Abstract
This doctoral dissertation consists of three self-contained chapters on migra tion, spatial frictions, and adaptation in India.
The first chapter studies how male migration reshapes household behavior both while the migrant is away and after he returns. Labor adjustment is strongly gendered: spouses move into paid work during the separation period but reverse upon return, while other working-age males shift out of school and into work with little reversal, pointing to persistent effects on human capital accumulation.
The second chapter studies how improved road connectivity alters local eco nomic activity and the environment, using India’s 2014–2024 national high way expansion as its setting. It shows that connectivity raises economic activity and urbanization and shifts households out of farming and into non-farm work, but does not increase out-migration. Adjustment occurs largely in place, along side measurable environmental costs including higher pollution and forest loss.
The third chapter examines how extreme heat affects short-run migration among farming households, and how ration-card portability modifies that response. It shows that heat exposure triggers rapid out-migration, but that when food entitlements become portable across locations, baseline mobility rises, while the incremental migration response to additional heat shocks atten uates sharply, shifting mobility away from distress and toward a more stable form of adjustment