About Me

Welcome to my website! Until November 2025, I was employed as a Research Fellow (Level B) at the Institute of Climate Risk and Response (ICRR) at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.

Previously, I worked as an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Economics at the South Asian University. My specialisation is environmental economics and agricultural economics. Recent topics of research include estimating the effects of pollution on congestion in Indian cities and measuring the impact of climate change on worker absenteeism. My past research has been published in Science, Climatic Change, World Development and is covered in popular media such as The Huffington Post.

I completed my PhD. in Economics from Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi.

 

 

none

Research
Highlights

none

Hot days and worker absence in the formal sector: Evidence from India. (With E. Somanathan)

Does heat increase the probability of missing work for formal-sector workers? We address this question by analysing three years of daily data on 274 employees across 86 locations of a large welding firm in India. A 1 degree celsius rise in daily mean temperature increases the probability of missing work for workers without workplace climate control by 3.4% of the mean rate of absence. The same temperature increase decreases the probability of missing work by 2.5% relative to mean absenteeism for workers with climate control. Temperature effects for workers without climate control are seen above a threshold of 22 degree Celsius and above 28 degree Celsius in the case of workers with climate control.


none

Health Impacts from Traffic Congestion: Evidence from a Highly Congested and Polluted City (With Kanishka Kacker and Saif Ali)

Traffic congestion has a non-linear, dynamic impact on pollution raising it sharply by over a standard deviation. Simulations using parameters from epidemiological studies suggest congestion may be responsible for at least 25% of all premature deaths from pulmonary and heart disease in Delhi.


none

Happy Seeder Machine

A potential solution to Crop Residue Burning in India


CITATIONS

PUBLICATIONS

WORKING PAPERS