Karan Singh Bagavathinathan
Ph.D. · Economist · Macro-development, monetary policy & urban growth
I am an economist working on topics related to macro-development. My current research focuses on inflation and monetary policy, GDP nowcasting, urban growth, and labour markets. I use applied econometrics, causal inference, and machine-learning methods in my work.
Research Fields
Primary: monetary policy and inflation; macroeconomic nowcasting; urban and regional economics.
Secondary: labour markets; development economics; applied econometrics and machine learning.
Work in Progress
Weather and Geopolitics Are Stress-Testing Europe’s Clean Energy Transition
Wind, water, and the price of the European evening. Reads the European power price at the resolution the system runs at, one price per bidding zone per hour across 3.9 million zone-hours ending 10 August 2026. The clean transition has moved Europe’s economic cycle in between a weather cycle and a political one: heat limits cooling water, hydro thins the evening, and gas covers the difference. Expanding wind, and building the wires and the agreement to share it, is the binding constraint on completing the transition.
Price Analysis Is Necessary for Global Large Projects
And the market only prices half of what they buy. A census of about 97 megaprojects, each above one billion dollars, active over 2020 to 2024 across more than forty countries. Only 10 to 35 per cent of a project’s cost can be hedged in a financial market, and where a cost shock can be neither hedged nor passed on it is absorbed by the physical quality of the asset itself.
Where Urban Agglomerations Grow Next: Build-Vintage as a Map for Service and Investment
Dates urban fabric by decade of construction across 26 Global-South countries, using 334,091 households. About half of current city fabric is post-1990, and within a city newer areas are poorer and less serviced.
Inflation Targeting in the Time of Supply Shocks: A Large-Language-Model Reading of India’s Reserve Bank, 1997–2025
with T. O. Sridevi · A large-language-model reading of three decades of Reserve Bank of India communication, examining how inflation targeting performed through successive supply shocks.
Scheduled, Not Cyclical: What Germany’s Turn from Auto to Defence and AI Means for Nowcasting
Germany’s rotation from autos toward defence and AI changes the information structure of its business cycle: anticipated defence output carries no news at the nowcast horizon, while AI capital expenditure adds both signal and volatility.
Working Papers
with T. O. Sridevi · High-frequency GDP nowcasting from India’s digital infrastructure (GST, UPI, electricity, credit) using Bayesian ensemble methods.
Know the Economy, Not the Data Lake: Country Structure and the Right Number of Indicators in a GDP Nowcast
with T. O. Sridevi · How many indicators a nowcast should use is set by a country’s economic structure, not its data availability, tested across twelve economies through a bias-variance lens.
Publications
Irrigation and the Spatial Pattern of Local Economic Development in India
with Blakeslee, Dar, Fishman, Malik & Pelegrina · Journal of Development Economics
The Effects of Tradable Services on Non-Tradable Services in India
with Avidu, Chaurey, Nayyar & Gaurav · India Policy Forum
Workfare Programs and Children’s Meals Intake: Evidence from India
with R. Chaurey · Food Policy
Women’s Political Representation and Educational Attainments: A District-Level Analysis in India
Journal of South Asian Development
Asset Returns in the Indian Stock Market and Its Linkages with Macroeconomic Fundamentals
with A. Kanakaraj · Revue d’économie financière
Revisiting the Empirical Existence of the Phillips Curve for India
with A. Kanakaraj & T. O. Sridevi · Journal of Asian Economics
Trends and Correlates of Remittances to India
with P. Gupta · Migration & Remittances during the Global Financial Crisis, World Bank · chapter
Contact
Open to research collaboration and consulting across a range of economic questions. Please get in touch by email or LinkedIn.