Essays in Development Economics

I study a variety of development policies in the context of India. In the first chapter, I focus on the administrative decentralization generated by the creation of new
districts in the state of Telangana in India. On the one hand, the resulting smaller
districts could experience improved governance by reducing bureaucratic burden and
making them more accessible to the people. On the other hand, reshuffling of civil
servants following district reorganization could result in disruption of routine functioning, lower administrative capacity, and higher operational costs in newly created
districts. I examine the short-run effects of this policy change using a spatial regression discontinuity approach and comparing villages across the border areas between
the parent and the newly created district that had similar characteristics prior to
the policy change. Examining village-level data on various government schemes and
economic outcomes, I find mixed results with positive impact under scheme with
bottom-up implementation and negative or no effect under top-down programs. The
positive effect is stronger in villages that are closer to the district headquarter and in
villages with high level of civic participation suggesting the role of greater lobbying
as district administration moves closer to people.
For the second chapter I ask: can cash transfers to farmers boost agricultural
productivity? On the one hand, cash transfers could increase productive investment
if farmers face liquidity constraints. On the other hand, cash transfers could increase

consumption and decrease labor supply through an income effect. Additionally, such
transfers could have general equilibrium effects, such as raising the price of farm in
puts, which may to dampen the intended effect. Using household-level data and a
difference-in-differences approach, I investigate how transfers made to farmers under
the Rythu Bandhu Scheme in the Indian state of Telangana affected their labor sup
ply and the farm related outcomes. These transfers were large and unconditional,
though labeled as investment support, and targeted only to landowning agricultural
households. I document significant gains in crop yield due to an increase in expenditure on farm inputs and assets, and a greater allocation of household labor to own
farm cultivation for larger agricultural households. Smaller farmers experience modest gains in input expenditure and a shift to agriculture labor, away from own self
employment in agriculture. Further, I find no evidence of negative spillover effects on
tenant farmers or non-agricultural households who did not receive transfers.
The third chapter considers whether women leaders find it difficult to lobby for
discretionary development funds and funds contingent on subjective official evaluation, within a male-dominated political system and a male-biased society. To test this
hypothesis, I exploit randomly assigned electoral gender quotas and a panel data set
on loans released under a large public sector capital investment scheme in India. My
results show that village councils reserved for women have a lower likelihood of receiving a loan under this program compared to unreserved, largely male-headed village
councils. These results are robust to the inclusion of controls for Sarpanch characteristics but heterogeneous with the village council distance to the district headquarter.
However, conditional on getting a loan sanctioned, women-reserved councils are able
to secure greater loan disbursal than those unreserved. My findings are consistent
with existing evidence on the gains from women leadership in spite of the of the
barriers that persist post reservation