Profile of Shiladitya Kumar

About

I am a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of Houston. My research interests lie in Comparative Politics, Political Economy of Elections, and Political Methodology. I hold a BSc (Honours) and MA in Economics from the University of Calcutta and Jadavpur University respectively. I also graduated with an MPhil in Development Studies and Economics from the Indira Gandhi Institute of Developmental Research. Presently, I work as a Graduate Research Assistant at the Hobby School of Public Affairs and the Department of Political Science, University of Houston. My PhD dissertation concerns how the personal wealth of candidates interacts within an electoral system to produce political outcomes with meaningful second-order implications. To do so, I apply quasi-experimental research designs on both electoral and assets data of candidates in Indian state/assembly elections from 2009 to 2023. My other research projects include those studying the cause of affective polarization in the United States (US), how networks are formed amongst donors and recipients as a consequence of an education policy in Texas charter schools, and how voters use reputation as an instrument of accountability in selecting candidates under repeated elections. I am a recipient of the Jylee Nogee Scholarship at the University of Houston and was selected to participate in the Empirical Implications of Theoretical Models (EITM) Summer Institute, hosted by Duke University. I worked as a Senior Analyst in Transfer Pricing at PricewaterhouseCoopers (India) and I am currently on the advisory board of Fairfield Excellence, a non-profit organization involved in improving grassroots education in West Bengal, India.