Research

My scholarly work focuses on the political economy of economic development. I explain the relationship between the choices made by politicians and the level of welfare in a country. In my work, political choices include the trade policy, central governance quality, the level of democracy, the role of the state, and the type of legal system, while welfare is measured by economic growth, education, poverty, and even health. I also analyse how the choices themselves arise due to internal and external factors within a country, such as history, natural and man-made disasters, geography, and other economic fundamentals. In my policy work, I focus on the economic impact of natural disasters in Australia and Asia. 

Selected Publications

• Redistributive Land Reforms, Agricultural Productivity and Structural Change: New Cross-National Evidence (with D. Mitra, A. Shifa and L. Tong), American Journal of Agricultural Economics, forthcoming.

• Paying Income Tax After a Natural Disaster (with M. Kucuk), Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 2024, vol 128, 103044.

•  “Storm Autocracies”: Islands as Natural Experiments (with M.H Rahman and N. Anbarci). Journal of Development Economics, 2022, vol 159, 102982.

• Evaluating Wildfire Exposure: Using Wellbeing Data to Estimate and Value the Impacts of Wildfire (with D. Johnston, Y.K. Onder, M.H Rahman), Journal of Economic Behavior and Organisation, 2021, vol. 192, pp. 782-798.

• The Political Economy of Land Reform Enactments: New Cross-National Evidence (1900-2010) (with P. Bhattacharya and D. Mitra), Journal of Development Economics, 2019, v. 139, pp. 50-68.

• An Empirical Inquiry into the Role of Sectoral Diversification in Exchange Rate Regime Choice (with M.T. Chowdhury, P. Bhattacharya, and D. Mallick), European Economic Review, 2014, v. 67, pp. 210-227.

• Democracy and Economic Growth: A Meta-Analysis (with C. Doucouliagos), American Journal of Political Science, 2008, v. 52, pp. 60-82.

• International Comparisons of Rural-Urban Educational Attainment: Data and Determinants (with B. Cardak), European Economic Review, 2007, v. 51, n.7, pp. 1828-1857.

• Zipf`s Law Strikes Again: The Case of Tourism (with B. Hazari), Journal of Economic Geography, 2004, vol. 4, n.4. pp. 459-472.

• Protection for Sale in A Developing Country: Democracy vs. Dictatorship (with D. Mitra and D. Thomakos), 2002, Review of Economics and Statistics, 84(3), pp. 497-508.

For a full list of my publications, please see my CV