After completing his undergraduate degree in economics at the University of Delhi, VSE PhD candidate and Stone Fellow Vibhu Pratyush began his career in economic consulting before arriving in Vancouver to pursue graduate studies at UBC. Research Assistant Sophia Bertuzzi Samilski sat down with Pratyush to discuss his background, research, and future as walks the stage in May 2026, marking the completion of his seven-year journey at UBC.
Throughout his studies, Pratyush developed a strong interest in the microeconomics of development and political economy. In his job market paper, “Land for Opportunity? Deprivation and Immobility in Rural India,” he examines how family land ownership affects the likelihood that children experience upward educational mobility.
“It’s about that extensive margin of land ownership,” Pratyush said. “And this idea that just a little bit is enough to change long-term outcomes for a lot of people.”
The primarily agrarian society of rural India is the chosen setting for his study as land accounts for nearly three-quarters of total wealth owned by households. To make ends meet, parents with little or no land often send their children to work instead of school, diminishing their odds of upward mobility. When landless households become marginal landholders, child labour sharply drops while schooling and upward mobility rises.
Pratyush says that an effective policy should relax both demand-side constraints, such as increasing the likelihood that families send their children to school, and supply-side constraints, such as teacher absenteeism and inadequate infrastructure, to mitigate the persistence of educational inequality.
“You can build great schools, but if a family owns no land and is really poor—and must lean on child labour to make ends meet—even that really good school is not going to do as much good as you would want it to.”
Pratyush hopes to one day conduct a randomized trial in rural India, aiming to show easing both supply-and-demand side constraints is what really makes a difference.
“It’s a very ambitious thing to do, but people do all kinds of interesting interventions. That kind of intervention would be a real goal of mine,” he said.
In a working paper, Pratyush is exploring additional mechanisms such as land redistribution and cash transfers to measure the alternative ways in which families can increase their income so they can send their children to school.
In terms of his broader research agenda, Pratyush wants to keep researching inequality and political economy issues in rural India where inequality “bites especially hard,” due to the large share of people living on the margin. He’d like to extend his research on the consequences of land ownership and land inequality in rural India by estimating its impact on village-level governance and political outcomes. He also plans on continuing to research broader questions regarding industrial policy and credit expansion, and their consequences for firms and the financial sector.
Before we concluded the interview, Pratyush took the time to describe how he has found great meaning through his teaching assistantships and hopes to teach graduate-level courses in his area of expertise.
“Helping [students] see that they’re capable of tackling these complex abstract economic ideas really goes a long way. I think it has the biggest marginal impact of the work we do.”