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Contact Information
Kellogg School of Management
Northwestern University
2211 Campus Drive
Evanston, IL 60208
Phone: +1-773-858-547
Email: siddhant.agarwal@kellogg.northwestern.edu
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Education
Ph.D, Managerial Economics and Strategy, Northwestern University, 2024 (anticipated)
MS, Managerial Economics and Strategy, Northwestern University, 2018
MS, Quantitative Economics, Indian Statistical Institute (Delhi), 2016
BS, Economics, Presidency University (Kolkata), 2014
Primary Fields
Labor Economics, Development Economics, Political Economy
Curriculum Vitae
Job Market Paper
Workhour Normality and Gender Gaps: Evidence from Brazilian Exporters
Abstract: Workhours are ‘normal’ when they match the rest of the economy and are regular. Exporting firms’ foreign trading partners often operate in different time zones and can induce abnormal working hours. Using a comprehensive employer-employee matched dataset from Brazil, I show that the further away an exporting firm’s trading partner is temporally, the wider are the gender gaps in employment and earnings in exporting firms. Two extra hours of difference of an exporter from their trading partners lead to a decrease in the proportion of female employees by 1.2 percentage points, and a rise in the earnings gender gap by 0.84 percentage points. This accounts for more than 40% of the extra gender earnings gap seen between exporting firms and domestic firms. Exporters pay a premium to all their employees but this “exporter wage premium” is 2 percentage points smaller for women workers. Temporal distance explains 42% of this difference. Exporters’ temporal distance leads to a 0.15 percentage point widening of the gender earnings gap in the whole Brazilian formal economy, which is an increase of 1.2%. Men’s earnings are unaffected by the temporal distance to their trading partners. The contractual basic salary and hourly wage rate are unaffected by temporal distance, and contractual hours are only marginally affected. Rather, the difference in earnings arises due to overtime pay, commissions, and bonuses. Using a panel event study design, I also find that new mothers are 2.6 percentage points more likely to leave exporting firms with far away trading partners than they are to leave exporting firms with closer partners within a year of giving birth. This difference becomes stark again as their children reach school-going age. Schoolhours overlap, the overlap between Brazilian schoolhours and trading partners’ workhours, is also the most potent temporal measure, suggesting that childcare is an important driver of these effects. The earnings gap is worsened amongst white collar workers and managers, but not amongst blue collar workers, emphasizing that temporal distance matters because it creates frictions in synchronous communication and management.
Publications
Redistributing Teachers using Local Transfers
with Athisii Kayina, Abhiroop Mukhopadhyay, and Anugula N. Reddy
World Development (2018), 110: 333–344
Brief abstract: In this paper we show that local redistribution of educational resources via teacher transfers between neighboring public schools can improve equity in access to teachers. Transfers from teacher surplus schools to deficit schools within a 10 km radius in Haryana, a state of India for which we have geo-coded location of schools in 2013, enables 19 percent of deficit schools to meet the minimum requirement. We use the mandated norms in the Right to Education Act in India, to define deficit and surplus schools. We also provide a characterization of schools that are in deficit and those in surplus. We find that connectedness, the social composition of the enrolled students, the income of the neighborhood are important determinants of a school being in deficit. Surplus schools mirror the results on deficit, but not always so: they are far more heterogenous. A comparison of transfers that follow our redistribution rule to transfers resulting from an actual transfer policy shows that while our rule removes deficits in rural areas, the actual transfers favored more developed regions.
Works in Progress
Reservations and Caste Endogamy in India
Brief abstract: In this paper, I study how reservations (quotas) in government jobs and higher educational institutions affected the caste-endogamous nature of marriages in India. The Area Restriction Removal Act of 1976 harmonized Scheduled Caste status for jatis (sub-castes) within states, and led to exogenous variation in the access to reservations for individuals from the same jati within the same linguistic area. I find that the rates of endogamy do not fall due to affirmative action, suggesting that the distate for exogamy is higher than the benefits from higher employment opportunities and potential earnings for partners and future children.
From Patronage to Merit: Civil Service Examinations in the US
Brief abstract: Using a novel panel of all U.S. federal bureaucrats from 1817 to 1905, I study how much political influence was exerted on the careers of bureaucrats at different stages of development of the federal bureaucracy and whether reforms defending against partisan capture effective. I exploit the staggered introduction of meritocratic appointments starting in 1883, which allows me to investigate effects of merit on selection and career evolution.
Last Call for a Public Monopoly: Alcohol Prohibition in Kerala with Prerna Dewan
Brief abstract: We study the alcohol market in the state of Kerala in India, wherein the state-owned Beverage Corporation (BevCo) is the monopoly retailer and wholesaler of alcoholic beverages. We model the procurement, supply, and sale of alcohol in this peculiar context to understand how governments balance the twin goals of revenue-maximization and externality-reduction through optimal corrective taxes. Using the staggered closure of alcohol shops across the state as the government moved towards a policy of prohibition, we estimate the size of the public health externality of alcohol using data on road accidents, hospital admissions, and crime. This also helps us recover the Pareto weight that the state government places on the reduction of the externality in its welfare function, enabling us to conduct counter-factual exercises to calculate the welfare implications of different price regimes.
Adverse Events and the Use of Force by Police: Evidence from New Jersey
Brief abstract: Using a novel dataset with the universe of use-of-force reports filed by New Jersey police officers between 2012-16, I study the effect that adverse events and media coverage have on the use of force by police. Does an adverse event lead to fewer violent encounters and/or the milder use of force conditional on encounters? Adverse events include the death of a subject, or the incapacitation and hospitalization of an officer. In this context, I examine the effect on the involved officer and any spillovers to their precinct and county colleagues. In addition, I consider the effect of national media coverage of high-profile police brutality incidents in other states on the use of force by NJ police.
References
Prof. Benjamin Friedrich (benjamin.friedrich@kellogg.northwestern.edu)
Prof. Edoardo Teso (edoardo.teso@kellogg.northwestern.edu)
Prof. Meghan Busse (m-busse@kellogg.northwestern.edu)