Akshay Govind Dixit is a Ph.D. student in Political Economy and Government at Harvard University. He studies why ethnic divisions and disparities persist and how government policy can reduce them. His dissertation demonstrates how and when welfare programs enhance inter-caste integration in India, combining causal inference tools with in-depth qualitative interviews. In related work, he utilizes a natural experiment to evaluate the social and political effects of a caste reparations policy.
During the 2024-25 academic year, Akshay is a Graduate Student Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies. He is also a Democracy Doctoral Fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, a James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Ph.D. Scholar in Inequality and Wealth Concentration, and a recipient of the Amartya Sen Fellowship for Students from India.
Contact
akshay_dixit@g.harvard.edu
Website: www.akshaydixit.org
1737 Cambridge Street
Subfields
Comparative Politics
Academic Interests
Political Economy | Race and Ethnic Politics | South Asian Politics | Public Policy
Research Methods
Causal Inference | Quantitative Methods | Qualitative Methods | Surveys
Geographic Regions of Study
Asia