Puneet Arora

Puneet Arora

Assistant Professor, Economics and Public Policy

Management Development Institute, Gurgaon

Biography

I am an Assistant Professor in the Economics and Public Policy area at the Management Development Institute Gurgaon. I am an economist with research interests in the area of behavioral and experimental economics, applied in the contexts of education, household finance and ethics. I conduct field, lab and online experiments to study behavioral biases in human behavior. My research also studies the issue of identity based discrimination in different contexts.

I received my PhD in Economics degree in 2020 from Georgia State University, an MA degree in Economics degree in 2013 from Delhi School of Economics, and a BA Honors in Economics degree in 2009 from Hansraj College, University of Delhi. I am also an Invited Researcher at JPAL.

Interests
  • Behavioral & Experimental Economics
  • Education
  • Household Finance
  • Ethics and Morality
Education

  • PhD in Economics, 2020

    Georgia State University

  • MA in Economics, 2013

    Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi

  • BA(H) in Economics, 2009

    Hans Raj College, University of Delhi

Experience

 
 
 
 
 
Assistant Professor
Economics and Public Policy, Management Development Institute Gurgaon
Apr 2023 – Present Gurugram
 
 
 
 
 
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Faculty of Business Administration, Prague University of Economics and Business
Sep 2022 – Mar 2023 Prague
 
 
 
 
 
Assistant Professor
Ahmedabad University
Jul 2020 – Jun 2022 Ahmedabad
 
 
 
 
 
Assistant Professor
Indian School of Business and Finance, Delhi
Jul 2015 – Jun 2016 Delhi

Selected Publications

Puneet Arora, Alberto Chong, Carla Srebot (2023). Systemic Financial Crises and Income Inequality in OECD Countries. In Open Economies Review (Accepted).

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Puneet Arora, Tareena Musaddiq (2023). Can rank-based non-monetary rewards improve student attendance? Experimental Evidence from India. In Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (Accepted).

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Puneet Arora, Ishtiaque Fazlul, Tareena Musaddiq, Abhinav Vats (2022). Can social recognition for teachers and principals improve student performance? Evidence from India. In Applied Economics Letters.

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Nicholas Wright, Puneet Arora (2022). A For Effort - Incomplete Information and College Students' Academic Performance. In Economics of Education Review.

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Puneet Arora, Nicholas Wright (2022). Grade reporting and student performance. In Education Economics.

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Puneet Arora, Alberto Chong (2018). Government effectiveness in the provision of public goods - the role of institutional quality. In Journal of Applied Economics.

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Working Papers

I Promise to Work Hard - The Impact of Written Pledges on Student Performance (with N. Wright and J. Wright) - Revision Requested
Students often start a course with high expectations and an ambitious plan of action. Some instructors use goal-inducing non-binding commitment pledges to nudge students to follow through on their intended course of action. Using a field experiment, we asked treated students to set a goal grade, identify the actions they will take to achieve it, and sign a commitment pledge to work towards this grade. We find that while treated students pledged a greater time commitment and targeted a higher grade, their overall test scores decrease by 0.23 standard deviations and they were 15 percentage points less likely to pass the course.
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Are Students Really Biased against Female Professors? Experimental Evidence from India (with M. Roy) - Revision Requested
We investigate the presence of gender bias in student evaluation of teaching (SET) scores with a natural field experiment in India. We employ a novel experimental design, randomly assigning 504 economics students to an identical audiovisual class taught either in a female or male voice. We find no significant differences in ratings given between female or male professors across any teaching dimension. However, when additional information about a professor’s professional accomplishments is provided, female professors receive higher ratings on average. The effect comes mainly from female students, who increase the ratings of female professors and lower the ratings of male professors. Our findings suggest that gender bias is context-dependent and provide evidence of the effectiveness of an information mechanism that can help shift perceptions about female professors.
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Loan Selection, Attribute Substitution and Information Effect - Under Review
Borrowers face a menu of similar looking options while selecting a loan plan. However, it is unclear whether they can select the most cost-effective plan. Through a framed laboratory experiment, I found that participants were 78% likely to state a suboptimal preference ordering and 68% likely to select a dominated loan plan. I provide suggestive evidence on the role of attribute substitution in the decision making process, where participants substituted APR and Total Cost attributes for the present discounted cost of a loan plan. Additionally, I provide causal evidence demonstrating how additional information can alter the choice of the substituted attribute. These findings raise important questions about individuals’ comprehension of loan-related attributes and emphasize the need for education programs to build citizens’ financial capability.
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Maximum Points, Test Scores and Effort on the Test Itself (with I. Tripathi and A. Jain)
Assessment tests are used extensively to measure student learning. Other than ability and prior preparation, student performance reflects their intrinsic motivation to do well on the test, affecting their effort on the test itself. We experimentally increase the numerosity (magnitude) of maximum points on the test to create an illusion of a more rewarding test and nudge students to exert higher effort on the test. Tested in three different settings, we find insignificant treatment effects in the high-stake test context (Setting 1) and low-stake test context (Setting 2) when an incorrect response does not attract a negative penalty. However, in a high-stake test context, when an incorrect response attracts a penalty (Setting 3), we find the likelihood of getting the question correct increases by 9.5 pp, with stronger effects on male (16 pp) and above-median ability (16 pp) students. We discuss increasing mental effort as the potential mechanism driving the effects.
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Group Accountability and Tax Compliance (with S. Kim)
One of the Internal Revenue Services’ methods for audit is to pick individuals engaged in transactions with other taxpayers whose tax returns were selected for audit. This group accountability (GA) in the audit mechanism introduces an externality where one’s action affects the likelihood of others being audited. It can induce a different tax compliance behavior compared to the individual accountability (IA) audit mechanism, where an individual is selected randomly for audit. We study the effectiveness of GA against IA treatment using a lab experiment, and find that GA treatment increases the mean tax compliance by 6.6 pp (intensive margin) and full tax compliance rate by 12.7 pp (extensive margin). We also report how this impact changes as we vary the audit rate, group size and degree of anonymity among group members.
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Conversations and Investment - An experimental study (with G. Dhamija and D. Nagori) - Under Review
We investigate the impact of informal peer conversations on investment decisions and examine whether a longer evaluation time frame for investment returns can partly solve the stock market participation puzzle. In a framed lab experiment within the context of incentivized investment decisions, participants engaged in conversations of varying nature (bearish, bullish, placebo) and considered different time frames for investment returns (1 year or both 1 and 5 years). We find that both bearish and bullish conversations decreased the likelihood of investing in risky assets, with a stronger effect on moderately risky assets. The unexpected conservative investment behavior observed in response to bullish conversations was predominantly driven by female participants. Additionally, incorporating a longer-term perspective on investment returns increased the likelihood and average investments in risky assets, hinting at a potential mitigating mechanism for the stock market participation puzzle.

Research-in-Progress

Stigma and Prisoners (with L. Cingl and V. Korbel) - Manuscript in preparation
Feb 10, 2023
Research Strategies in Academia (with I.Tripathi and K. Trivedi) - Data Collection in Progress
Jul 10, 2022

Teaching

Management Development Institute (MDI) Gurgaon (April 2023-present)

  • Ethics in Public Service (2023-24)
  • Business Ethics (2023-24)
  • Corporate Social Responsibility (2023-24)
  • Managerial Economics (2023-24)

Amrut Mody School of Management, Ahmedabad University (August 2020-June 2022)

  • Empirical Research Methods for Economics (Winter 2022 - Post Graduate course)
  • Experimental and Behavioural Economics (Monsoon 2021 - Post Graduate course)
  • Principles of Microeconomics (2021, 2022 - Undergraduate course)
  • Principles of Macroeconomics (2021 - Undergraduate course)

Indian School of Business and Finance (2013-14 and 2015-16)

  • Principles of Microeconomics (Undergraduate course)
  • Intermediate Microeconomics (Undergraduate course)
  • Mathematical Economics (Undergraduate course)

Contact