Research

Job Market Paper

• A House for Two: Empowering Women with Property Rights
  Abstract

  Formal property ownership may not empower women unless those that they interact with also recognize it. I study the effect of improving awareness about property rights on women’s empowerment through a field experiment in rural Maharashtra. I work in a setting where following a recent policy change married women are documented owners but only 26% recognize it. I randomize an awareness campaign across 1,783 households that informs both spouses that women co-own their property and delivers a physical copy of their ownership document. The campaign improves knowledge that women hold property rights, increases expenditure on women-specific goods by 40%, and reduces men’s alcohol consumption by 33%, though it has no overall effect on domestic violence. I develop and test an intrahousehold bargaining model, which highlights that the effect of the campaign may differ depending on who already knows. Consistent with the model’s predictions, the strongest consumption effects are observed in households with the lowest initial knowledge about women’s ownership, while reductions in domestic violence occur in households where the husband did not know but the wife did. This study highlights how shifting beliefs about women’s rights is essential to realizing the full impact of large-scale government programs.

  Coverage: Published across Maharashtra in Sakal Newspaper

Working Papers

• How do political connections affect property tax compliance?
  with Aneesha Parvathaneni
  Abstract

  How does being connected to a local elected leader affect property tax compliance? Using a close election difference-in-discontinuities design, we quantify the effect of being connected to a local elected leader on tax liability and compliance. We use novel administrative data on property taxation from an Indian district and find that citizens connected to local elected leaders are 45 percentage points more likely to remit taxes and remit 351% more in taxes. We also find that these results are partially driven by enforcement as those who are connected are 30.8 percentage points more likely to face fines and face 247% more in fines. Among those who are connected to the local elected leader, we find that these results are driven by poorer property owners.

Work in Progress

• Unpacking Willingness to Pay as a Measure of Women’s Empowerment
  with Aletheia Donald, William Hickman and Berber Kramer

• Skills to Jobs: How Community and Household Networks Impact Women’s Workforce Entry
  with Tushar Kundu

• Signaling in Female Education
  with Tushar Kundu