Akhila Kovvuri

Moving Opportunity Closer: How Public Transit Transforms Firm Composition and Employment

with Karmini Sharma

Transportation infrastructure can improve workers' access to existing economic opportunities, but it can also reshape economic opportunity itself by influencing where and what kinds of firms locate. This paper studies how public transit infrastructure influences firm location, composition, and employment using novel neighborhood-level data and multiple empirical strategies exploiting the phased expansion of the Delhi Metro Rail in India. Transit access increases economic dynamism, with more and larger firms entering near transit stations. This creates new economic hubs, with larger retail and service firms driven by greater footfall near transit stations. Employment increases, especially of women: a crucial effect in a context with low female labor force participation. Counterfactual decompositions show that changing firm size and industry composition explain more of this gendered effect, as firms that ex-ante hire more women are also more likely to move in closer to transit stations. Understanding how infrastructure reshapes the demand side of the labor market is thus critical for predicting and enhancing its distributional impacts.

Ancient Epics in the Television Age: Mass Media, Identity, and the Rise of Hindu Nationalism in India

with Resuf Ahmed, Paul Brimble, Alessandro Saia, and Dean Yang

This study examines the long-term social and political impacts of mass media exposure to religious content in India. We study the impact of "Ramayan," the massively popular adaptation of the Hindu epic televised in 1987-88. To identify causal effects, we conduct difference-in-difference analyses and exploit variation in TV signal strength driven by location of TV transmitters and topographical features inhibiting electromagnetic TV signal propagation. We find that areas with higher exposure to Ramayan (higher TV signal strength when the show aired) experienced significant cultural and political changes. First, we document a strengthening of religious identity among Hindus: parents in these areas became more likely to give their newborn sons traditionally Hindu names, and households showed increased adherence to orthodox Hindu dietary practices. In the short term, this cultural shift led to an increase in Hindu-Muslim communal violence through 1992. Over the longer term, through 2000, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) became more likely to win state assembly elections. Analyses of changes in local TV signal strength in India over decades indicate that these effects are not due to general access to TV but are due to exposure to the Ramayan TV show in 1987-1988. Our findings reveal that media portrayal of religious narratives can have lasting effects on cultural identity, intergroup violence, and electoral outcomes.

Unintended Consequences of Firm Agglomeration on Female Employment in India

Women across the globe face a higher disutility from commuting to work; this is exacerbated in the context of India where only 20% of the women participate in the labor force and majority of the working women commute less than 2 kilometers. This paper explores the effects of spatial concentration of firms on gender disparities in employment outcomes. Studying an industrial policy that indirectly increased firm concentration, I find that exposure to the policy increases the average distance of a work opportunity which disproportionately reduces female employment. This could also have implications for firm productivity: firms may hire less productive men in the place of more productive women who are outside of their labor catchment area. This study underscores the equity implications of policies designed for economic efficiency and motivate my exploration of interventions that could bridge these disparities by enhancing mobility and demand for female workers.

Measuring Employment Effects of Virtual Career Coaching Through LinkedIn Profiles

Can low-cost virtual career development programs improve employment outcomes for underrepresented groups? I evaluate an asynchronous career coaching intervention that teaches communication, self-promotion, and career skills while offering mentoring opportunities to Muslim women in India. The program was delivered through a randomized controlled trial with approximately 600 participants in India, organized in cohorts of around 50 each. I assess career preparedness through third-party mock interviews and measure medium-run employment outcomes using LinkedIn profile analysis, including employment status, career progression, industry transitions, firm mobility, job positions, and promotions. This approach demonstrates how social media data can enable cost-effective measurement of employment trajectories. The study examines whether accessible virtual career development programs can improve professional outcomes for women facing barriers to corporate employment, with implications for scalable interventions targeting underrepresented populations in labor markets.

Promoting Equality: Gender Gaps in Job Applications and Labor Market Outcomes

with Willian Adamczyk, Verónica Escudero, and Sally Zhang

Despite Brazil's reversed gender gap in education, persistent wage disparities remain. Using a unique dataset linking Brazilian workers' online job applications to administrative employment records, we examine gender differences in application behavior and subsequent labor market outcomes. Employing natural language processing to extract skills and job amenities from applications, we find that similarly qualified women apply to lower-paying positions and experience wage penalties following job transitions. The gender wage gap widens significantly post-application, with women placed in roles requiring fewer skills and offering different amenities. These findings suggest that gendered application patterns contribute substantially to persistent wage inequality.

Real Solutions for Fake News? Measuring the Effectiveness of General Warnings and Fact-Check Banners in Reducing Belief in False Stories on Social Media

with Katherine Clayton, Brendan Nyhan et al.

Political Behavior, 42, 1073-1095 (2020)