Dr. B. R. Ambedkar School of Economics University, Bengaluru

Vikash Vaibhav

Assistant Professor

Email: vikashv@base.ac.in

Educational Qualification

  • Ph.D. (Development studies). Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), Mumbai. I submitted my thesis for external evaluation in August, 2020. The title of my thesis is ‘State Reorganization and Development: Evidence from Indian States’.
  • Bachelor of Engineering (Production Engineering) from BIT, Mesra. Graduated in 2009.

Teaching Experience

  • Quantitative Techniques for Economics: Currently, I am teaching this graduate level course at BASE, Bengaluru.
  • Advance Microeconomics: Currently, I am a teaching assistant (TA) for this graduate level course at BASE. [Instructor: Prof. Neeraj Hatekar].
  • Labour Economics [HR10]:  I taught this course at Tata Insititute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai during Jan-April 2020. [Co-Instructor: Dr. Rahul Sakpal].
  • Development Economics: I was a Teaching Assistant (TA) for this graduate level course offered during Jan-May 2014 at IGIDR. [Instructor: Prof. K.V. Ramaswamy]
  • Mathematics for Economists: I took this refresher course in July 2014 at IGIDR. It was a four lecture series (of 90 mins. each) for newly admitted M.Sc./M.Phil students. [Instructor: Dr. Taniya Ghosh]

Professional (Corporate) Experience:

  • Assistant Manager at Tata Motors Limited, Jamshedpur (August 2009-July 2010). I worked in Supply chain division (Sheet metal) of World Truck (Tata Prima) Project.

Conferences, Workshops and Seminars attended (selective):

  • 2019: 29th Annual General Conference, Jadavpur University, Kolkata (December).
  • 2019: 55th TIES conference at NISM, Mumbai (January).
  • 2018: 3rd IGIDR PhD colloquium (CoRe), IGIDR, Mumbai (November).
  • 2016: Law and Economics Conference, IGIDR, Mumbai (September).
  • 2014: Political Economy of Contemporary India conference, IGIDR, Mumbai (November).
  • 2014: ISI -Warwick workshop in Economics, Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi (February).
  • 2014: Advanced Graduate Workshop (AGW), Azim Premji University, Bangalore (June).
  • 2013: The Indian Econometric Society Golden Jubilee Conference, IGIDR, Mumbai (December).
  • 2013: Labor and Employment Conference, IGIDR, Mumbai (September).
  • 2013: Fifteenth Money and Finance Conference, IGIDR, Mumbai (December).
  • 2012: IGIDR Silver Jubilee International Conference, IGIDR, Mumbai (December).

Published Research Paper:

Popular/ Newspaper articles:

Working Papers:

Work in Progress (Selective):

  • ‘Has growth been pro-poor and socially inclusive in Reorganized States? Evidence from NSS Data’ (with Dr. K.V. Ramaswamy). This is the third core chapter of my PhD dissertation. We base our analysis on the consumption data from NSS in the reorganized states. We check if the growth has been pro-poor in these reorganized states. In the first look, we do not find any evidence of pro-poor growth in these states, either in absolute or relative sense. We also look into the changes in inequality in these states and, both vertical and horizontal inequalities.
  • ‘State Reorganization and Informal sector Enterprises’. This forms the second core chapter of my PhD dissertation. We use the data from Economic Census (1998, 2005, 2014) to construct Panel data at the level of Indian districts. Using difference-in-difference strategy we investigate whether informal enterprises in reorganized state flourished more than other major states in term of their number and employed workers. The evidence suggests that the districts in the ‘new’ states show better growth in terms of numbers and employment. Further, enterprises owned by STs have increased substantially in the two states (Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh) having significant ST population. The results are different in the first (1998-2005) and second period (1998-2014).
  • ‘Estimating Economic Costs of Conflict in Jammu & Kashmir’. (Co-author: Akhilesh Verma).
    This study attempts to quantify the effect of terrorism on economic activities in the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir. An important aspect of undertaking any such a case study is that of finding a counterfactual. The practice, generally, has been to compare the affected state/region with carefully chosen comparison unit based on Mill’s method of difference. But a single comparison group has the problem of its own, in addition to choosing that one comparator. We create a synthetic control group based on a weighted average of other states. This method has the advantage of being free from the subjectivity of researchers, as the choice of control states and weights assigned to them is data drive. Our results indicate that with increasing incidents of terrorist activities in the state since the late 1980s there has been a severe decline in economic activities in the state. As a result of sustained conflicts, the state foregoes about half its economic size compared to the synthetic version of the state. This is equivalent to foregoing a growth rate (CAGR) of 1.1% per annum. The loss in terms of per capita income is even higher, about 1.5%. These results are especially interesting as the human development indicators in the state have performed relatively well over the same period.

Technical Expertise:

  • Extensive experience of handling most of Indian unit-level datasets. They include various surveys conducted by National Sample Survey (NSS), Annual Survey of Industries (ASI), Prowess, National Family Health Survey (NFHS), Indian Human Development Survey (IHDS), State Domestic Products (SDP), Economic Census, and State Budget. This reflects in some of the published works in which I have contributed through my research assistance.
  • STATA, Octave/MATLAB, MS Excel, C, C++, Auto CAD.

Teaching Interests:

  • Quantitative Techniques for Economics
  • Probability and Statistics
  • Applied Econometrics
  • Development Economics
  • Labour Economics
  • Microeconomics
  • Public Economics
  • Corporate Finance
  • Industrial Organization

Research Interests:

  • Applied Econometrics
  • Impact Evaluation
  • Regional growth and disparity
  • Poverty and Inequality Analysis
  • Corporate Finance
  • Labour Economics