Sunil Mitra Kumar

Bio

I'm a development economist and Director of the King's India Institute at King's College London. I work on questions of causal inference in development using observational data, particularly in the context of discrimination and inequality involving caste, race and gender. I am an Associate Editor for the Journal of Development Studies and Economia Politica.

I received my PhD in Economics from the University of East Anglia, MA in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics, and BA (Hons.) in Mathematics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University. Before embarking on my PhD I worked for the Social Initiatives Group of ICICI Bank, an erstwhile major funder of non-profit activities in India.

Publications

Gender, race and their interplay with economic status: intersectionality and asymmetric jeopardies in Brazilian education

(with Lucio Esposito, Adrián Villaseñor, and Sandra Macedo )

World Development, (2026)

The absolute and relative facets of the economic gradient in educational attainment: large-scale evidence from Brazil

(with Adrián Villaseñor & Lucio Esposito, and Sandra Macedo )

The European Journal of Development Research, (2026)

Against Standardization: Reflections on Decolonization, Logic and Economics

(with Ragupathy Venkatachalam)

New Mathematics and Natural Computation, (2025)

Relative Deprivation and Hey and Lambert’s Motivation: Mixed Methods Evidence from Rio de Janeiro

(with Lucio Esposito, Adrián Villaseñor & Roney Fraga )

Journal of Income Distribution (2024)

Poor economics and its missing mechanisms: The case for causal mediation

(with Ragupathy Venkatachalam)

Review of Development Economics, (2023)

Counterfactual thinking and causal mediation: An application to female labour force participation in India

(with Ying-Fang Kao)

in Artificial Intelligence, Learning and Computation in Economics and Finance. (Ed. Ragupathy Venkatachalam), 2023, New York: Springer.

Discrimination in Credit

in Handbook on Economics of Discrimination and Affirmative Action (Ed. Ashwini Deshpande), 2022, New Delhi: Springer.

Economic Structures and Dynamics: A Morphogenetic View

(with Ragupathy Venkatachalam)

Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, 2021

The Importance of Being Earliest: Birth Order and Educational Outcomes along the Socioeconomic Ladder in Mexico

(with Lucio Esposito & Adrián Villaseñor)

Journal of Population Economics, 33: 1069–1099, 2020

Caste and credit: A woeful tale?

(with Ragupathy Venkatachalam)

Journal of Development Studies, 55(8): 1816-1833, 2019

Ideas for India article

Comparing private and government schools in India: The devil is in the maths

Applied Economics Letters, 25(6): 409-414, 2018

RCTs for better policy? The case of public systems in developing countries

Economia Politica, 33: 83-98, 2016

Does Access to Institutional Agricultural Credit Depend on Caste?

World Development, 43: 315-328, 2013

Ideas for India article.

Other writing

For gender pay equality, universities must let social scientists see the data

A (small) step along the way to a UK-India trade deal

Data and a public health crisis

Caste and credit: A woeful tale?

Caste and credit: Not such a woeful tale?

Does caste influence access to agricultural loans in rural India?

Is there a case for school vouchers?

Economic and Political Weekly, 65(7): 41-45, 2010

Economic methodology and the promise of behavioural approaches

Norwich Economic Papers, (2010), Vol. 1

Work in progress

Causal inference for discrimination: An analysis of police stop-and-frisk decisions

With Ragupathy Venkatachalam

The absolute and relative facets of the economic gradient in educational attainment: mixed methods evidence from Rio de Janeiro

With Lucio Esposito, Adrián Villaseñor and Roney Fraga Souza

Research grants

Enablers and Obstacles for UK-India Trade: Banks and Diasporas (as PI)

ESRC-ICSSR grant, £431,070 (2020)

With Kamini Gupta and Prateek Raj

Health system decentralisation and the COVID-19 Response in India (PI: Louise Tillin)

King’s Faculty Research Fund, £7,936 (2020)

DecovIndia website

Social and Economic Dimensions of Health and Morbidity (PI: Ashwini Deshpande)

Wellcome Trust Small Grant in Humanities and Social Science, £25000 (2019)

Caste in Contemporary India

King’s College London Faculty Research Fund, £4000 (2018)

Teaching

Dissertation research methods

2020-

Quantitative methods for causal inference

2017-2023

Economic analysis for emerging economies: microeconomics

2013-2016

India's economy: Structures, policies and challenges

2013-2016