Pritha Dev

Paper: Domestic workers and sexual harassment in India: Examining preferred response strategies, with Akshaya Vijayalakshmi and Vaibhavi Kulkarni, World Development, Vol 155, 2022
The purpose of this research is to understand how women working as domestic workers, who are part of the informal sector, are likely to respond to sexual harassment incidents. We conducted a detailed survey of 387 domestic workers in India where we presented each respondent with eleven possible sexual harassment scenarios and nine possible responses to each such scenario. We find that (a) women are most likely to employ strategies that are self-focused and with minimal support from friends/family. (b) Women complain to authorities/family only when they can furnish evidence of harassment. (c) Women are not likely to complain to their female supervisor under any circumstances. And (d) unsurprisingly, poorer, and migrant women are likely to be more silent than women who are relatively better-off about harassment. The results, in brief, show a distrust of the current systems.

Paper: Employment and Income Shock during COVID-19 lockdown in a Metropolitan city in India, accepted The Indian Economic Journal
The COVID-19 crisis had a harsher impact on women globally, as they were disproportionately represented in sectors offering low wages, few benefits and least secure jobs. We examined the economic impact of loss of employment and incomes on workers in relatively low income households during and after the first stringent lockdown, April to June 2020, in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.

Paper: How macroeconomic shocks impact employment: comparison of Gujarat with states in Western India, Journal of Social Economic Development, with Jeemol Unni, Vol 23, 199–211 (2021).
In this paper, we discuss the impact of the macroeconomic shock of demonetisation on employment in the five Western states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. We analyse the impact of the macroeconomic shocks on workforce participation rates (WPR) in the states.

Paper: Breaking “bad” links: Impact of Companies Act 2013 on the Indian Corporate Network, with Mayank Aggarwal and Anindya Chakrabarti, Social Networks, Volume 62, July 2020
This paper looks the network of companies and board directors where two companies are linked if they share a director and two directors are linked if they sit on the same board. We look at the evolution of this degree distribution and k-core of network over three snapshots in the last 10 years.

Paper: More is Not Always Better: the Case of Anti-Terrorism Security, with Konrad Grabiszewski, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol 68(3), 2019
Can government provided anti-terrorism security be counterproductive? We argue that it can be when the at-risk population acts strategically. We model a game where government first chooses the security level for a public place followed by a simultaneous move game between the terrorist and the public.

Paper: Group Identity in a Network Formation Game with Cost Sharing, Journal of Public Economic Theory, Volume 20, Issue 3, June 2018
This paper introduces the choice of identity, which comprises characteristics and commitments to these characteristics, in a network formation model where links costs are shared. It seeks to understand how the choice of identity together with the choice of network could explain observed divisions based on identity.

Paper: Networks of Information Exchange: Are Link Formation Decisions Strategic? Economics Letters, Volume 162, January 2018
This paper provides a theoretical and empirical study of information networks. The theoretical model points to the presence of hubs of information and the empirical section seeks to identify whether the decision to be linked with someone depends on the number of links this other person already has. I use a rich data set from Ghana to check the hypothesis.

Paper: Ethnic Inequality: Theory and Evidence from Formal Education in Nigeria, with Blessing Uchennah Mberu and Roland Pongou, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Volume 64, Issue 4, 2016
Education  is widely viewed as an efficient solution to the often detrimental effects of ethnic divisions, by achieving more cohesive nation states through the transmission of common values and the reduction of ethnic level inequalities in economic outcomes. We test the educational effects of ethnic identity and  minority status using individual level data from Nigeria.

Paper: Homophily and Community Structure in Networks, Journal of Public Economic Theory, Volume 18, Issue 2, 2016
I propose an empirical methodology to deduce which dimensions of identity cause the fragmentation of a given network. I propose a practical algorithm for the estimation and apply this to data collected from villages in Ghana.

Paper: Identity and Fragmentation in Networks,  Mathematical Social Sciences, Volume 71, September 2014
This paper looks at the role of identity in the fragmentation of networks. The paper theoretically explains the level of fragmentation in networks by using the concept of commitment to identity characteristics, where commitment can be thought as the importance a person attaches to his identity characteristic.

Paper: Sale of Information by an Informed Trader, Finance Research Letters, Volume 10, Issue 2, June 2013
This paper presents a theoretical model to study the sale of information amongst traders. The model shows that an informed trader never fully divulges his information; he always sells a noisy signal of his information.