• WP

  Performance-based subsidies and product exports and imports: evidence from India’s Production-Linked Incentives

  with Daniel Mirza and Dorcas Opoku (Université de Tours, LEO)

  The first causal evaluation of the trade effects of a performance-based production subsidy. Exports of treated products rise along a J-curve while imports first rise, then decline: the design works, but only with a lag.

  Abstract

  Production subsidies have become the dominant instrument of industrial policy across advanced and emerging economies. Yet how their design shapes their effects remains largely unknown and untested. We provide the first causal evaluation of the trade effects of a performance-based production subsidy — one that requires upfront investment and pays out only on performance above a pre-set baseline — using India’s Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme as a quasi-natural experiment. Matching monthly HS6 export data (2017–2025) to treated products through a nested classification of decreasing certainty, we estimate the response using difference-in-differences two-way fixed effects, PPML, and staggered PPML estimators. We find a clear, robust positive effect on treated-product exports, but one that takes time to materialize, building up in a J-curve pattern consistent with capacity- and finance-constrained exporters. The import response is the mirror image, with a similar delay. Treated-product imports rise in the first periods after the subsidy is introduced, then continuously decline thereafter. A performance-contingent subsidy design can raise exports and cut imports — but only with a lag.

• WP

  Land ceilings and delayed industrialization: evidence from the Indian states

  with Sarmistha Pal (University of Surrey), Prabal Roy Chowdhury (ISI Delhi) and Zoya Saher (University of Nottingham)

  India’s 1970–72 land ceiling reforms cut invested capital by about 70% and the number of factories by 28%. Recovery took a dozen years: the reform delayed industrialisation rather than reversing it.

  Abstract

  India’s land ceiling reforms of the early 1970s were designed to redistribute agricultural land, but by fragmenting holdings they also raised the cost of assembling land for industrial use. We study how this shock affected industrialisation across 16 major Indian states between 1960 and 1985. Treating the 1970 announcement of stricter, retroactive ceilings as the pivotal date, we estimate both level and trend breaks in invested capital, the number of registered factories and the manufacturing share of state output, and exploit variation in ceiling stringency across states and over time. The reform triggered an abrupt fall of about 70% in invested capital and 28% in the number of factories, followed by a rebound that took roughly a dozen years to offset the initial shock. Losses were larger where ceilings were stricter. The reform did not reverse the industrialisation of Indian states, but it significantly delayed it.

• WP

  Big fish, small pond: relative education and the price of distinction in Indonesian marriage markets

  with Marine de Talancé (Université Gustave Eiffel, ERUDITE)

  What raises bride price is not a woman’s absolute education but her rank among the women of her ethnic group. Evidence from Indonesia’s 1994 compulsory schooling reform.

  Abstract

  A large literature links education to bride price, treating the payment either as compensation for a family’s investment in a daughter or as an incentive device for female schooling. We show that this individual-level reading is incomplete: what raises bride price is not a woman’s absolute education, but her education relative to the women she is compared against within her ethnic group. Drawing on the status-driven mechanisms used to explain dowry inflation in South Asia, an institution not as distant from bride price as the two are usually assumed to be, we develop a model in which a groom’s family derives social status from marrying a bride distinguished within her ethnic group’s prevailing educational norm, generating a bride price that depends solely on relative rank, a restriction we term pure relativity. We take these predictions to Indonesian data, exploiting a 1994 compulsory schooling reform whose intensity varied across birth cohorts and, independently, across districts by their pre-reform level of education. This two-way source of variation lets us instrument separately for a woman’s own education and for the leave-one-out mean education of her ethnic peers, isolating the causal effect of each from the endogenous correlation between individual attainment and family background that has confounded prior estimates. The resulting decomposition delivers clean, quasi-experimental identification of relative education’s effect. Individual education raises a woman’s bride price, while her ethnic group’s average education lowers it by the same amount, so that only her standing relative to her peers ends up mattering, exactly as the model predicts.

• WP

  Trusting up: how social hierarchies shape social trust

  with Chloé Leclère

  Higher castes enjoy a trust surplus from lower castes, only partly reduced when caste identity is made salient, and sustained by narratives about caste success and failure.

  Abstract

  This paper examines the impact of social hierarchy on trust dynamics within the Indian caste system, building on social identity theory. We find that higher castes enjoy a trust surplus from lower castes, which is only partially reduced when caste identity is emphasized. This asymmetrical trust premium is linked to the higher status of upper castes and is supported by narratives about caste success and failure. Our findings integrate social psychology and economics literature, highlighting how hierarchical relationships influence inter-group trust and contribute to the perpetuation of social hierarchies. The paper provides empirical evidence and discusses implications for understanding trust in fragmented and hierarchical societies.

Journal articles

• 2024

  Does gender matter for trade policy? Evidence from contingent protection

  with J. Lochard and N. B. Upadhyay · Oxford Economic Papers, 77(3)

  Article

• 2023

  Female labour, status and decision power

  with V. Gille and F. Maniquet · Economica, 90(358), 453–476

  Article

• 2023

  Estimating skill mismatch in the Indian labour market: a regional dimension

  with S. Gooptu and S. Roy Chowdhury · Global Business Review

  Article

• 2022

  Climbing the economic ladder: the role of microfinance institutions in promoting entrepreneurship in Pakistan

  with F. Fareed and J. Lochard · Journal of International Development

  Article

• 2019

  Land tenure insecurity as investment incentive: the case of migrant cocoa farmers and settlers in Ivory Coast

  with A. Desdoigts and H. Kouadio · Journal of African Economies, 28(2), 147–175

  Article

• 2015

  Untouchability, homicides and water access

  with M. Couttenier · Journal of Comparative Economics, 43(3), 549–555

  Article

• 2014

  The burden of caste on social identity in India

  Journal of Development Studies, 50(10), 1411–1429

  Article

• 2013

  Confidence in public bodies and electoral participation in India

  with V. K. Borooah · European Journal of Development Research, 25, 555–583

  Article

• 2010

  Impact de la fragmentation sociale sur la production de biens publics : polarisation et patronage en Uttar Pradesh et au Bihar

  Revue d’économie du développement, 24(3), 49–78

  Article

Book chapters

• 2023

  Inde : une croissance sans développement ? Le défi de l’emploi pour le pays le plus peuplé du monde

  in T. de Montbrial and D. David (eds), RAMSES 2024, IFRI / Dunod, pp. 130–135

  Chapter

• 2021

  Education, skills mismatch and wage differentials

  with S. R. Chowdhury and S. Gooptu · in N. V. Varghese and M. Khare (eds), India Higher Education Report 2020, Routledge

• 2021

  Riding the wave or going under? The Covid-19 pandemic and trust in governments

  in R. Bhattacharyya, A. Ghosh Dastidar and S. Sikdar (eds), The Covid-19 Pandemic, India and the World, Routledge

Public writing

Op-eds and policy analysis for non-specialist readers.

• 2026

  Le défi de l’économie indienne

  Revue Projet, 411(2), 25–29

  Article

• 2026

  UE-Inde : un accord inédit à bien des égards

  L’Europe, no. 11, April 2026, pp. 12–13

  Issue

• 2026

  Accord UE-Inde : les deux géants tracent leur voie, loin des pressions de l’ère Trump

  The Conversation

  Article

• 2025

  Tarifs douaniers de Trump : une aubaine économique pour l’Inde

  with Daniel Mirza · The Conversation

  Article

• 2024

  L’Inde peut-elle prendre la place de la Chine dans le commerce mondial ?

  The Conversation

  Article

• 2021

  75 millions de nouveaux pauvres en Inde : le modèle de développement indien à l’épreuve du Covid-19

  IFRI, Asie.Visions no. 121

• 2020

  Inde : vers un cauchemar démographique ?

  The Conversation, February 2020

  Article