Research

Job Market Paper

• The Human Cost of Conservation: Evidence from Protected Areas in Africa (Draft coming soon)
  Presented at: CU Environmental & Resource Economics Workshop
  View Abstract

  In this paper, I use the global expansion of protected areas (PAs) in the twenty-first century as a setting to show how the local costs of globally beneficial environmental policies can generate severe unintended consequences in weak states. Focusing on Africa, I combine a comprehensive database of PA boundaries with georeferenced conflict data in a difference-in-differences framework and find that PA designation increases the probability of conflict in designated locations by 0.6 percentage points—a 50% increase relative to the baseline. I further find that this effect is concentrated primarily in borderlands, where state authority tends to be limited. Investigation into the mechanism yields multiple findings suggesting that conflict is driven by grievances against the state, where the state is the salient actor imposing costs on local populations through PA designation. First, I find no statistically significant effects in strong states, which can address or credibly commit to addressing local grievances arising from PA designation. Second, the results are driven by conflict events involving the state and actors with explicit anti-state agendas. No such effects are found for conflict involving other types of violent political actors. Third, I find no increase in the probability of conflict following designation among PAs that allow greater local autonomy in PA management through community governance or plausibly generate local economic benefits through safari tourism. Finally, despite the increase in conflict, I find no meaningful effect of PA designation on environmental outcomes in either direction. Taken together, these findings highlight the importance of accounting for local political constraints and incentives when expanding PAs in fragile states, both to maximize conservation benefits and to avoid severe unintended consequences.

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Working Papers

• Environmental Degradation in One’s Own Backyard: Who Gains and Who Loses from Sand Mining in India (With Claire Fan and Varun K)
  Presented at: LSE Environment Camp, IPWSD (Columbia), MWIEDC
  View Abstract

  Sand, the backbone of modern construction, makes up 85% of global mineral extraction. Its large-scale removal—especially from fragile river ecosystems—has raised serious environmental concerns, particularly in developing countries experiencing construction booms and lacking strong environmental regulation. Yet, the full extent of these effects, their social and economic consequences, and how they are distributed across communities remain poorly understood. This project combines novel administrative data with satellite imagery in a difference-in-differences framework to estimate the causal impacts of sand mining in Bihar, India. We find that sand mining increases flood inundation rates and flood frequency by 1.5 and 2 percentage points, respectively, from a baseline of 10%. Agricultural output, measured by vegetation index, declines by 5%. Despite these environmental costs, sand mining raises local income—proxied by nightlight intensity—by 10–20% in nearby villages. Income gains are broadly distributed within villages, reaching both wealthier and poorer households, but are concentrated among socially dominant groups, particularly upper castes and OBCs. These findings help explain why illegal sand mining continues with local support despite environmental harm and regulatory efforts. The unequal balance of economic benefits on social groups highlights the need for targeted policies—those that mitigate flooding, ensure sustainable mining, and compensate marginalized communities bearing the brunt of net harm. To characterize the mechanisms for heterogeneous effects of sand mining, we are now beginning a large-scale field survey.
• On Strategic Civilian Targeting in Civil War (With Gina Eckhoff)
  
  View Abstract

  Under what conditions does the state adopt more violent strategies during civil war, and where is it more likely to happen? In this paper, we study state violence against civilians during the Nepalese civil war (1996-2006), and show that the state is more likely to victimize civilians in areas that are more remote from developed infrastructure and the state’s presence. We use the unexpected death of the Nepalese monarch and the subsequent accession of a more violence-prone king as an exogenous shock to the timing of military deployments. We find that remote villages face an eight-fold increase in violence against civilians in the first years after the event, compared to non-remote villages. We connect our findings to a tradeoff between precise identification of insurgent targets versus higher violence at the loss of more civilian lives, where the costs and benefits of each strategy vary across locations with different degrees of remoteness. Our findings have implications for what conditions may discipline state forces to behave better when faced with the opportunity to misuse power

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Works in Progress

• The Economic Costs of Climate Change From Ecosystem Disruptions: Evidence From Forest Defoliation Outbreaks in the United States (With Eyal Frank, Greg Dwyer, and Andrew M. Liebhold)
  

• When Do Incentives for Preemptive Action Erode Gains from Policy? Studying the Effectiveness of the Endangered Species Act (With Eyal Frank and Anouch Missirian)
  

• The Politics Machine: Data Centers and Grassroots Political Actions in the US (With Prabidhik KC)
  

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Pre-PhD Publications

• Earthquake chemical precursors in groundwater: a review (With Shukra R. Paudel, Amrita Wagle, and Friedemann T. Freund)
  Journal of Seismology

• Pretreatment of agricultural biomass for anaerobic digestion: Current state and challenges (With Shukra R. Paudel, Oh K. Choi, Ki Y. Park, Young M. Kim, and Jae W. Lee)
  Bioresource Technology