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Updated October 2015 Updated October 2015 SAM ASHER http://samuelasher.com [email protected] [email protected] HARVARD UNIVERSITY Placement Director: David Cutler DCUTLER @HARVARD.EDU 617-496-5216 Placement Director: Oliver Hart OHART @FAS.HARVARD.EDU 617-496-3461 Graduate Administrator: Brenda Piquet [email protected] 617-495-8927 Contact Information Department of Economics, University of Oxford Oxford OX1 3UQ, UK UK: +44 7763511365 US: +1 (413) 519 9650 Employment Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Nuffield College and Economics Department, University of Oxford (September 2013 – August 2016) Academic Affiliations Research Fellow, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford (2013 – present) Research Associate, Oxford Centre for the Analysis of Resource Rich Economies (2013 – present) Associate, Center for International Development, Harvard University (2013 – present) Affiliate, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi (2014 – present) Education Harvard University, Ph.D. in Economics, 2013 Yale University, B.A. in Ethics, Politics and Economics magna cum laude, 2004 References Asim Khwaja Andrei Shleifer Sumitomo Foundation Professor of International Professor of Economics Finance and Development Department of Economics Harvard Kennedy School Harvard University Harvard University [email protected] [email protected] +1 (617) 495-5046 +1 (617) 384-7790 Professor Edward Glaeser Douglas Gollin Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics Professor of Development Economics Department of Economics Department of International Development Harvard University University of Oxford [email protected] [email protected] +1 (617) 495-0575 +44 (1865) 281832 Teaching and Research Fields Primary: Development Economics, Political Economy Secondary: Urban Economics, Economic Geography Teaching Experience Updated October 2015 2015 Quantitative Methods (Oxford MSc in Economics for Development) 2013-2015 Development Economics I (Oxford MPhil in Economics) 2009-2011 PED-309: Development Policy Strategy (Harvard Kennedy School MPA/ID, teaching fellow for Professor Ricardo Hausmann) 2009 Econ 2390b: Development Microeconomics (Harvard graduate, teaching fellow for Professors Sendhil Mullainathan and Richard Hornbeck) Professional Activities Referee Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Economics and Statistics, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Economic Development and Cultural Change, World Politics Panelist USAID Development Innovation Ventures Proposal Review Co-organizer CSAE (Development Economics) External Seminar, University of Oxford (2014-2015); IGC Workshop on Industrial Research and Data Needs in India (2015) Presentations (including scheduled) 2015-2016 Pennsylvania State University, Harvard University, Oxford Development Workshop, Paris School of Economics, University of Oxford, Northeast University Development Conference (NEUDC), Dartmouth College 2014-2015 University of Oxford, Northeast University Development Conference (NEUDC), University of Essex, Indian Statistical Institute, Centre for Policy Research (Delhi) 2013-2014 Northeast University Development Conference (NEUDC), University of Oxford, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (India) 2012-2013 Northeast University Development Conference (NEUDC), University of Oxford, Harvard University, Planning Commission (India) Research Grants 2015 IGC, “How do Rural Roads Affect Development? Evidence from India” (with Paul Novosad) $71,000 2014 IGC, “The Cost of Road Construction in Tanzania” (with Martina Kirchberger and Paul Novosad) $110,000 2014 IGC, Scoping Visit for Research on Roads in Tanzania (with Martina Kirchberger and Paul Novosad) $8,600 2013 Growth and Labour Markets in Low Income Countries Programme, “The Urban Geography of Entrepreneurship and Growth in India” (with Paul Novosad) $172,000 2013 Private Enterprise in Low-Income Countries, Centre for Economic Policy Research, “The Urban Geography of Entrepreneurship and Formality in Poor Countries” (with Paul Novosad) $56,000 2013 John Fell Fund (University of Oxford), “The Urban Geography of Entrepreneurship and Growth in India” $12,000 2013 OxCarre Research Grant (University of Oxford), “Mining and Politics in India” $5,000 2011 Institute for Quantitative Social Science (Harvard University), “Estimating the Impact of Politician Power on Local Economic Development in India” $2,000 2010 Real Estate Academic Initiative (Harvard University) “Property Rights and Land Use in Rural India” $7,000 2009-2013 Warburg Fund (Harvard University), 3x, $9,000 Honors and Fellowships 2012 GSAS Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Harvard University 2010-2013 Graduate Research Fellow, Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University 2010-2013 Graduate Research Fellow, Center for International Development, Harvard University 2010 Graduate Research Fellow, Tobin Project Updated October 2015 2007-2009 Graduate Fellowship, Harvard University Job Market Paper The Economic Effects of Road Construction in Rural India (with Paul Novosad) This paper investigates the economic effects of reducing transportation costs in rural areas. We construct a new, high spatial resolution household dataset to estimate the impact of a national rural road construction program in India that has built over 400,000 km of paved roads. Program rules provide exogenous variation in road assignment. We find that paved road construction to previously unconnected villages leads to a large and significant sectoral reallocation of economic activity out of agricultural cultivation. These results are driven by locations close to major cities, suggesting the importance of access to urban markets in the process of structural transformation. We provide further evidence that this exit from agriculture is concentrated among younger workers and households with low levels of land, precisely those groups we expect to have the lowest costs and highest returns to sectoral reallocation. Other Research Papers Politics and Local Economic Growth: Evidence from India (with Paul Novosad) Does politics have an impact on local economic outcomes? Using a regression discontinuity design built around close elections from 1990-2005, we examine the local economic effects of one form of political favoritism: the benefit of having a local politician who is aligned with the party in control of government. We show that private sector employment in politically aligned constituencies grows by 1.7 percentage points more per year than in non-aligned constituencies. We find no effect on government employment or supply of public infrastructure. Stock prices show 12-15% positive cumulative abnormal returns when an aligned candidate wins the constituency where a firm is headquartered, suggesting that political alignment is a net benefit to both local labor and capital. Finally, we use international survey data to classify industries by their dependence on (i) government bureaucracy, (ii) direct transfers in the form of procurement, and (iii) external finance. We find the effect of political alignment is largest in industries that depend most on government officials, with no significant effect of dependence on credit or procurement. This suggests that the effect of alignment works through regulation. The results are consistent with a model of politicians choosing policy levers to maximize electoral gain. Dirty Politics: Natural Resource Wealth and Politics in India (with Paul Novosad) Does extractable natural resource wealth cause adverse political outcomes? We interact global price changes with locations of mineral deposits within India to isolate exogenous variation in local resource wealth. By exploiting temporal variation with locations held constant, we remove confounding factors that vary across locations and may be correlated with the importance of natural resources. We find that natural resource wealth increases the likelihood that criminal politicians are elected to office, and increases margins of victory and incumbency advantages in local elections. We can exclude the possibility that these results are driven by higher budgets alone, as mining royalties are not distributed locally. We test three channels for the criminality effect: (i) moral hazard; (ii) adverse selection of politicians into the political system; and (iii) greater success of criminal candidates in elections. The evidence favors the third channel. We discuss potential interpretations based on changes in voter, candidate and party behavior. Work in Progress The Impacts of Local Control over Political Institutions: Evidence from State Splitting in India (with Paul Novosad) Local Employment Multipliers in India (with Karan Nagpal and Paul Novosad) The Cost of Road Construction in Tanzania (with Martina Kirchberger and Paul Novosad) Digging for Development: Economic Impacts of Mining Booms (with Paul Novosad) Updated October 2015 The Impact of Agricultural Output on Local Economic Activity in India (with Paul Novosad) Personal Citizenship: USA Date of Birth: August 6, 1982 Languages: English (native), Spanish (proficient), Hindi (proficient) LORENZO CASABURI http://scholar.harvard.edu/lorenzocasaburi [email protected] HARVARD UNIVERSITY Placement Director: David Cutler [email protected] 617-496-5216 Placement Director: Oliver Hart [email protected] 617-496-3461 Graduate Administrator: Brenda Piquet [email protected] 617-495-8927 Office Contact Information Home Contact Information Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research 4118 Folsom
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