Research
Job Market Paper
Climate Maladaptation and the Commons: Groundwater Management in India
with Ricardo Pommer Muñoz
Upcoming at APPAM Fall Research Conference (2025).
Funded by the Columbia University Program for Economic Research (PER)
India is the world’s largest groundwater user, with 90% used for agriculture. Groundwater, however, is a common pool resource, generating a tragedy of the commons that threatens agricultural sustainability. We develop a parsimonious model to show how a popular policy intervention — subsidizing efficient irrigation technology — can exacerbate distortions away from socially optimal groundwater extraction. We test the model’s predictions by leveraging geophysical variation in extraction externalities and a $1.35 billion program subsidizing efficient irrigation. Consistent with the model’s predictions, the policy’s impact depends on the severity of extraction externalities: extraction falls 9.2% in low-externality areas but rises 11.0% in high-externality areas. Low-externality farmers maintain cultivation using less groundwater, while high-externality farmers cultivate more intensively. Finally, the program causes climate-adaptive responses in low-externality areas—reducing extraction during normal rainfall and increasing it during droughts—but the opposite pattern in high-externality areas, consistent with climate maladaptation. Our findings illustrate that the same common pool conditions that typically justify an intervention may also determine its welfare implications.
Work in Progress
Mobility, Climate Shocks, and Demand for Information: Evidence from India
with Ricardo Pommer Muñoz
Presented at NetMob Conference, World Bank (2024)
Extended Abstract
Weather shocks pose severe risks to agricultural communities in India. Information on how to mitigate their effects, however, can be difficult to access, as it spreads slowly through potentially sparse and distant social networks. Using novel cellphone mobility data merged with over 1.5 million calls to India’s national agricultural helpline, we doc- ument three patterns. First, mobility in rural India is severely constrained: over 75% of areas exhibit primarily local travel. Second, we examine how mobility and helpline calls correlate with climate shocks—heatwaves and extended droughts. While mobil- ity increases during heatwaves, helpline calls decline. Third, this relationship varies systematically with baseline mobility levels: the negative association between climate shocks and calls is significantly weaker in low-mobility areas across multiple measures of geographic isolation. The heterogeneity is specific to agricultural information requests and concentrated during crop growing seasons.
Information Provision and Agricultural Productivity
with Ricardo Pommer Muñoz
Slides
Funded by the Columbia University Program for Economic Research (PER) and the Center for Development Economics and Policy (CDEP)
Information extension services are common in the developing world, but often “push” information regardless of demand. We study how information provision through a large agricultural call center in India — a “pull” service — affects agricultural productivity. Leveraging a shock to access from the consolidation of the call center to one phone number and variation in tower coverage, we find the call center led farmers to sow less land overall but produce more per unit area.
Frictions in Information Diffusion Among Smallholder Farmers
with Raissa Fabregas and Jack Willis
Smallholder farmers vary substantially in agricultural know-how, even within the same village. Do farmers value others’ information and, if so, what prevents its diffusion? We measure knowledge of, and willingness-to-pay for, such information, and test interventions to encourage diffusion and identify the corresponding frictions.
Natural Disasters and the Deployment of Public Labor
with Hannah Farkas and Ricardo Pommer Muñoz
Climate Hazards and Demand for Information: Evidence from a Farmer Helpline
Policy Writing
Harnessing the potential of community-driven groundwater management in the Global South: Experiences and recommendations
with Nitin Bassi, Anik Bhaduri, Soorya K K, Ekansha Khanduja, Ricardo Pommer Muñoz, and Yashita Singhi