Pallab Ghosh

This paper is a narrow replication of Firpo, Fortin and Lemieux (Unconditional quantile regressions. Econometrica 2009; 77(3): 953-973), who propose a new estimation method, called "unconditional quantile regressions". Using their empirical example, we confirm their results for the effects of unionization on US wage inequality during the period 1983-1985 for both conditional and unconditional quantile regressions. In addition, this paper applies the proposed estimation method to another paper by Autor, Katz and Kearney (Trends in US wage inequality: revising the revisionists. Review of Economics and Statistics 2008; 90(2): 300-323). The latter paper looks at measures of wage inequality in the US labor market data over the period 1963-2005.

@article{baltagi2017replication,
  author  = {Baltagi, Badi H. and Ghosh, Pallab},
  title   = {Replication of Unconditional Quantile Regressions by Firpo, Fortin and Lemieux (2009)},
  journal = {Journal of Applied Econometrics},
  year    = {2017},
  volume  = {32},
  number  = {1},
  pages   = {218--223},
  doi     = {10.1002/jae.2477}
}

This paper proposes a semi-parametric procedure to determine the contribution of human capital variables in explaining the changes of U.S. wage distribution function over the period of 1990-2000. The effects of these factors are estimated by using the Chamberlain's two stage Box-Cox quantile regression approach. One of the main contributions of this paper is that it relaxes the linearity assumption of the conditional quantile function to estimate the counterfactual wage distribution function consistently. This paper also shows that the proposed method provides better estimates of capturing the effects of human capital variables in the two tails of the wage distribution while the results of other parts of the distribution are comparable with the estimates of the previous study which used the linear quantile regression approach. To summarize, these results suggest that this proposed approach is more applicable in cases where the behavior of the tails of the distribution bear much importance.

@article{ghosh2014humancapital,
  author  = {Ghosh, Pallab},
  title   = {The Contribution of Human Capital Variables to Changes in the Wage Distribution Function},
  journal = {Labour Economics},
  year    = {2014},
  volume  = {28},
  pages   = {58--69},
  doi     = {10.1016/j.labeco.2014.03.006}
}

Coauthorship has become the new norm in academics since the early 1970s because it enhances productivity. However, the gender gap in economics journal publication continues to persist, which explains why there are fewer women than men in the economics profession. This study investigates the role of coauthorship in the gender gap in top economics journals for untenured faculty members in the US. We construct a unique dataset from the CVs of academic economists from the top 96 PhD-granting economics departments in the US. Our results suggest that, compared to men, women are matched with less productive unique coauthors because women begin their academic careers in lower-ranked economics departments than men, which is associated with institutional gender bias. This poor-quality matching can explain approximately 0.60 fewer publications in the top 20 economics journals during the untenured period.

@article{ghosh2020coauthorship,
  author  = {Ghosh, Pallab and Liu, Zexuan},
  title   = {Coauthorship and the Gender Gap in Top Economics Journal Publications},
  journal = {Applied Economics Letters},
  year    = {2020},
  volume  = {27},
  number  = {7},
  pages   = {580--590},
  doi     = {10.1080/13504851.2019.1644420}
}

Breastfeeding has significant health and human capital effects on both mothers and infants. However, breastfeeding rates vary significantly within and across countries as societal, political, economic and cultural factors along with individual choices shape the breastfeeding practices. Using data from the Egyptian Demographic and Health Surveys, this study examines the effects of first motherhood timing, availability of breastmilk substitutes, and mothers' education levels on breastfeeding duration in a major developing country, Egypt. The empirical analysis, which corrects for the estimation errors that plagued previous research, shows that delaying the first motherhood timing and increasing the availability of infant formulas have statistically significant negative effects on breastfeeding duration. Furthermore, breastfeeding duration is found to be decreasing in mothers' education levels.

@article{demir2020breastfeeding,
  author  = {Demir, Firat and Ghosh, Pallab and Liu, Zexuan},
  title   = {Effects of Motherhood Timing, Breastmilk Substitutes and Education on the Duration of Breastfeeding: Evidence from Egypt},
  journal = {World Development},
  year    = {2020},
  volume  = {133},
  pages   = {105014},
  doi     = {10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105014}
}

This paper examines the effects of political protests during the Egyptian revolution between 2011 and 2014 on "missing women" in Egypt. The term "missing women" refers to the number of women missing in population because of sex-selective abortions, excess female mortality and lower survival rates caused by gender discrimination, infanticide, neglect, malnutrition, domestic violence, unequal healthcare access and provision, and poor treatment. We hypothesize that increased female participation in these protests improved women's empowerment and helped reduce missing women. Using a difference-in-differences analysis, our identification strategy is based on protest intensity heterogeneity, and changes in missing women for the age group of [0-1] before and after the protests across different governorates in urban and rural areas. We find convincing causal evidence that the number of missing women decreased significantly in high protest intensity governorates. Based on protest heterogeneity across different periods, we also show that this effect was most visible after the fourth and final phase of protests. As for possible channels, we find that domestic violence during pregnancy incidence fell significantly in treatment areas, while both relative vaccination rate of girls aged [0-1] as well as women's empowerment increased significantly.

@article{demir2026missingwomen,
  author  = {Demir, Firat and Ghosh, Pallab and Xu, Zhengang},
  title   = {The Effects of Female Political Participation on Missing Women: Evidence from the Egyptian Protests of 2011--2014},
  journal = {Journal of Comparative Economics},
  year    = {2026},
  volume  = {54},
  number  = {1},
  pages   = {194--213},
  doi     = {10.1016/j.jce.2025.09.003}
}

As of Aug. 2, 2021, 1693 injury claims associated with COVID-19 medical countermeasures have been filed in the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP), of which 686 claims were related to COVID-19 vaccines and urgently needed compensation decisions. However, from an economic and public policy perspective, we find that the CICP design has unintended consequences: locating CICP in the executive agency DHHS potentially creates a conflict of interest, and not permitting judicial review generates a lack of checks and balances, both of which could jeopardize justice. These fundamental problems would subsequently weaken four key performance indicators of CICP compared with its judicial counterpart in the Court of Federal Claims. CICP lacks accountability, transparency, and cost-effectiveness efficiency, with 94% of its total costs spent on administration rather than compensation. CICP's ability to compensate is also questionable. If COVID-19 claims were compensated at its historical rate, CICP would face around $21.16 million in compensation outlays and $317.94 million in total outlays, 72.1 times its current balance. To ensure just compensation for injured petitioners during COVID-19 and future public health emergencies, we recommend Congress (1) initiate a major reform by relocating CICP from DHHS to the Claims Court or (2) keep CICP within DHHS and make incremental changes by permitting judicial review of DHHS administrative adjudication of CICP claims. We further recommend Congress audit and adjust budgets for CICP and DHHS promptly propose an injury table for COVID-19 claims. This is the first study that contributes an economic perspective to the limited literature on CICP and also provides unique and rich economic data.

@article{zhao2022countermeasures,
  author  = {Zhao, Junying and Demir, Firat and Ghosh, Pallab and Earley, Austin and Kim, Myongjin},
  title   = {Reforming the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program for COVID-19 and Beyond: An Economic Perspective},
  journal = {Journal of Law and the Biosciences},
  year    = {2022},
  volume  = {9},
  number  = {1},
  pages   = {lsac008},
  doi     = {10.1093/jlb/lsac008}
}