Alexander Persaud

Publications

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"Escaping local risk by entering indentureship:  Evidence from nineteenth-century Indian migration." 2019. The Journal of Economic History 79 (2): 447-476.

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• Winner of the 2019 Arthur H. Cole Prize awarded to the best article in The Journal of Economic History

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"Indian merchant migration within the British Empire." 2020. In the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History. Ed. David Ludden. New York: Oxford University Press.

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"A (paid) passage to India: Migration and revealed willingness to pay for upper-caste status." 2023. Economic Inquiry 61 (3), 652-674.

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"Colonial companies and the cost of introducing Indian immigrants into Fiji, 1884-1916." 2023. Asia-Pacific Economic History Review 63 (1), 4-29.

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"Historical height measurement consistency:  Evidence from colonial Trinidad." 2023. Explorations in Economic History 90, 101549.

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"From sugar to shop: the organic rise of Indian shopkeepers in colonial Trinidad.'' 2024. Business History Review 98 (4), 921-952.

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"Caste criminalisation in south India and permanent migration to Fiji, 1903-1927." Early view at the Asia-Pacific Economic History Review.

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"Little Cash, Little Carry: Liquidity Constraints and Missing Out on Bulk Discounts in Tanzania" (with Michael Olabisi​).  Forthcoming at the Journal of Development Studies.

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Work in progress​

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"The externalities of missionary activity:  Tracing the Pre-independence Origins of Kerala's Comparative Literacy Advantage"

With Anil Menon

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"Where camponeses feared to tread:  Agricultural production and land mine clearance in post-conflict Mozambique"

Paper and slides available on request; with Tyler Belyea

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"Treating text as pictures:  OpenCV, feature matching, and parsing historical documents"

Code:  Python (in a .zip file) or raw text

Paper and slides available on request

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"Matchmaking gone wrong:  Quantifying bias and methods using non-western data"

Paper and slides available on request

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"The Sun Never Sets on the British Empire's Money Orders:  Trinidad-India Remittances in the 1880s."

Slides available on request

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"Caste selection and Indian indentureship"

 

"The re-invention of indentureship in the 19th century as a contract-enforcement mechanism:  theory and historical evidence"

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"Foreign/native wage differentials and return migration in Germany"

Paper and slides available on request

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"Do Asian Americans Practice Male-biased Sex Selection?  New Evidence from the 2008-2012 American Community Survey and 2010 US Census"

Paper available on request; with Sital Kalantry, Brian Citro, and Arindam Nandi