Bio

This paper examines whether expanding women’s political representation affects marital practices in rural India. Exploiting the reservation of village council leadership positions for women under India’s 1992 constitutional amendment, I show that exposure to female leaders delays marriage by improving women’s economic opportunities, but also increases dowry payments. The increase in dowry is concentrated in more patriarchal settings, where the social costs of delayed marriage are higher. The results suggest that political empowerment can shift marital behavior, but that its effects are constrained—and partly offset—by entrenched social norms.

This paper studies whether parliamentary deliberation affects policy-making, and whether its effects depend on public exposure. Using quasi-random variation from the computerized ballot that determines which policies are discussed during Question Hour in the Indian Parliament, we show that debated issues are more likely to appear in subsequent bills and that related bills progress faster through the legislative process. These effects are substantially stronger when debate receives media coverage. Reductions in news attention cut the policy impact of debate by roughly half, implying that public exposure is an important mechanism through which deliberation shapes policy.

This paper quantifies a cultural premium in immigration attitudes: the additional income a culturally distant immigrant must earn to be equally preferred to a culturally close immigrant for remaining in the host country. Using a representative survey experiment in the United Kingdom, we estimate that this premium exceeds £20,000 when the immigrant’s personal values are unobserved, but falls by 73% when respondents learn that his values align with UK norms. Information on value alignment also reduces concerns about cultural erosion by 35%. The findings indicate that opposition to culturally distant immigrants reflects, to a large extent, beliefs about their underlying values rather than origin per se.

This paper studies how postpartum depression affects mothers’ labor-market trajectories after childbirth. Using Danish administrative records linked to validated postpartum depression screenings, we show that depressed and non-depressed mothers follow similar pre-birth employment trends but diverge sharply after birth, generating persistent employment gaps. These effects are larger for less educated mothers and for women in less family-friendly jobs. The results identify postpartum depression as an important and unequal contributor to the motherhood penalty.

This paper studies exponential growth bias in beliefs about COVID-19 transmission and examines how reducing this bias affects economic expectations and risky investment. Using four experimental interventions, we show that simple feedback and forecast information substantially reduce misperceptions about epidemic growth. Correcting the bias also dampens expectations of macroeconomic deterioration and reduces risky investment. The results highlight how errors in processing non-linear growth can shape economic beliefs and choice under uncertainty.

This paper studies exponential-growth prediction bias in beliefs about COVID-19 transmission and its implications for compliance with protective behavior. Using an incentivized online experiment spanning countries at different stages of the pandemic, we show that respondents systematically underestimate infection growth, and that larger bias is associated with lower compliance with safety measures. A simple information intervention that presents prior case counts in raw numbers rather than graphs significantly reduces the bias. The findings suggest that how epidemic information is presented can improve risk perception and public-health behavior.