Mr. E. Somanathan

Address :

SANDEE Grant Period:

SANDEE Publications :

1. Somanathan, E. and J. Jalan (2005), 'Danger Dirty Water! An Assessment of the Importance of Information in Improving Water use Hygiene', SANDEE Policy Brief No. 8 - 05
2. Somanathan, E. and J. Jalan (2005), 'The importance of being informed: experimental evidence on the demand for environmental quality', SANDEE Working Paper No. 8 - 04
3. Somanathan, E., J. Jalan and S. Choudhuri (2004), 'Adoption of Safe Drinking Water Practices: Does Awareness of Health Effects Matter?', SANDEE Policy Brief No. 4 - 04
4. Jalan, J., E. Somanathan and S. Choudhuri (2003), 'Awareness and the Demand for Environmental Quality: Drinking Water in Urban India, SANDEE Working Paper No. 4-03

Other Publications :

1. Climate Policy and Innovation in the Absence of Commitment, with Ashokankur Datta.

Published Papers

If you do not have access to a paper below, you can e-mail me (som [at] isid.ac.in). 

1. Impact of Biometric Identification-based transfers with Arka Roy Chaudhuri, Economic and Political Weekly, 46(21): 77-80, May 21, 2011.
2. Effects of Information on Environmental Quality in Developing Countries. Review of Environmental Economics and  Policy, 4(2): 275-292, Summer 2010.
3. What Do We Expect from an International Climate Agreement? A Perspective from a Low-income Country in Joseph Aldy and Robert Stavins (Eds), Climate Change Policy Beyond Kyoto, Cambridge University Press, 2009.
4. Climate change: Challenges facing India's poor with Rohini Somanathan, Economic and Political Weekly, 44(31): 51-58, August 1, 2009. (Erratum: The labels in Figure 3a are interchanged.)
5. Decentralization for cost-effective conservation with R. Prabhakar and B.S. Mehta, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 106(11): 4143-4147, March 17, 2009. Download the data and programs for this paper.
6. Awareness and the Demand for Environmental Quality: Survey Evidence on Drinking Water in Urban India with Jyotsna Jalan and Saraswata Chaudhuri, Environment and Development Economics, 14(6): 665-692, December 2009. Download the data.
7. Discrimination in an Elite Labour Market? Job Placements at the Indian Institute of Management - Ahmedabad with Sujoy Chakravarty, the Economic and Political Weekly, 43(44): 45-50, November 1, 2008.
8. The Importance of Being Informed: Experimental Evidence on Demand for Environmental Quality with Jyotsna Jalan, Journal of Development Economics, 87(1): 14-28, August 2008. Download the questionnaires, data, and programs for this paper.
9. Biodiversity, pp. 32-35 in the Oxford Companion to Economics in India, edited by Kaushik Basu, Oxford University Press, 2007.
10. Collective Action for Forest Conservation: Does Heterogeneity Matter? with R. Prabhakar and B.S. Mehta, pp. 234-245 in Inequality, Cooperation, and Environmental Sustainability edited by Jean-Marie Baland, Pranab Bardhan and Samuel Bowles, Princeton University Press, November 2006.
11. How Degraded are Himalayan Forests? with R. Prabhakar and B.S. Mehta, Current Science, 91(1): 61-67, July 10, 2006. Comments and our response, 92(4): 418-420, February 25, 2007. Training sites used for image classification in the paper are available on the India Biodiversity Portal.
12. Measuring the marginal value of water and the elasticity of demand for water in agriculture, with R. Ravindranath, Economic and Political Weekly, 41(26): 2712-2715, June 30-July 7, 2006.
13. Environmental Policy Instruments in Developing Countries with Thomas Sterner, pp. 217-244 in Economic Development and Environmental Sustainability: New Policy Options, edited by Ramon Lopez and Michael A. Toman, Oxford University Press, June 2006.
14. A Simple Model of Collective Action with Rajiv Sethi, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 54(3): 725-747, April 2006.
15. Valuing Lives Equally: Distributional Weights for Welfare Analysis. Economics Letters, 90:122-125, January 2006.
16. Inequality and Environmental Policy, in Environment, Inequality, and Collective Action, edited by Marcello Basili, Maurizio Franzini, and Alessandro Vercelli, Routledge: New York, January 2006.
17. Norm Compliance and Strong Reciprocity, with Rajiv Sethi, pp. 229-250 in Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: The Foundations of Cooperation in Economic Life edited by Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles, Robert Boyd, and Ernst Fehr, MIT Press, 2005.
18. The Evolution of Honesty, with Paul H. Rubin, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 54(1): 1-17, May 2004.
19. "What can we learn from Cultural Group Selection and Co-evolutionary Models?" with Rajiv Sethi, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 53(1): 105-108, January 2004.
20. Understanding Reciprocity with Rajiv Sethi, in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 50(1): 1-27, January 2003.
21. Can Growth Ease Class Conflict? in Economics and Politics, March 2002, 14(1): 65-81.
22. Empowering Local Government: Lessons from Europe in the Economic and Political Weekly, October 13, 2001, 36(41), pp 3935-40.
23. Preference Evolution and Reciprocity with Rajiv Sethi in the Journal of Economic Theory, April 2001.
24. Humans as Factors of Production: An Evolutionary Analysis with Paul H. Rubin in Managerial and Decision Economics, November-December 1998.
25. Evolutionary Stability of Pure-Strategy Equilibria in Finite Games in Games and Economic Behavior, October-November 1997.
26. The Evolution of Social Norms in Common Property Resource Use with Rajiv Sethi in the American Economic Review, September 1996, pp 766-88.
27. Deforestation, Property Rights and Incentives in Central Himalaya in the Economic and Political Weekly, January 26,1991, 26(4), Political Economy Supplement 37-46. 

1. "Understanding India's Economic Growth." Review of Pulapre Balakrishnan's Economic Growth in India: History and Prospect. Economic and Political Weekly, March 19,2011, 46(12), 29-31. 

Current Research Area/ Interests :