Koustuv Saha

• Agricultural and development economics
• Gender and women’s labour in agriculture
• Intra-household decision-making under risk
• Human – wildlife coexistence and conservation behaviour
• Field and lab-in-field experiments

Koustuv Saha is an agricultural economist who studies how social norms and culture shape how rural households respond to development and environmental challenges. He uses experimental and quasi-experimental methods, including field experiments with real money at stake. His doctoral research examined how married couples in Bangladesh coordinate risky decisions. It also asked whether India’s rural employment guarantee scheme offset women’s exit from farm work as agriculture mechanised. 

His latest work, with Rabari and non-Rabari herders in the Jawai Bandh region of Rajasthan, asks how cultural and spiritual beliefs shape tolerance for livestock losses to leopards. His paper ​‘Women’s Work and Agricultural Productivity Gaps in India’, published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, won the Uma Lele Prize at the 2024 International Conference of Agricultural Economists. He worked most recently as Postdoctoral Researcher at the American University of Sharjah. He completed his PhD in Agricultural Economics at Purdue University.