Author: Karthick Arunachalam

Commentary

COMMENTARY: Qatar’s World Cup: Boon or Bust?

Karthick Arunachalam

Jacob Ye, Boston College -- Every four years, all eyes turn towards a month-long competition in the world of soccer: the FIFA World Cup. The World Cup is considered the most prestigious prize in the sport, and boasts the title as the most watched sporting event. The 2018 Russia World Cup reached over half the world's population. Now, four years later, Qatar’s 2022 World Cup continues to impress with record-breaking viewership. The host of the World Cup receives billions of dollars in sponsorships, advertising, and merchandising. However, the host nation pays a steep cost. Indeed, the 2022 Qatar World Cup was the most expensive World Cup to date. Was it worth it? 

Commentary, Health Economics

LONG-FORM COMMENTARY: Saving the Lungs of 1.4 Billion: India and the Need for Air Pollution Control

Karthick Arunachalam

Raina Talwar Bhatia, Stanford University -- Air pollution has become one of the most pressing issues of our time, both from a health and economic perspective. According to the WHO, air pollution is responsible for approximately seven million deaths globally. Nine out of ten humans currently breathe ‘polluted air’ (as per WHO guidelines), with inhabitants of low and middle-income countries feeling the greatest consequences. Although the health effects of air pollution are well-documented, much less attention is given to its economic consequences. The total global cost of air pollution in 2015 was $330 billion and is expected to rise to $3.3 trillion by 2060 based on the current trajectory. Alongside the healthcare costs, air pollution decreases agricultural productivity, increases absenteeism and reduces productivity in the workplace, and creates greater resident interest in emigration and immigration. While all low and middle-income countries are disproportionately impacted by air pollution, none draw the concern and attention of the international community and health experts like India.

Commentary

COMMENTARY: What is a Digital Nomad? Introducing the New Nomadic Workforce

Karthick Arunachalam

Alma Andino Frydman, Stanford University -- The COVID-19 pandemic drastically transformed how people work. Before the pandemic, only 5% of American workdays were WFH (“working from home”); as the pandemic engulfed the world, this number rose to a staggering 50%. For many, the pandemic forced a natural divergence from the “9 to 5” work structure. Many workers realized they were just as, if not more, productive working at their own pace, and for many, there was no going back to the office.

Health Economics

The Effect of Primary Care Provider Supply on Downstream Emergency Department Visits for Pediatric Asthma in California

Karthick Arunachalam

Jashdeep Dhillon, University of California, Berkeley -- California is facing a primary care workforce shortage. Although this has been studied at the state level, it is important to understand the downstream health implications: how will this affect the management of chronic illnesses or how will this affect access to primary care? Due to the significance of investing in childhood health, I exploit different healthcare access features (i.e. the number of primary care physicians) across California’s counties with a variety of socioeconomic variables to investigate the effect of the supply of primary care providers on emergency department visits for pediatric asthma.

Uncategorized

My way or the riot way: (Markov) Equilibrium in almost-Rubinstein Bargaining with Costly Deferral

Karthick Arunachalam

Daniel Luo, Northwestern University -- This paper studies “two-stage” perfect information dynamic bargaining. In the first stage, players cannot split surplus, but only agree whether or not to proceed to the second stage, where canonical Rubinstein bargaining occurs. Bargaining power is realized both through an exogenously evolving state variable and an endogenous choice of one player (the activist) to destroy some share of the other player’s (the government) surplus in a costly fashion. This second-order framework formalizes the intuition offered by activists during interviews that rioting is a justified response to repeated state ignorance of their movements and demands as a way to force engagement and secure a “seat at the table.”

Uncategorized

Loss Aversion in Dictator Games

Karthick Arunachalam

Anthony Khaiat, Camille Burton, Gabe Moos, and Kimberly Stafford, University of Chicago -- Dictator Games consist of two players, an allocator and a recipient, in which the allocator governs the distribution of an endowment between themselves and the recipient. Widely replicated Dictator Game studies by Kahneman et al. (1986) and Kuang et al. (2006), among others, reveal that altruistic behavior among allocators can be influenced by variables that regulate models of human inequity aversion. This study presents a randomized, modified Dictator Game experiment with loss aversion and transparency manipulations.

Uncategorized

Efficient Matchings on 7 Cups

Karthick Arunachalam

Eric Gao, Stanford University -- We analyze two-sided asymmetric matching markets on 7 Cups, a site for social-emotional support where users in need of help can request to be matched with volunteer listeners who have the sole power to accept requests. The aim of this paper is to analyze user incentives to characterize what their dominant strategies are when deciding what to reveal when requesting a conversation.