Work In Progress

• Making Green Transition Work: Adoption of Electric Vehicles in India

  with Linchuan Xu

  • supported by IGC

  While electric vehicle (EV) adoption has surged in developed countries, far less is known about how this green transition will unfold in the Global South. Against the backdrop of rapid industrialization and motorization, developing countries will soon become the primary carbon emitters for the next generation. Facilitating EV transition may therefore become the most crucial lever to reach the right balance between economic growth and reducing emissions. This project will provide the first in-depth documentation of EV transition in India over the last decade and discuss how to make green transition work in developing economies. Transport accounts for around 14% of energy-related CO2 emissions in India and is one of the fastest-growing emissions sectors. EV adoption is now central to India’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and Low-Emission Development Strategy (LEDS). India is also one of the first developing countries to launch policies such as FAME (Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles) to speed up EV uptake, yet progress has been uneven across states and vehicle segments. Absence of systematic data and empirical analysis has left open questions about the effectiveness of EV policies and their heterogeneities. This project will build a novel comprehensive dataset combining vehicle registrations, state and national policies, charging infrastructure, and congestion and local air pollution data. We will answer three interrelated questions: (1) What is the status of EV adoption in India, and how does it vary spatially and by vehicle segments? (2) How effective have subsidies and other policies been in driving uptake? (3) Through a general equilibrium framework, we explore what combinations of policies—like congestion pricing or targeted subsidies—can accelerate adoption and generate environmental benefits most cost-effectively? With reduced-form regression-analysis and quantitative modelling, we identify the main barriers and the right incentives to scale up green transition in the developing world.

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• Beyond Enforcement: Understanding Street Vendor Preferences for Evidence-Based Urban Planning

  with Muskan Jain

  • supported by IGC, BA, H.E.R. (STICERD)

  Street vending is a crucial source of income for millions of people in developing countries, yet vendors often face regulatory uncertainty, evictions, and economic vulnerability due to a lack of formal property rights. In India, where estimates suggest up to 40 million street vendors operate, regulatory policies such as the Street Vendors Act (2014) seek to balance public space management with vendors’ rights through relocation to vending areas. However, ineffective implementation, coordination failures, and information frictions hinder their impact. This project investigates how vendors value legal rights and other attributes of a vending space and how their willingness to relocate varies with beliefs about policy enforcement, particularly in the presence of coordination challenges. Specifically, we will focus on the role of the presence of other vendors while accounting for heterogeneity in vendor responses based on their social networks. To answer this question, we will employ a Discrete Choice Stated Preferences Experiment, where vendors choose between maintaining their current unregulated spot or relocating to a designated vending area with legal security, but at a cost and varying number of vendors relocating from the current market as a key coordination variable. The experiment includes an information treatment, where a subset of vendors is provided with details about policy enforcement, allowing us to assess whether knowledge of regulatory risks alters their WTP. Combining this with a decision making process for vendors modeling coordination games, we will quantify the "right" size of the marketplace when relocation can be successful. Our study is set in Patna, India, where approximately 30,000 street vendors work, and encroachment drives by the local government are a regular practice. The findings may have critical policy implications, particularly for urban local bodies (ULBs) that implement relocation policies.

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• Weathering the Waste: Climate Adaptation and Food Loss Among Urban Street Vendors

  with Swati Dhingra

  • supported by Global Sustainability Research Fund (LSE)

• Exposure to Pollution, Productivity and Well-Being: Street Vending Sector in India

  with Swati Dhingra

  • supported by LSE Seed Research Fund

  Street vendors constitute a significant portion of the informal workforce in low- and middle-income countries. They operate in public spaces that are often marked by inadequate sanitation, high noise levels, and air pollution. Prolonged exposure to such unfavourable working conditions can adversely affect both worker productivity and physical and mental health. Focusing on a city in India, this project aims to gather comprehensive data on marketplace/workplace characteristics including physical environment features like local pollution, as well as vendor characteristics. The goal is to understand the role of street vendors in well-being of city residents and explore potential policy solutions to enhance their working conditions and better integrate them into the urban landscape.

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• From Street to Screen: Digital Marketplaces and the Informal Economy