Research

Job Market Paper

Branching Out: How Bank Expansion Shapes Household Credit Portfolios

This paper investigates the interaction between formal and informal credit markets by analyzing the effects of a large-scale bank expansion policy in India. Using a regression discontinuity design based on the Reserve Bank of India’s 2005 initiative to increase banking in underserved districts, the study finds that greater bank presence led to a 14 percentage point increase in the probability of households taking informal loans, an effect concentrated in rural areas. Furthermore, the share of formal loans in household portfolios was lower in treated districts. These results suggest a vertical interaction between the two credit sectors, with evidence found in the loan terms: informal moneylenders in newly banked districts charged significantly lower interest rates. The findings suggest that informal lenders may act as intermediaries, channeling the increased supply of formal credit to households and demonstrating their adaptive role within the financial ecosystem.

Working Papers

Impact of Cricket on Hindu-Muslim Conflicts in India

Can shared national experiences reduce religious conflict? Using the case of India, I examine whether international cricket matches influence the incidence of Hindu–Muslim violence. Combining daily data on Hindu–Muslim conflicts (1950 – 2000) with the full schedule of India’s international cricket matches, I show that the occurrence of a match reduces the likelihood of a conflict event by 1.7 to 2 percentage points. The effect is concentrated in matches played abroad, which suggests that context and collective attention may strengthen the unifying impact of national sporting events. Since both cricket activity and conflict intensity increase substantially in the post-1980 period, when television viewership expands, I re-estimate the specifications for this subsample and find consistent effects. While the current analysis uses only temporal variation, the findings point to several promising next steps. These include incorporating spatial variation across regions with different levels of polarization and political salience, as well as examining domestic cricket and other forms of violence. Overall, the evidence suggests that widely shared cultural experiences, such as cricket, can create moments of national cohesion that temporarily reduce inter-religious conflict.

Work in Progress

Demonetization and Domestic Violence

Women's Land Inheritance and Credit: Evidence from India
with Mansa Saxena