Three essays in development economics and political economy

This dissertation consists of three chapters studying topics in development economics and political economy. The first two chapters explore the political economy of drought relief in India and potential consequences for local economies. The third chapter focuses on the effect of the residential segregation of the South Asian community on the political views of natives in England and Wales. In the first chapter, I study the allocation of drought relief in three states of southern India between 2008 and 2019. I compare the observed allocation against the national government’s guidelines for drought relief and show that state governments systematically deviate from these guidelines. To assess the potential role of political motives in this mistargeting, I develop a dynamic probabilistic voting model. The model provides testable implications relating electoral incentives to the allocation of relief, which I show hold empirically. In the second chapter, I consider the potential impacts of receiving drought relief on agricultural output at the local level. Using a satellite-based vegetation index as a proxy for agricultural production, I find that drought relief is associated with increased agricultural output. However, I also show that this positive correlation is strongest when relief is appropriately allocated to drought-affected areas. I consider a number of alternative explanations for these results, but conclude that the results are consistent with drought relief being more effective in drought-affected areas. In the third chapter (joint with Sergio Villar Vallenas), we study how the size and spatial distribution of South Asians influences the sentiments of natives towards the group in England and Wales. We use voting for the British National Party (BNP), an extreme right political party, to measure natives’ sentiment. One obstacle to causally identifying the effect of segregation on the voting for the BNP is that the antipathy for South Asians reflected in BNP support might lead to segregation. To address this concern, we isolate variation in the settlement patterns of South Asians using historical immigration patterns. We find that a rise in the residential segregation of South Asians increases voting for the BNP in both a European Parliament and UK general election

An overview of New England's economic performance in 2010

In the first calendar year following the Great Recession, signs of an economic recovery began to take shape across New England. An improving labor market picture, growth in income, indications of a stabilizing housing market, and booming exports spurred economic growth in the region in 2010. As a result, New England’s overall performance surpassed that of the nation as a whole.Economic conditions - New England

Modeling the Impact of Climate Change on Extreme Weather Losses

This report summarizes current research on how climate change is likely to influence future losses from extreme weather events. We consider six types of weather-related extreme events: tropical cyclones, extratropical cyclones, inland floods, landslides and avalanches, wildfires, and small-scale storms. For each type of event, we synthesize existing research related to three topics. First, we examine research that estimates historical average losses from each type of extreme weather. We find that while there are relatively good data on costs of destroyed infrastructure, there is considerable disagreement in the literature about the longer-term macroeconomic effects of disasters. Second, we summarize evidence on the relationship between socioeconomic growth and storm losses. Our review suggests that increases in GDP and population lead to higher losses from disasters, but that disaster mortality is lower in more developed countries. Finally, we review studies of how climate change will affect future losses from extreme weather. Many studies predict increases in losses under climate change, but the science remains uncertain and some projections suggest that certain types of extreme weather losses may decrease. Overall, based on a reduced-form model that draws together parameter estimates from each of these three strands of literature, we estimate that moderate climate change will cause average extreme weather damages to increase by tens of billions of dollars per year. However, the confidence intervals surrounding our estimates are very wide, reflecting substantial underlying uncertainties