Unpublished Economics Papers

Shrey Shah · August 2023

During my undergrad, I worked on a handful of economics research papers. I never quite got around to publishing them, so I’m putting them up here instead. They span a few different areas - development economics, public finance, urban economics, industrial organization, and political economy. Some are more polished than others, but I think the ideas are interesting regardless. If you have any questions or want to take any of the papers further, feel free to contact me.

Institutions as Insurance

Why does economic growth under autocracy often fail to survive leadership transitions? The paper constructs an index to decompose institutional dimensions and finds that succession institutionalization, not elections, nor rule of law, is the key predictor. Using natural experiments from leader deaths in office across 1,459 leadership transitions, the paper shows that what matters isn't whether an autocrat produces growth, but whether the system can outlast the autocrat.

Quantifying Privacy

Blackwell's theorem says more information always benefits a decision-maker. This paper shows the logic reverses in labor markets: surveillance generates information about who people are rather than what they can do, reducing aggregate welfare. Using the FBI's COINTELPRO program as a natural experiment, the paper estimates that surveillance of Black organizations widened the racial income gap by 7.4 log points in targeted cities, with effects persisting and compounding 50 years later.

The Form of Redistribution

Poverty depletes cognitive bandwidth, but does that actually matter for policy? The paper traces the causal chain from income to cognition to financial decisions over 37 years and finds that only sustained income changes activate the cognitive mechanism — transitory shocks don't. This has implications for optimal tax design: the cognitive channel adds a duration-dependent component to the standard tax formula.

The Returns to Neighborhood Quality Depend on Who You Are

Current "opportunity scores" assign a single number to each neighborhood. This paper shows that's wrong — the returns to neighborhood quality depend on family income. School quality and neighborhood wealth are complements for low-income families but substitutes for high-income ones, because wealthier families can privately purchase what the neighborhood doesn't provide.

Retail Ownership, Wealth Extraction, and Local Economic Development

"Buy local" is usually dismissed as sentimentality. This paper provides economic logic for it. Using North Dakota's pharmacist-ownership law and Walmart entry events, the paper finds that competitive all-independent markets deliver more employment, higher wages, and lower prices compared to chain-dominated markets. The key is that chain entry generates net welfare losses when accounting for profit leaving the local economy.

The Market for Political Influence

Lobbying, campaign contributions, and revolving-door employment are usually studied separately. This paper treats them as channels in a unified market for political influence. Using Citizens United as a natural experiment, the paper rejects the "whack-a-mole" hypothesis - when corporate campaign spending became legal, firms didn't reduce lobbying; they reallocated it toward campaign-complementary issues. The estimated cost of rent-seeking is substantial.