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Sriniketh Nagavarapu
Sriniketh Nagavarapu is originally from Torrance, California, and received his B.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University. He joined Brown University as an Assistant Professor in 2008, with a joint appointment in the Department of Economics and the Center for Environmental Studies. At Brown, he is an affiliate of the Population Studies and Training Center, the Environmental Change Initiative, and the Brown-India Initiative.
His research is focused on environmental and labor economics in developing countries. Specifically, he is interested in understanding how local institutions manage natural resources and public service delivery, and how management effectiveness is shaped by market incentives and the nature of the institutions. He is particularly interested in settings where government monitoring and enforcement are limited.
His work in India has focused on the Public Distribution System (PDS) and, more recently, groundwater depletion.
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The role of informal caste networks in public service delivery
Large public programmes designed at the national level are often undermined by corruption at the local level. This column proposes local level monitoring and enforcement through informal networks as a potential low-cost solution. It shows how caste networks can facilitate monitoring and enforcement in the Targeted Public Distribution System, and infers implications of these findings for the food security bill.
Role of Information Provision in Improving Public Service Delivery
Informal monitoring and enforcement can increase the efficiency of public service delivery. This project studies the Targeted Public Distribution System of India and finds that Scheduled Castes (SC) have a higher take-up of government subsidised food when facing SC delivery agents.