Research
Working papers and active projects
My research covers development, environmental, and AI economics, with a focus on energy systems, climate adaptation, structural transformation, and new technologies in low- and middle-income countries.
Fields Development economics Environmental & energy economics AI & technology
Working papers
AI and the Ladder of Development
Develops a small open-economy model in which frontier AI can raise current productivity yet slow capability accumulation by reallocating labour toward weak-learning local services.
Working paper
Human Capital, Mobility, and the Unequal Effects of Climate Change
Examines how human capital creates mobility across sectors and locations as a channel for climate adaptation, combining a historical schooling expansion in India with a spatial model of structural change.
Working paper IGC project page Policy brief
The Economic Costs of Lopsided Contracts: Evidence from Power Purchase Agreements in Pakistan
Builds a new database on power purchase agreements to study how asymmetric information and regulatory capture shape electricity prices and productive misallocation.
Working paper
Pushing on a String? Price and Enforcement Interventions in Pakistan’s Power Sector
Uses two randomised experiments with government to estimate how electricity payments and theft respond to price incentives and norm-based enforcement.
Working paper IGC project page
Deciphering the Miracle on the Han: How South Korea Escaped Poverty and Transformed its Economy
Uses newly digitised historical microdata to study the roles of industrial policy, rural development, and infrastructure in South Korea’s rapid transformation.
In progress IGC project page
Electricity, Agglomeration, and Industrialisation in Ghana
Estimates how the allocation of electricity outages affects firm productivity, entry, and industrial agglomeration across space.
In progress IGC project page
Active projects
Smart meters and firm performance
A randomised evaluation of how smart meters affect reliability, utility revenue, electricity theft, and SME performance.
The diffusion of solar in rural economies
Mapping how market structure, intermediaries, and spatial frictions shape off-grid solar coverage, prices, and adoption.
Customs evasion and state capacity
Evaluating faceless assessment and risk-management reforms intended to improve customs efficiency and detect under-invoicing.
Replacing energy subsidies with targeted transfers
Using linked administrative data to study better targeting and delivery of household energy support.
Work in progress
- Randomising Anti-Theft Technologies: Experimental Evidence on Aerial Bundled Cables — energy and state capacity
- Price Relief under Nonlinear Electricity Tariffs: Experimental Evidence from Pakistan — public finance and energy
- Optimal Spatial Policy with Local Demand Effects — spatial economics