Job Market Paper
International Financial Flows, Credit Allocation and Productivity
[Link]
This paper examines how international financial liberalization shapes domestic credit allocation and real economic outcomes using detailed loan-level data matched with firm and bank balance sheet data. Exploiting a 2004 reform that raised foreign shareholding limits in Indian banks, I identify differences in credit allocation patterns across banks with varying exposure to foreign capital inflows. More exposed banks received larger inflows, which relaxed their funding constraints and expanded their overall lending. This increase in bank lending was disproportionately directed towards more productive firms, raising their investment and reducing the overall dispersion of the marginal revenue product of capital (MRPK). Quantifying the aggregate impact and accounting for general equilibrium effects, I find that the reallocation gains from the bank-lending channel of liberalization led to significant improvements in total factor productivity (TFP).
Presentations: GWU Macro Lunch (2024, 2025)
Coverage: Ideas of India Podcast @ Mercatus Center (Forthcoming!)
Research in Progress
International Borrowing Cycles and Economic Growth: Insights from a New Historical Database
with Graciela Kaminsky and Zheyu Yang
This paper examines capital inflows to China, India and Japan during the first episode of financial globalization (1830-1931). These countries engaged with international capital under distinct institutional arrangements: Britain guaranteed returns on Indian railway investments to attract capital, China was integrated under unequal treaties following the Opium Wars and Japan borrowed voluntarily to fund railways and industrial growth after the Meiji Restoration. We construct a novel database for these countries by systematically compiling data on all known bond and equity issuances issued primarily in London and other major financial centers, including Paris, Frankfurt, Berlin, Hamburg and New York and link them to macroeconomic indicators such as trade, output and terms of trade. The dataset also incorporates information on interest rates and business cycles from leading financial centers. Using this resource, we analyze how global financial conditions and local institutional arrangements shaped borrowing patterns and economic outcomes. The study provides new insights into the determinants and consequences of international capital flows and the integration of Asian economies into global financial markets in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Presentations: III Congress Globalization and Growth in the History of East and Southeast Asia (2025, Scheduled)
Monetary Policy Transmission to Consumption: Evidence from Transaction-Level Data
with Donghao Wu
We examine the transmission of monetary policy shocks to consumption spending using high-frequency credit card transaction data for the United States. The use of daily data allows for improved identification of monetary policy transmission and enables a detailed analysis of its effects on consumption patterns. The ability to disaggregate credit card data by spending category and consumer characteristics provides insight into the heterogeneous effects of monetary policy across different groups. Using a local projections estimation framework, we find that monetary policy shocks influence spending much more rapidly than previously documented in the literature. These findings enhance our understanding of how monetary policy affects consumer behavior and offer a valuable complement to evidence based on traditional aggregate data.
Presentations: GWU Macro Lunch (2025, Scheduled)
The Design and Evolution of IMF Supported Programs: 2000–2019
with Atish R. Ghosh
This paper examines the evolution of IMF-supported programs over the past two decades across advanced economies, emerging markets and low-income countries. It analyzes the design and outcomes of these programs, focusing on the balance between financing and adjustment, the nature of conditionality and the extent to which stated economic objectives were achieved. The paper reviews the external environment facing emerging markets and low-income countries and its role, together with country-specific shocks and policies, in shaping the demand for Fund resources. It provides a comparative assessment of macroeconomic performance under GRA and PRGT programs, evaluates the alignment of current account targets with debt sustainability considerations and examines the relationship between adjustment and real economic outcomes. The analysis also considers program goals related to inflation, fiscal balance and public debt and documents the evolution and focus of structural conditionality over time.
Presentations: SPR Internal Seminar, IMF (2024)
Forthcoming as a Chapter in The IMF History: Overview II Volume, to be published by the International Monetary Fund
The History of the Future (of Emerging Markets)
with Atish R. Ghosh
The study investigates the factors that drive revisions to World Economic Outlook (WEO) projections of real GDP levels in emerging markets over time. It examines the role of key global and domestic variables such as advanced economy growth rates, commodity prices, and financial market volatility (VIX) in shaping these revisions. The analysis also explores whether IMF country teams tend to overreact or underreact to changes in projections of these explanatory variables and assesses the extent to which actual realizations of these variables influence subsequent GDP outcomes. Understanding the determinants of medium-term GDP projections is essential for evaluating debt sustainability and macroeconomic resilience. The study focuses on a sample of about 50 major emerging markets, with potential extensions to include low-income countries in future analysis.
Pre-PhD Publications
The Openness-Inflation Puzzle: An Asymmetric Approach with Irfan Ahmad Shah
Macroeconomics and Finance in Emerging Market Economies, 15(2): 125–139, 2022.
Does Government Deficit Crowd Out Private Investment? An Empirical Analysis for National and Sub-National Governments with Pushpa Trivedi, Sangita Misra and Kaushiki Singh
ICFAI University Press Journal of Applied Economics, 18(3): 7–36, 2019.