Working Papers
5. Gender, Crime and Punishment: Evidence from Women Police Stations in India (with Sofia Amaral, and Sonia Bhalotra)
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We examine the impact of establishing women police stations (WPS) on reporting of gender-based violence. Using administrative crime data and exploiting staggered implementation across Indian cities, we find that the opening of WPS is associated with an increase in police reports of crimes against women of 29 percent, 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 & INTERVIEWS:
MEDIA:
4. When Goal Setting Forges Ahead but Stops Short (with Asadul Islam, Sungoh Kwon, Eema Masood, Shwetlena Sabarwal, and Deepak Saraswat)
3. Wheels of Change: Transforming Girl’s Lives with Bicycles (with Nathan Fiala, Ana Garcia-Hernandez, and Kritika Narula)
2. Political Change and Crime Reduction in Bihar (with Oliver Vanden Eynde, Chinmaya Kumar, and Clement Imbert)
1. Education Policies and Practices: What have we Learnt so Far and the Road Ahead? (with Priya Ranjan)
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We conduct an at-scale randomized control trial among 18,000 secondary students in Zanzibar (Tanzania) to examine the effects of personal best goal-setting on student outcomes. We also test the impact of combining goal setting with non-financial rewards conditional on students meeting the goals they set. We find that goal-setting has a significant positive impact on student time use, study effort, and self-discipline. However, we do not find any significant impacts on test scores. This is partially because nearly two-thirds of students do not set realistic goals. We find that effects on time use, study effort, and discipline are weaker when goal-setting is combined with non-financial rewards. This suggests that tying goal-setting to extrinsic incentives could weaken its impact. We also find stronger impacts for female students, and from students coming from weaker socio-economic backgrounds. These results demonstrate that goal-setting can have positive impacts on student outcomes, especially for the relatively disadvantaged. However, for maximizing impacts goal-setting may need to be combined with guidance on setting realistic goals and extrinsic rewards tied to goals may need to be avoided.
Slides
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Reducing the gender gap in education is a primary goal for many countries. Two major challenges for many girls is the distance to school and their safety when commuting. We study the impact of providing a bicycle to a school-going girl who lives more than 3 km from the school. We randomized whether a girl receives a bicycle with a small cost to her family to cover replacement parts, a bicycle where these costs are covered by the program and so is zero cost to the family, or a control group. We find that the bicycle reduced average commuting time to school by 35%, late arrival by 66%, and decreased absenteeism by 27% in the short and medium-run. We also find evidence of increased grade transition in the medium-run, improved math test scores, girls expressing higher feelings of control over their lives and, for those who received bicycles with a small cost to her family, higher levels of aspirations, self-image, and a desire to delay marriage and pregnancy. Heterogeneity analysis by distance to school shows an inverted U-shape for most of the schooling and empowerment results, suggesting those impacts are larger for girls that live further away from school. This also suggests that empowerment outcomes worked through increased attendance in school.
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Slides
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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.
Slides
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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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