I am a postdoctoral scholar at the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, based out of India. Before this, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Environmental Markets Lab at the University of California, Santa Barbara. I hold a PhD in Environmental Economics from the London School of Economics, a Masters degree in Public Policy from UC Berkeley, and an undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (ISM Dhanbad).
My research is broadly about the understanding the interactions between economic growth and environmental change, including air and water pollution, climate change, and groundwater depletion.
Welcome to my website.
How do the health benefits of reducing air pollution translate into aggregate income gains? Income gains can differ from health benefits because labor productivity may vary in the places where people experience lower pollution, and because labor reallocation to those places may reinforce agglomeration economies. This paper shows that incorporating two physical features of pollution sources - their location and long-distance dispersion tendency - can alter the importance of labor productivity and reallocation, and lead to very different income gains from pollution control policies that otherwise produce similar population health benefits. To understand these interactions, I develop a spatial equilibrium model that accounts for the movement of both pollution and people across space. I apply this model to study income gains from two archetypal pollution control policies that target non-industrial sources in India andproduce similar population exposure reductions, but in very different places. One policy controls agricultural fires in northwestern India that spread pollution across much of north India, and another policy reduces localized emissions from sourcessuch as vehicles within India’s 10 largest cities. Accounting only for differential labor productivity in the places experiencing lower pollution, I find that the latter policy leads to a 3 times larger GDP gain relative to the former. Further accounting for labor reallocation and agglomeration economies leads to a 6 times larger GDP gain. These results have implications for spatial targeting of pollution, especially in polluted-yet-poor LMICs.
Highways and the Spatial Distribution of Industrial Water Pollution
The Heterogeneous Impacts of Air Pollution on Workers and Firms in India (with Shefali Khanna)
The Urgency of Climate Action: Equity impacts of climate mitigation pathways (with Tamma Carleton)
Department of Economics, LSE, 2021
Overall teaching evaluation of 4.6 out of 5. (Dept. average was 4.2)
“The classes were really informative and engaging”
“The fact that the professor and TA really knew what they were doing and were passionate about the material…”
“The quality of teaching exceeded my expectations. Both teacher and lecturer were excellent in their execution of teaching the course materials.”
Department of Economics, LSE, 2021
Overall teaching evaluation of 4.3 out of 5.
“Absolute legend! Best slides ever”
“always felt like i could ask for help / further explanation when needed”
“Great teacher, explains concepts well and uses good real life examples to understand the concept. Probably best class I have this year. Group activity is also quite interesting and has a good class structure.”
LSE, 2019
UC Berkeley, 2013-2015