Tamoghna Halder
Areas of Interest & Expertise
- Economic History
- Labour Economics
- Economic History of Identities
- Economics of Discrimination
Biography
Following my MStat (Masters in Statistics) from Indian Statistical Institute, I went on to pursue my PhD in Economics from the University of California, Davis. As an applied economist, I seek to investigate how historical institutions, whether formal or informal, have persistent, long-run effect on inequality, human capital accumulation, growth, development, and diversity. For example, in one of the chapters of my doctoral research I use archived graduation records of students from elite universities to trace group-level social mobility in India for different caste and religious groups over the last 150 years. In fact, I find it fascinating to extract and analyse economic information from historical texts – whether these are pieces of ancient literature or boring records maintained by bureaucrats/institutions. Therefore, fellow economists often classify me as an Economic Historian, however, my research spans several other fields such as Labour, Development and Political Economy as well.
I love to teach as much and have taught several courses in Economics to both undergraduate and graduate students including a unique course, “How to Teach Economics” to PhD students at University of California, Davis. At Azim Premji University, I am currently teaching two courses: Intermediate Microeconomics (UG) and Economics of Identity (PG).
I am also a regular contributor of op-ed articles at Al Jazeera. At different turns of life, I wanted to be a poet, a theatre practitioner, or a filmmaker, but failed so bad, that I decided to become an Economist instead. Nevertheless, poetry, films and theatre continue to be my breathing space till date.
Courses
Microeconomics: Theory and Applications II
This course focuses on standard models in areas including competition, prices, taxation, and public goods.
Communicating Economics
How do you communicate economics in different contexts?
Economics of Identity
How does a sense of self determine and affect economic outcomes?
Intermediate Microeconomic Theory
Do individuals calculate their actions to suit consequences? Are individual’s choices purely self-interested? How do individual behaviours affect social institutions? And how can policies take heed to these behaviours?
Reports
State of Working India 2023: Social Identities and Labour Market Outcomes
Amit Basole, Rosa Abraham, Angarika Rakshit, Vijayamba R, Anand Shrivastava, Tamoghna Halder (2023)
Publications:
Journal Articles:
T. Halder, K. Sharma, S. Ghosh and R. Verbrugge. (2015). How do adults reason about their opponent? Typologies of players in a turn-taking game. In D. Noelle et al (Ed), Proceedings of the 37th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2015), 854 — 859. (PDF)
S. Ghosh, T. Halder, K. Sharma and R. Verbrugge. (2015). Human strategic reasoning in dynamic games: Experiments, logics, cognitive models. In W. van der Hoek et al (eds), Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Logic, Rationality and Interaction (LORI 2015), 116 — 128. (PDF)
Newspaper Articles:
In recent past, I have contributed articles for Al Jazeera. For the list of articles, follow my author profile.
Work in progress:
Caste, Reservation and Social Mobility in India: 1856 – 2017 (aka Job Market Paper)
Gender-gap among Elite Graduates: A Social Mobility Perspective
Residential Segregation in Bengal: It is what it was (1870 – 2020)