Rikhil R. Bhavnani

Political Science doctoral candidate

 

 

rrbpage2Welcome to my homepage.  I am a PhD candidate in political science at Stanford University.  My dissertation—“On Political Inequality: Measurement, Causes, Effects and Remedies”—seeks to catalyze a research program on political inequality. I generate a protocol to measure the phenomenon, and examine the causes and effects of, and remedies for, political inequality.  The dissertation demonstrates that political inequality is measureable and is amenable to study, and advances our understanding of the phenomenon.  In some of my other research, I examine the extent and correlates of political corruption in India and the costs of federalism.  My research is characterized by an interest in political and economic development, in South Asia, and by a close attention to causality.  My research outputs (parts of my dissertation are marked by an asterisk) and contact information are listed below.  Here is my CV.  Thank you for visiting.

 

 

Publications

·     * Do Electoral Quotas Work After They Are Withdrawn?  Evidence from a Natural Experiment in India, American Political Science Review 103 (1):23-35, 2009. Here is the replication data and code, and a summary (with Dustin Brown) of the article in the Indian Express.

·      Aid and Growth: The Current Debate and Some New Evidence with Steven Radelet and Michael Clemens in The Macroeconomic Management of Foreign Aid edited by Peter Isard and others, 2006 (Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund).

·      Aid and Growth with Michael Clemens and Steven Radelet, Finance and Development 42 (3), September 2005.  Reprinted in Annual Editions: Developing World 07/08, edited by Robert J. Griffiths, November 2006 (Columbus, OH: McGraw-Hill). 

 

Work-in-progress

·     Counting Chickens When They Hatch: Disaggregated Aid and Growth, with Michael Clemens and Steven Radelet, reject/revise, The Economic Journal.  A previous version of the paper was issued as Center for Global Development Working Paper 44, July 2004, and was referred to in a Washington Post editorial.

·     * The Effects of Malapportionment in Parliamentary Systems: Theory, and Subnational Evidence from India.

·     * What Have the Lasting Effects of Electoral Quotas for Lower Castes Been? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in India.

·     Corruption Amongst India’s Politicians: Insights from Unusual Data.

·     The Costs of Political Coordination in Federations: Evidence from a Natural Public Goods Experiment in India.

·      The Effects of Migration on the Political Process and Public Goods Provisioning: Evidence from New Data from Kerala, with Maggie Peters.

·      The Structure and Stability of India’s Political Economy, with Sunita Parikh and Barry Weingast.

·     The Effect of Civil War Violence on Post-War Economic Activity in Sierra Leone.

 

Other papers

·      A Microeconomic View of the Evolution of Poverty and Inequality in Ghana, 1967-1997 with Markus Goldstein.

·      The Missing Globalization Puzzle with Arvind Subramanian, Natalia Tamirisa, and David Coe, International Monetary Fund Working Paper WP/02/171, October 2002.

 

Software

·      RB-AMIN.exe: A Tool to “Fuzzy” Match Indian Names.

 

Policy papers, notes

·      The Effect of the United States on Poland’s Economic Development, Center for Global Development, 2006. 

·      2004 MCA Country Selection Program: A Comment on Country Selection with Sarah Lucas and Steven Radelet, Center for Global Development, October 2004.

·      2004 MCA Threshold Program: A Comment on Country Selection with Sarah Lucas and Steven Radelet, Center for Global Development, October 2004.

·      Round Two of the MCA: Which Countries are Most Likely to Qualify? with Steven Radelet, Center for Global Development, October 2004.

·      Whither Development Assistance? An Analysis of the President’s 2005 Budget Request with Nancy Birdsall and Isaac Shapiro, Center for Global Development, July 2004. 

·      A Comment on the Millennium Challenge Account Selection Process with Sarah Lucas and Steven Radelet, Center for Global Development, March 2004.

 

 

Department of Political Science

Encina Hall West, Room 100

Stanford University

Stanford, CA 94305

rbhavnani(at)stanford(dot)edu