Vatsal Khandelwal

Working Papers

• Afraid to Talk? Misperceived Norms and Informal Safety Nets

  with Ronak Jain — 2023 Econ Job Market Best Paper Award, UniCredit Foundation & EEA

  Abstract Draft
  Can pessimistic beliefs about social norms reduce community support among the poor? We combine a field experiment, survey experiments, and a structural model to show how misperceptions about peers’ willingness to discuss mental and financial concerns trap communities in a low-support equilibrium. Belief correction increases demand for social support by lowering reputational costs. However, structural estimates indicate the induced shifts are too small to escape this equilibrium. Two years later, treated individuals show improved economic outcomes, but beliefs return below the level conveyed. While belief correction does not shift the equilibrium, it increases take-up and financial support for more intensive interventions that could sustain community interactions over time.

  Coverage: VoxDev (2025), VoxDev (2024), Ideas of India — Mercatus Centre podcast

• Spatial Inequality and Informality in Kenya’s Firm Network

  with Verena Wiedemann, Peter Wankuru Chacha, and Benard Kipyegon Kirui

  Revise and Resubmit, Economic Journal

  Abstract Draft World Bank Working Paper
  The spatial configuration of domestic supply chains plays a crucial role in the transmission of shocks. This paper investigates the representativeness of formal firm-to-firm trade data in capturing overall domestic trade patterns in Kenya — a context with a high prevalence of informal economic activity. We document that informal economic activity is not randomly distributed across space and sectors, with a higher incidence of informality in downstream sectors and smaller regional markets. We link granular transaction-level data on formal firms with data on informal economic activity to estimate a structural model and predict a counterfactual network that accounts for informal firms. We find that formal sector data overstates the spatial concentration of aggregate trade flows and under-accounts for trade within regions and across regions with stronger social ties.

• Personalized Teacher Attention and Student Achievement

  with Minahil Asim and Ronak Jain — Funded by JPAL Post Primary Education Grant and RISE

  Abstract Draft JPAL project page
  We study how personalized teacher attention affects student achievement by randomizing whether students receive messages on behalf of their teacher containing either information on past performance, information with teacher-set performance expectations, additional peer pairing for encouragement, or no message. We find that messages containing information or expectations improve math achievement by 0.18–0.21σ, with students interpreting both as signals of teacher attention. Effects are largest among low-performing students and those randomized to receive more ambitious expectations. Peer pairing only improves outcomes when students are similar. Our findings show that signaling teacher attention is a cost-effective input in the education production function.

  Coverage: VoxDev (2024)

• Peer Effects in Social Networks: Evidence from an Entrepreneurship Experiment

  with Juni Singh

  Abstract Draft
  We implement a randomized entrepreneurship program to study how peer effects vary with network position and whether peers can be leveraged as bridges to useful social ties. We find that socially close and more connected peers generate short-term motivational gains, while close but less connected peers generate long-term benefits. The average long-term peer effect is close to zero, masking substantial heterogeneity: effects are largest for those matched with the least connected peers, declining by 0.06σ per connection. Sharing network contacts leads to no additional gains as contact sharing is concentrated within social groups, showing that bridging fails under high homophily.

• Caring Until It Costs: Teacher Responses to Student Mental Well-being

  with Minahil Asim and Preetham Rodrigues — Draft available upon request

  Revise and Resubmit, World Bank Economic Review

  Abstract
  How do teachers balance academic performance and student mental well-being? We implement survey experiments with public school teachers to measure teacher preferences when academic performance and student well-being are in conflict. We document a gap between teachers’ stated and revealed priorities: while teachers overwhelmingly report valuing student well-being, they are significantly less likely to support it when it requires sacrificing academic outcomes. Using vignettes with randomized student attributes, we find that teachers report lower self-efficacy in supporting students with larger social networks. We then study a government-mandated training program and find that while it reduces teacher sensitivity to academic costs and improves attitudes toward well-being, it makes them less willing to support peer interactions and does not increase their self-efficacy.

Publications

• Learning in Networks with Idiosyncratic Agents

  Games and Economic Behaviour, 2024

  Abstract Published version
  Individuals update their beliefs and respond to new information in idiosyncratic ways. I show that an individual’s idiosyncrasies such as under-reaction, over-reaction, or frustration can have spillover effects and adversely affect the long run beliefs of society. I derive sufficient conditions for convergence of beliefs for all possible networks of agents with heterogeneous idiosyncrasies. Beliefs converge if the magnitude of over-reaction and frustration in any agent’s network neighbourhood is below a threshold determined by how much they trust their own private signals. I find that the absence of disproportionately influential agents is not sufficient to ensure the accuracy of long-run beliefs if learning idiosyncrasies also grow with the network. Finally, I show that agent under-reaction can partition the network, create bottlenecks, and delay convergence.

Selected Work in Progress

• Joint Learning by Doing

  with Juni Singh — Fieldwork completed — Pre-Analysis Plan

• The Demand for Connection

  with Sonia Bhalotra and Manuela Angelucci — Fieldwork ongoing — Pre-Analysis Plan

• Financial Frictions along Supply Chains

  with Benard Kirui and Verena Wiedemann; Funded by PEDL and DEC — Fieldwork ongoing

• Social Connections among Older Adults

  with Alison Andrew, Anandi Mani, and Sanchari Roy — Fieldwork ongoing

• Mask Up! How Social Networks Affect Adoption of Public Health Behaviours and Norms

  with Dennis Egger, Aleksandra Jakubowski, and Michael Walker

Teaching

Music

I am a trained singer and play the sitar. I hold a Senior Diploma in Hindustani Classical Music from Prayag Sangeet Samiti, and have won awards for singing at the local, state, and national level.