B.Sc. in Mathematics, University of Madras
M.A in Economics, Rutgers University
M.Phil. in Economics, The Graduate Center, City University of New York
Ph.D. in Economics, The Graduate Center, City University of New York
My research studies economics of education in developing countries with the focus on understanding how households make educational investments. I combine theories of economics of education and behavioral concepts in a policy framework setting. In a study, I explored whether low-income parents in certain occupations identify themselves by their occupation, whether parents substitute their children’s labor for their own, and how these occurrences impact parents’ educational investments in their children. In another study, I look at varying beliefs of parents and children and how such dissonance in beliefs impact educational investments. The insights of these studies are drawn from fieldwork in southern India. I have also worked in the field of experimental economics. In a study of choice experiment, I explored the phenomenon of context dependent preference such as asymmetric dominance hypothesis. One of my current projects involve understanding more about the effect of dissonance in beliefs on learning outcomes. The other would use field data to evaluate whether children develop life skills of intrinsic value when they help their parents at work and does such skill formation promote school performance. I am also a research affiliate of the Center for Development Economics and Sustainability at Monash University in Australia.