If you have any thoughts about any of my research, please feel free to contact me; I would love to know/discuss them.
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- Heetak Shah (Extension of my Master's Thesis)
This work is a modified version of my Master’s Thesis at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. I was very fortunate to be advised by Prof. K. S. Mallikarjuna Rao and Prof. Omkar D. Palsule-Desai.
Latest Draft (Please do not circulate)
- T. T. Niranjan, Heetak Shah, Enno Siemsen (Data Collected, Preliminary Analysis Completed)
Latest Draft (Please do not circulate)
- T. T. Niranjan, Kristian Rotaru, Narendra Ghosalya, Heetak Shah
Submitted to the Academy of Management 2025 Annual Conference.
Latest Draft (Please do not circulate) (AOM Submission)
An Extended Abstract (made for the ISB-POMS workshop 2024 in Hyderabad) is available here.
Benefits and Drawbacks of Retail Price Ceilings: Discussions on Supply Chain Profits and Consumer Welfare
- Heetak Shah
Motivation:
Anyone who has gone to India (or, in my case, grew up in India!) would have noticed a printed maximum retail price (MRP) on almost all packaged items sold at any retail shop. This is because of laws mandating MRP on all packaged goods (subject to exceptions). This price is decided by the manufacturer and is an additional constraint in the pricing optimization problem at all levels of the supply chain. In India, based on my personal anecdotal experience, without any discount on prices, MRP is the price at which the products are sold to the consumers, i.e., not only is the MRP an upper bound constraint, but in many cases, it is an equality constraint. It is common knowledge (and also easy to see) that adding a constraint to an optimization problem can only make the optimal value worse (as the feasibility set can only shrink). Because of these, there certainly are drawbacks to the MRP system, but in times of crisis, MRP can stop price gouging above a point and can be a very important social tool in countries/communities with a high proportion of poor population.
In this work, I want to look at the benefits of MRP during a crisis (or any event that induces price gouging) and if they are enough to overcome the potential economic drawbacks. I plan to start with a stylized model, looking at an economy with very few people with only one commodity, and then try and extend the model.
Environmental Benefits of Greener by Default Policies at Institutions: Applications to Schools, Universities, and Workplaces
- Heetak Shah
Motivation: Many papers have shown that giving a 'nudge' (a term introduced by Thaler and Sunstein in the book named Nudge) to sustainable options by changing the default option can increase the adoption of plant-based options, which are more sustainable, without removing the option to access other less sustainable options. This nudge has no significant downsides as the decision is still with the customers/employees/students (depending on context), while the environmental benefits are possibly relatively high. Most of the research in this field is based on making this nudge and looking at the effects, but there is a critical gap in modeling-based research. In this research, I aim to use modeling to examine the possible benefits of making this small nudge at various institutions. I also plan to look at possible ways the government can 'nudge' institutions to make this change.
In addition to my Current Personal Research, I hope to work on the following in the next years.
Transition to a sustainable food system
Motivation:
The current food system is inefficient in calorie and protein production, generates high greenhouse gas emissions, consumes excessive land and water, and is a major contributor to biodiversity loss. Livestock-based food production generates nearly 60% of all agricultural emissions and occupies around 80% of agrarian land while providing only 18% of calories and 25% of protein [1, 2]. A recent survey of over 200 climate scientists reveals that to meet the Paris Agreement goals, global livestock numbers and emissions must peak by 2025 [3].
These stark realities reflect the critical need for our society to pivot from the current livestock-dominated food system towards a plant-forward food system [1, 3, 4]. There is a critical gap in research on optimal strategies to achieve this transition while addressing key challenges such as ensuring equitable access to nutritious food, minimizing public health risks, and maintaining economic viability for food producers. In this work, I aim to use structured, theory-informed quantitative models to explore various options governments can employ to achieve this transition, starting with the subsidies they offer to the livestock farming industry.
Benchmarking for Recommender Systems.
Motivation coming soon :)
Childhood Smartphone usage and Mental Health as young adults
Detailed Motivation coming soon :)
This will be an extension of my course project in the Econometrics of Program Evaluation (Instructor: Prof. Rama Pal) course at IIT Bombay. The report for the course project can be found here. I found that there is indeed a causal effect between first smartphone age and mental health as a young adult.
I hope to add a game-theory based stylized model looking at how childhood smartphone usage can affect mental health as young adults and redo some of the econometric analysis that I did for the course project.
J. Poore and T. Nemecek, “Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers,” Science, vol. 360, no. 6392, pp. 987–992, Jun 2018, https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216.
H. Ritchie and M. Roser, “Half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture,” Our World in Data, 2019, https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture.
H. Harwatt, M. Hayek, P. Behrens, and W. Ripple, “Options for a paris-compliant livestock sector. timeframes, targets and trajectories for livestock sector emissions from a survey of climate scientists,” March 2024, https://animal.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/Paris-compliant-livestock-report.pdf.
B. Machovina, K. J. Feeley, and W. J. Ripple, “Biodiversity conservation: The key is reducing meat consumption,” Science of the Total Environment, vol. 536, pp. 419–431, 2015. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26231772/.