Arun G. Chandrasekhar

I study social learning, informal finance, partial market completion, health behavior, and redistribution, among other things, mostly using experiments. I think a lot about what we as researchers can know, what we miss, and how to design when inference is fragile. Sometimes we can see what’s going on. Sometimes we learn that we can’t. That’s where things get interesting. I build statistical or theoretical tools along the way when needed.

How to Know — and What to Discover — When You Can’t Fully Trust What You Know

epistemic fragility, concept discovery and robustness; the limits of generalizability and meta-analyses

Generalizability With Ignorance in Mind (with Emily Breza and Davide Viviano), 2025
On Tubes; or, Model-Building from Rich Data by Isolating Concepts (with Matthew Jackson, Tyler McCormick, Karl Rohe, and Brian Xu), 2025
Rashomon Partition Sets for Robust Experimental Design: Extending Bandit and Adaptive Methods (with Tyler McCormick, Dev Patel, and Annika Younge), in progress
Robustly Estimating Heterogeneity in Factorial Data Using Rashomon Partitions (with Aparajithan Venkateswaran, Anirudh Sankar, and Tyler McCormick), 2nd round resubmission to JRSS-B, 2025
Selecting the Most Effective Nudge: Evidence from a Large-Scale Experiment on Immunization (with Banerjee et al.), Econometrica, 2025
Small Surveys, Fragile Estimates: How Recruitment Framing and Moral Disposition Shape Inference (with Alsan et al.), in progress
Non-Robustness of Diffusion Estimates on Networks with Measurement Error (with Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, Tyler McCormick, Samuel Thau, and Jerry Wei), resubmitted to Econometrica, 2025
Interacting Regional Policies in Containing a Disease (with Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, Matthew Jackson, and Samuel Thau), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021

Dependence Is in the Design

simple designs for not-so-simple dependence

General Covariance-Based Conditions for Central Limit Theorems and Concentration Inequalities with Dependent Triangular Arrays (with Matthew Jackson, Tyler McCormick, Vydhourie Thiyageswaran), 2025
A Network Formation Model Based on Subgraphs (with Matthew Jackson), Review of Economic Studies, 2025

subsumes now-retired Tractable and Consistent Random Graph Models (with Matthew Jackson)

Identifying the Latent Space Geometry of Network Models through Analysis of Curvature (with Shane Lubold and Tyler McCormick), JRSS-B, 2023
On the Assumption of Local Structure (with Matthew Jackson and Samuel Thau), in progress

How to Learn From Data That Wasn’t Trying to Teach You

recovering behavior when the structure is blurred

Model-Based Inference and Experimental Design for Interference Using Partial Network Data (with Steve Wilkins Reeves, Shane Lubold, and Tyler McCormick), 2024
Consistently Estimating Graph Statistics using Aggregated Relational Data (with Emily Breza, Shane Lubold, Tyler Mccormick, and Mengjie Pan), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2023, Supplement
Using Aggregated Relational Data to Feasibly Identify Network Structure without Network Data (with Emily Breza and Tyler McCormick), American Economic Review, 2020
retired and subsumed by above agenda: Econometrics of Sampled Networks (with Randall Lewis), reject & resubmit at Econometrica, 2016

Covid

trying to do something

Can a Trusted Messenger Change Behavior when Information is Plentiful? Evidence from the First Months of the COVID-19 Pandemic in West Bengal (with Banerjee et al.), Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming
Effects of a Large-Scale Social Media Advertising Campaign on Holiday Travel and COVID-19 Infections: A Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial (with Breza et al.), Nature: Medicine, 2021
Effect of Physician-Delivered COVID-19 Public Health Messages and Messages Acknowledging Racial Inequality on Black and White Adults' Knowledge, Beliefs, and Practices Related to COVID-19: A Randomized Clinical Trial (with Torres et al.), Jama Network Open, 2021
Comparison of Knowledge and Information-Seeking Behavior After General COVID-19 Public Health Messages and Messages Tailored for Black and Latinx Communities: A Randomized Controlled Trial (with Alsan et al.), Annals of Internal Medicine, 2020

How to Learn From People Who Don’t Know Either

learning fails because of how we're wired and how we're wired together

Multiplexing in Networks and Diffusion (with Vasu Chaudhary, Benjamin Golub, and Matthew Jackson), 2024
Designing Effective Celebrity Public Health Messaging: Results from a Nationwide Twitter Experiment Promoting Vaccination in Indonesia (with Vivi Alatas, Markus Mobius, Benjamin Olken, and Cindy Paladines), The Economic Journal, 2024
When Less Is More: Experimental Evidence on Information Delivery During India’s Demonetization (with Abhijit Banerjee, Emily Breza, and Benjamin Golub), The Review of Economic Studies, 2023

applied to policy setting and model extended: Signaling, Shame, and Silence in Social Learning (with Benjamin Golub and He Yang), 2019

Blue Spoon; or, Sparking Communication About Appropriate Technology Use (with Duflo et al.), 2022
Naive Learning with Uninformed Agents (with Abhijit Banerjee, Emily Breza, and Markus Mobius), American Economic Review, 2021
Testing Models of Social Learning on Networks: Evidence from Two Experiments (with Horacio Larreguy and Juan Pablo Xandri), Econometrica, 2020, Supplement 1, Supplement 2, Data
Using Gossips to Spread Information: Theory and Evidence from Two Randomized Controlled Trials (with Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Matthew Jackson), The Review of Economic Studies, 2019, Data
Network Structure and the Aggregation of Information: Theory and Evidence from Indonesia (with Vivi Alatas, Abhijit Banerjee, Rema Hanna, and Benjamin Olken). American Economic Review, 2016, Supplement, Data
The Diffusion of Microfinance (with Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Matthew Jackson), Science, 2013, Supplement, Data

How to Hold Things Together Without a System That Holds You

rules without writing, threats without courts; when markets move in, things fall apart, or don’t

Effects of Caste-Based Affirmative Action in Governance on Socio-Economic Networks and Resource Provision (with Sumhith Aradhyula, Emily Breza, M.R. Sharan), in progress
Changes in Social Network Structure in Response to Exposure to Formal Credit Markets (with Banerjee et al.), The Review of Economic Studies, 2024, Supplement
Network-Based Hiring: Local Benefits; Global Costs (with Melanie Morten and Alessandra Peter), 2020
Social networks, Reputation and Commitment: Evidence from a Savings Monitors Experiment (with Emily Breza), Econometrica, 2019, Supplement
Network Centrality and Informal Institutions: Evidence from a Lab Experiment in the Field (with Emily Breza and Horacio Larreguy), revision requested at the Journal of Public Economics, 2019
Social Networks as Contract Enforcement: Evidence from a Lab Experiment in the Field, (with Cynthia Kinnan and Horacio Larreguy), American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2018, Supplement and Data

Untitled

not everything needs a theme

Liquidity, Financial Centrality, and the Value of Key Players (with Rob Townsend and Juan Pablo Xandri), 2022
A Note on Payments in the Lab for Infinite Horizon Dynamic Games with Discounting (with Juan Pablo Xandri), Economic Theory, 2022
Best Linear Approximations to Set Identified Functions: With an Application to the Gender Wage Gap (with Victor Chernozhukov, Francesca Molinari, and Paul Schrimpf), revision requested at Quantitative Economics, 2019
Seeing the Forest for the Trees? An Investigation of Network Knowledge (with Emily Breza and Alireza Tahbaz-Salehi), 2018

Might Delete Later

things that maybe shouldn’t be public but are

Social investments, Informal Risk Sharing, and Inequality (with Attila Ambrus and Matt Elliott), 2015
Information, Networks and Social Insurance: Evidence from a Lab Experiment in the Field (with Cynthia Kinnan and Horacio Larreguy), 2011
Come Play with Me: Experimental Evidence of Information Diffusion about Rival Goods (with Abhijit Banerjee, Emily Breza, Esther Duflo, and Matthew Jackson)

Arun G. Chandrasekhar

Research