Webinar streamed via Zoom
The Vilfredo Pareto Research Seminar is the Economics department's weekly seminar, featuring external speakers in all areas of economics.
As part of the Vilfredo Pareto Research Seminar series, the International Economics Department at the Graduate Institute is pleased to invite you to a public talk given by Abhishek Chakravarty, Assistant Professor in Economics at the University of Manchester.
He will present his work titled Informed Citizens and Political Entry: Evidence from a Large Education Programme in India, coauthored with S Anukriti and Rossella Calvi.
Abstract: We examine the impact of a large, decentralised primary school expansion programme on entry into political competition in India. We find that the impact of the programme on educational attainment is small, consistent with the previous literature, but that the number of candidates contesting state assembly elections in treated areas increases significantly. Candidates in treated districts are also likelier to be male, and elections winners are significantly wealthier than in untreated districts, consistent with elite capture of politics following programme implementation that increases gender and wealth inequality in political representation.
Abhishek Chakravarty is a Development Economist working on issues in gender inequality, policy evaluation, and intra-household resource allocation in developing countries. He received his PhD in Economics from University College London in 2012. He was Lecturer (Assistant Professor) of Economics at the University of Essex from the Autumn of 2011 to the Summer of 2016, after which he joined the Department of Economics at the University of Manchester in his current role.