Assistant Professor
PhD (Boston University)
Research Interests: Industrial Organisation, Development Economics, Financial Inclusion
Samarth Gupta obtained his PhD in Economics from Boston University in 2018. Prior to joining Ahmedabad University, Samarth was an Associate Fellow at the National Council of Applied Economic Research where he was conducted research in several areas of Public Policy such as alcohol taxation and pricing strategy, Direct Benefit Transfers, and an analysis of gig workers in the Platform economy.
Samarth’s current research interest lie primarily in the field of Development Economics, and particularly in the subject of financial inclusion. In his work, he explores what determines a rural enterprise to borrow from Self Help Groups as opposed to informal lenders, and the impact on entrepreneurship and employment when a commercial bank branch opens in a neighbourhood of a village. Currently, he is working on key projects in Industrial Organisation. This includes a project on estimating the response of private retailers when public pharmacies enter the market.
“Public Entry, Heterogeneous Consumers and Private Prices: New Evidence from India” with Chirantan Chatterjee [Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 219 (2024): 473-489]
Bhandari, B., Gupta S., Sahu, A., Urs, K. (2024) “Impact of Adaptation Strategies on Business Expectations: Evidence from India during the Pandemic” Indian Economic Journal https://doi.org/10.1177/00194662231214680
Dasgupta, M., Gupta, S. (2023) What Determines Enterprise Borrowing from Self Help Groups? An Interpretable Supervised Machine Learning Approach. Journal of Financial Services Research. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10693-023-00416-4
Gupta, S. (2023) Model-Selection Inference for Causal Impact of Clusters and Collaboration on MSMEs in India. Journal of Quantitative Economics. 21, 641–662. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40953-023-00349-8
Garg, S. and Gupta, S. (2023), "What influences village-level access to a bank branch? Evidence from India", International Journal of Bank Marketing, Vol. 41 No. 4, pp. 882-902. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJBM-08-2022-0360
Bhandari, B., Gupta S., Sahu, A., Urs, K. (2021) "Business sentiments during India’s national lockdown: Lessons for second and potential third wave." Indian Economic Review: 1-16.