There is growing awareness that development-oriented government policies may be an important counterinsurgency strategy, but existing papers are usually unable to disentangle various mechanisms. Using a regression-discontinuity design, we analyze the impact of one of the world's largest...

We analyze the electoral consequences of India's 2016 ‘demonetization': a unique policy that unexpectedly made 86% of the currency-in-circulation redundant overnight, and led to severe cash shortages in the subsequent months. We leverage a discontinuity in the number of bank branches arising...

Affirmative action raises the likelihood of getting into college or obtaining a government job for minority groups in India. I study how this change in future prospects affects schooling incentives, and find that minority group students are incentivized to stay in school longer. This approach is...

We present the first estimates of the effects of higher education investments on lower levels of schooling. Using the roll-out of elite public colleges in India, we show that investments in higher education increased educational attainment among school-age children. Private schools entered...

The COVID-19 pandemic brought the dual crises of disease and the containment policies designed to mitigate it. Yet, there is little evidence on the impacts of these policies on women, who are likely to be especially vulnerable, in lower-income countries. We conduct a large phone survey and...