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Mohit Karnani

Job Market Candidate

Research Fields

Development Economics, Market Design, Labor Economics

Contact Information

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Email Address karnani@mit.edu
Office E52-468
Social
Website mohitkarnani.com
References Esther Duflo Parag Pathak Paul Peterson
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Publications

jpe

Aftermarket Frictions and the Cost of Off-Platform Options in Centralized Assignment Mechanisms

By Adam Kapor, Mohit Karnani and Christopher Neilson

Journal of Political Economy

July 2024

Effects of a Large-Scale Social Media Advertising Campaign on Holiday Travel and COVID-19 Infections: A Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial

Nature Medicine, 2021

Effect of Physician-Delivered COVID-19 Public Health Messages and Messages Acknowledging Racial Inequity on Black and White Adults’ Knowledge, Beliefs, and Practices Related to COVID-19: A Randomized Clinical Trial

JAMA Network Open, 2021

About Me

I am an applied microeconomist working on the intersection between development economics and empirical market design. My research focuses on evaluating how different market features affect participants' welfare metrics, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Overall, my research agenda aims to study the general equilibrium effects of policies that foster equality of opportunity, especially when it comes to investing in human capital. To do so, I leverage experimental and quasi-experimental program-evaluation tools and integrate them with insights from empirical industrial organization to understand agents' equilibrium behavior.

JOB MARKET PAPER

Market Power and the Supply-Side of Cash Transfers: Experimental Evidence from Chile
(with C. Martinez and J. Tessada)

Abstract

This paper studies the impacts of a cash transfer program on local businesses. We conducted a two-stage RCT in a Chilean municipality, transferring funds to the poorest 1/3 of households. We transferred these funds through a novel digital wallet with restricted redemption, so that households could use the proceeds only at participating local retailers. We randomly encouraged local businesses to join the digital wallet platform, so they could sell to households using this new payment method. We also randomized the fraction of firms treated at the local-market level to measure the supply-side responses to these cash transfers under different levels of market saturation. Firms respond to local cash transfers, increasing prices by about 9% and reducing competitive monitoring. However, retailers facing more competitive markets attenuated their price increases: a 10pp increase in the fraction of substitute retailers reduces prices by 3.4%. These results suggest that limiting local market power may avoid unintended price effects in the context of cash transfer programs. Finally, we estimate a structural model describing the use of and competition for cash transfers, identified using the experimental variation and transaction-level microdata. We use these estimates to run counterfactual exercises that evaluate the impact of different program designs on prices and welfare.

 

PUBLICATIONS

Aftermarket Frictions and the Cost of Off-Platform Options in Centralized Assignment Mechanisms 
Journal of Political Economy, 2024 
(with A. Kapor and C. Neilson)

Effects of a Large-Scale Social Media Advertising Campaign on Holiday Travel and COVID-19 Infections: A Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial 
Nature Medicine, 2021 
(with E. Breza, F. C. Stanford, M. Alsan, B. Alsan, A. Banerjee, A. G. Chandrasekhar, S. Eichmeyer, T. Glushko, P. Goldsmith-Pinkham, K. Holland, E. Hoppe, S. Liegel, T. Loisel, L. Ogbu-Nwobodo, B. Olken, C. Torres, P. Vautrey, E. Warner, S. Wootton, and E. Duflo)

Effect of Physician-Delivered COVID-19 Public Health Messages and Messages Acknowledging Racial Inequity on Black and White Adults’ Knowledge, Beliefs, and Practices Related to COVID-19: A Randomized Clinical Trial 
JAMA Network Open, 2021 
(with C. Torres, L. Ogbu-Nwobodo, M. Alsan, F. C. Stanford, A. Banerjee, E. Breza, A. G. Chandrasekhar, S. Eichmeyer, T. Loisel, P. Goldsmith-Pinkham, B. Olken, P. Vautrey, E. Warner and E. Duflo)

Sudden Stops of Capital Flows: Do Foreign Assets Behave Differently from Foreign Liabilities? 
Journal of International Money and Finance, 2019 
(with M. Agosin and J. Diaz)

Impact Evaluation of a Freshmen Remedial Math Program: A Regression Discontinuity Approach 
Experiencias de Innovacion Docente, 2017 
(in Spanish)

 

WORKING PAPERS 

Screening and Recruiting Talent At Teacher Colleges Using Pre-College Academic Achievement 
Submitted 
(with F. Calle, S. Gallegos and C. Neilson)

RCTs with Interference in Matching Systems

Peer Effects in Matching Systems

Charter School Expansion and Achievement: Evidence from Harlem
(with P. Peterson)

 

WORK IN PROGRESS

Long-Run Effects of Housing Improvements on Labor, Education and Health Outcomes of Families: Evidence from a Nationwide Field Experiment in Chile 
(with D. Contreras, R. Cooper and N. Valdés)

Teaching Experience

Undergraduate Lecturer, Taught 10 courses as sole lecturer: Introductory Economics (2), Macroeconomics (3) and Mathematics (5) as an Instructor at University of Chile.

Graduate Lecturer, Co-Taught 2 courses on Economic Development for the MA in Economic Analysis program as an Instructor at University of Chile.

Teaching Assistant Experience

Graduate Teaching Fellow, Professor Paul Peterson in Political Economy of the School at Harvard.

Undergraduate Teaching Fellow, Professor Paul Peterson in American Education at Harvard.

Undergraduate Teaching Assistant, Professor Sara Fisher Ellison in Principles of Microeconomics (Head TA × 2) and Professor Parag Pathak in Market Design at MIT.

Graduate Teaching Assistant, Professors Eduardo Engel, Juan Pablo Torres-Martínez and Fabián Duarte in different courses of Public Private Partnerships and Advanced Microeconomics in the MSc. and PhD. in Economics programs at UChile.

Undergraduate Teaching Assistant, Professors Dante Contreras, Pablo Tapia, Christian Belmar and Carlos Cáceres in different courses of Mathematics (TA Coordinator), Statistics, Econometrics (TA Coordinator), General Economics, Microeconomics and Labor Economics in the BSc. in Economics program at UChile.

Talks

(*Denotes co-author presenting)

NEUDC (Ithaca, NY, 2026), Hoover Institution at Stanford University (Stanford, CA, 2026), Harvard Graduate School of Education (Cambridge, MA, 2025), AEFP (Washington, DC, 2025), Columbia Economics of Education Guest Lecture ×3 (New York, NY, 2024, 2025 & 2026), Baker Institute at Rice University (Houston, TX, 2024), APSA ×2 (Los Angeles, CA, 2023 & Boston, MA, 2026), IHS ×2 (Raleigh, NC, 2023), EAGxLatAm (Mexico City, 2023), ChileConf (PUC Santiago and UDEC-Concepción, 2023), GPI ×2 (Oxford, 2022 & 2023), SDSCon (Cambridge, MA, 2022), Jane Street (virtual-NYC, 2022), WEAI ×3 (virtual-Hawaii, 2021), ConsiliumBots (virtual, 2021), NBER Market Design* (virtual-Cambridge, 2020), Econometric Society* (virtual-Milan, 2020), SITE* (virtual-Stanford, 2020), ASSA (San Diego, CA, 2020), U. Chile (Santiago, 2018), LACEA & LAMES ×2 (Puebla, 2019 & Buenos Aires, 2017), FLAUC (Bogotá, 2017), CLADEA (Riverside, CA, 2017), LAWEBESS (Cali, 2017), SECHI ×2 (Santa Cruz, 2017), SINERGIA & 3ie (Bogotá, 2016) and RIDGE (Buenos Aires, 2016).

 

Posters

APPAM (Austin, TX, 2022), MIT.nano (Cambridge, MA, 2018), SECHI ×2 (Viña del Mar, 2016 & Talca, 2015), ENIN (Valparaíso, 2016) and COES & LSE (Santiago, 2016).

Referee

Econometrica, American Economic Review, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Labor Economics, Journal of Applied Econometrics, Journal of International Money and Finance, Journal of Econometric Methods, Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance.

At Harvard

Postdoctoral Association Events Committee (2024-); Founder of the Empirical Methods in Education Reading Group (2024-)

At MIT

Treasurer for: (i) Institute for Data Systems and Society ×1.5 (2022-2024), (ii) LatinX Graduate Students Association (2021-2022), (iii) Graduate Economic Association ×2 (2019-2021), (iv) Ashdown House (2019-2020); Development Lunch Co-Organizer (2020-2021); Presidential Taskforce: Beyond MIT (2020); Residential Scholar Coordinator (2019-2022); and several Graduate Student Council’s committees.

At UChile

High School Math Teacher in different institutions for underserved students (2012-2017), Volunteer in social entrepreneurship program (2012-2013).

Awards and Honors

2026 - 2026
Full Research Grant, Harvard Bloomberg Center for Cities
2025 - 2027
RIS Data Grant, Ministry of Social Development and Family - Chile
2022 - 2026
IHS Junior Fellow and Fund for Scholars
2022 - 2023
Jerry Hausman Fellowship
2018 - 2020
Castle Krob International Fellowship