompasses a range of cognitive and non-cognitive skills. However, there is a lack of data and experimental evidence on whether an entrepreneurial mindset can be instilled (especially in high school students), whether the current at-scale implementation has been effective, its impact on entrepreneurial traits, and whether such skills are effective in closing the existing skill gaps across genders. To address this gap, we leverage a unique opportunity to work with the Government of Andhra Pradesh on the rollout of the Entrepreneurial Mindset Development Program (EMDP). The program consists of a special curriculum, delivered to Grade 9 students over 220 working days, to train students on their entrepreneurial mindset. Working closely with the Government of Andhra Pradesh and implementing NGOs, we aim to assess the program’s impact on the students’ entrepreneurial mindset, cognitive and non-cognitive skills, their ability to prepare and deliver an entrepreneurial idea, their hypothetical choice of labor, choice of major going forward, and their intention to pursue work that is different from traditional labor (i.e., not self-employed).
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Policy Writings and Interviews
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11. Building Teacher Capacity or Outsourcing Pedagogy? Experimental Evidence from Science Education Reform (with Ariel Gomez, Vinay Jha, Sandeep Kumar, Santosh Gautam, and Soham Sahoo), accepted at The Journal of Development Economics (based on pre-analysis plan)
Working Draft
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Despite making great strides in expanding access to education, developing countries like India continue to lag in measures of actual student learning. To understand how the quality of education mediates learning, this randomized control trial evaluates a pedagogical intervention that trains science teachers in rural Uttar Pradesh, India. The curiosity-based curriculum emphasizes practical techniques along with foundational principles on effective answer-seeking, guided research, constructive feedback, and peer-to-peer communication. The researchers assess whether active teaching approaches increase student recall of course material, curiosity, student engagement, critical thinking, and other soft skills foundational to developing students’ intrinsic motivation to learn.
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10. Sorting it Out: Urban Waste Management in India (with Ahana Basistha, and Raisa Sherif), revise & resubmit in Environmental and Resource Economics
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Urban waste management challenges pose significant health and economic consequences. Although source-level waste segregation offers a promising solution, its success depends on household participation. Through a randomized controlled trial in the capital city of Bihar, India, we evaluate how light-touch messaging interventions influence household waste management practices. Our results reveal a stark behavioral disconnect: while interventions increased financial contributions to waste segregation initiatives by 9.6 -- 11.7 percent compared to the control group, they failed to improve actual waste segregation practices. This gap between financial support and behavioral change highlights the complexity of promoting sustainable waste management practices in urban households.
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Policy Writings and Interviews
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9. When Feedback Backfires: Confronting Gender Bias Among Police Officers in India (with Sofia Amaral, Kimberly Chaney, Victoria Endl‑Geyer, and Abhilasha Sahay)
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Police officers' discretionary handling of gender-based violence (GBV) complaints is a critical and largely neglected barrier to justice in developing countries. We collaborate with the Madhya Pradesh Police in India, the second largest state by area, to conduct a lab-in-the-field randomized experiment with 323 officers, and study the effect of confronting officers with evidence of their own biased handling of a fictitious GBV case. We find no statistically significant average effect on any pre-specified outcome. In exploratory analysis, responses differ by officer gender. Relative to female controls, confronted female officers prioritize the victim's statement 23 percentage points more one week later, though this estimate rests on 58 female officers. Confronted male officers move the opposite way, a backlash: they deprioritize the victim's statement, elevate the offender's statement, and endorse significantly fewer pro-victim descriptors for GBV victims on a computerized stereotyping task. We detect no change in attitudes toward GBV, and no increase in guilt or shame, the affective pathway through which confrontation is theorized to operate. Behavior moves without it. Baseline bias differs sharply across groups, with 28 percent of female officers and roughly half of male officers strongly biased before treatment, but gender, baseline bias, confrontation intensity, and officer age covary in our sample and cannot be separated. We read the results as immediate reactions to having one's own biased handling made salient, not as durable de-biasing. Uniform confrontation risks adverse responses among the most biased officers, the group such interventions most need to reach.
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Policy Writings and Interviews
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8. Empowerment Paradox? The Long-run Impact of a Cycling Program for Girls in Zambia (with Ana Garcia‑Hernandez, and Janina Steinert), revise & resubmit in Economic Development and Cultural Change
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This study examines the five-year impacts of a bicycle distribution program for adolescent girls in rural Zambia, implemented across 91 schools as part of a randomized controlled trial. While the program increased girls’ self-reported empowerment and reduced experiences of domestic and intimate partner violence, it also led to higher rates of early marriage and teenage pregnancy—outcomes that run counter to the program’s objectives. We explore mechanisms behind this paradox, including improved socioeconomic status and increased receipt of bride prices, which may reflect girls’ higher perceived value in the marriage market. These findings suggest that girls may have exercised greater agency by making strategic decisions about marriage and childbearing. Our results underscore the complex interplay between empowerment, economic mobility, and local norms, and highlight the importance of accounting for potential unintended consequences when designing gender-focused development interventions.
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7. Science on the Move: How ‘Experiential Learning’ Shapes Human Capital (with Nitin Bharti, Samreen Malik, and Abhiroop Mukhopadhyay)
Working Draft
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Despite progress in educational access across many developing economies, the provision of high-quality education that fosters lifelong learning, meta-learning skills, and the ability to apply knowledge in novel contexts remains largely absent. In collaboration with the Agastya Foundation, we conducted a randomized controlled trial in public schools in Uttar Pradesh (UP) to evaluate an alternative science-based pedagogical intervention, characterized as discovery-based learning. This study involved 68 "treatment" schools and 64 "control" schools. Our primary objective is to assess the impact of this intervention on students' lifelong learning skills—transferable competencies that extend beyond mere academic success. These skills, which cannot be taught through traditional textbook methods, must be cultivated through enriched teaching and learning experiences. The alternative pedagogy we evaluate aims to do just that. Our investigation examines whether the intervention led to improvements not only in students' overall creativity, curiosity, confidence, commitment, and content-based learning, but also in their scientific skills. This holistic approach to skill development aligns with the growing recognition of the importance of non-cognitive abilities in educational and life outcomes.
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Policy Writings and Interviews
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6. Educator Knowledge of Early Childhood Development: Evidence from Eastern Nepal (with Lindsey Buck, Nathan Fiala, Shwetlena Sabarwal, Deepak Saraswat, and Deepika Shrestha)
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Early childhood is a crucial period for the cognitive, social, emotional, physical, and language development of children. Of the 200 million children who do not reach their developmental potential worldwide, 66 percent live in South Asia. This paper explores gaps in knowledge among educators in Eastern Nepal about the importance of early childhood. The results of a survey headteachers and teachers show that teachers often do not place enough weight on the importance of behaviors that contribute to the growth and development of children in early childhood. There are also large gaps in teachers' understanding and practice of classroom accommodations for children with disabilities. The paper illustrates that educators, who play a large role in children~^!!^s lives during early years, may be uninformed about the importance of early childhood development. The paper provides policy recommendations that can help policymakers target areas that lack understanding and improve early childhood development education and understanding among educators.
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Policy Writings and Interviews
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5. Understanding Behavioral Barriers to Demand for Domestic Violence Services (with Sofia Amaral, Lindsey Buck, and Maria Micaela Sviatschi)
Working Draft
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Rates of domestic violence (DV) are increasing rapidly in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic. What are the barriers that victims of DV face in reporting and leaving abusive relationships? How can policymakers eliminate the obstacles that victims face? This project aims to answer these questions through a novel intervention that targets information constraints, belief updating, and victim self-blaming. We use Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and Prolific to survey a set of 6,000 women and look at common barriers that women face when in an abusive relationship; we then provide treatments that give victims access to resources for reporting, information about the health status of their relationships, and videos that break down self-blame and encourage self-esteem building. Our research attempts to analyze what the most important barriers are for victims of domestic violence, and how they can reduce self-blaming, increase emotional and psychological wellbeing, and ultimately report or leave abusive relationships.
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4. Gender, Crime and Punishment: Evidence from Women Police Stations in India (with Sofia Amaral, and Sonia Bhalotra), revise & resubmit in Economic Development and Cultural Change
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We examine the impact of establishing women police stations (WPS) on gender-based violence in India. Using administrative crime data and exploiting staggered implementation across Indian cities, we find that the opening of WPS is associated with a 20 percent increase in gender-based violence cases registered by the police, a result driven by domestic violence. This appears to reflect reporting rather than incidence, as we find no changes in femicide or in survey-reported domestic violence. We also find some evidence of an increase in women’s labor supply following WPS opening, consistent with women feeling safer once the costs of reporting violence fall.
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Policy Writings and Interviews
2. Political Change and Crime Reduction in Bihar (with Oliver Vanden Eynde, Chinmaya Kumar, and Clement Imbert)
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After 2005, Bihar has experienced a dramatic and fast improvement in law and order. We document this improvement by relying on novel, police station level monthly crime-data from 2001-2013. Our analysis shows that crime improvements were largest in areas characterized by high crime before 2005. We find mild evidence that personnel management and political characteristics correlate with crime reduction measures. However, the overall impact of these factors appears to be small.
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Policy Writings and Interviews
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1. Education Policies and Practices: What have we Learnt so Far and the Road Ahead? (with Priya Ranjan)
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This paper assesses the status of education, both quantity, and quality, in Bihar in both absolute terms and relative to other states in India. It then performs a regression exercise using a panel data of Indian states to identify the correlates of educational outcomes. It also surveys the broader literature on education policies which provides a perspective on the current policies in the field of education in Bihar. Finally, it makes a case for several policy initiatives that should be accorded priority by the policymakers in Bihar.
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