Petia Topalova

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate the relationship between declines in trade costs, imports of intermediate inputs, and domestic firm product scope, and find that lower input tariffs account on average for 31% of the new products introduced by domestic firms.

TL;DR: This article examined the effects of India's trade reforms in the early 1990s on firm productivity in the manufacturing sector, focusing on the interaction between this policy shock and firm and environment characteristics.

TL;DR: It is shown that female leadership influences adolescent girls’ career aspirations and educational attainment and no evidence of changes in young women’s labor market opportunities is found, which suggests that the impact of women leaders primarily reflects a role model effect.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors exploit India's rapid, comprehensive, and externally imposed trade reform to establish a causal link between changes in tariffs and firm productivity, and find no evidence of a differential impact according to state-level characteristics, observing complementarities between trade liberalization and additional industrial policy reforms.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors exploit random assignment of gender quotas for leadership positions on Indian village councils to show that prior exposure to a female leader is associated with electoral gains for women and that women are more likely to stand for, and win, elected positions in councils required to have a female chief councilor in the previous two elections.