avatar

Claire Fan

Ph.D. Candidate
University of Chicago
claireqfan (at) uchicago.edu


Welcome! I am a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. My research uses applied microeconomics to study the consequences and political economy of natural resource management, especially in developing countries. Please reach out if you’d like to discuss research!

My work has been supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and EPIC DRW Fellowship.

I am on the 2025-26 job market.

Research

Working Papers

  1. Dam Thy Neighbor: International Relations and the Externalities of Impounding Rivers (Job market paper)
    Draft
    Presented at: Occasional Workshop (UCSB), AERE Summer Conference, IPWSD (Columbia)
    Using the context of dams around the globe, this paper provides the first quantification of how international relations shape transboundary environmental externalities. Leveraging a novel measure of dam exposure in a difference-in-differences framework, I find that dams lead to reductions in downstream growth in nighttime lights, both within and across borders, on the order of 2% of average growth over 2001-2013. Next, I compile quantitative measures of bilateral relations motivated by theories of cross-country cooperation. I find that the transboundary externalities of dams are driven by country pairs in which the downstream country has high coordination costs with or little geopolitical leverage on its upstream neighbor. When coordination costs are low, the externalities are mitigated to null. Among various measures of bilateral relations, joint membership in international institutions most strongly predicts the mitigation of transboundary externalities. As recent dams have predominantly been built in developing regions, these results uncover the role played by international relations in economic development, through the management of transboundary natural resources.

  2. Environmental Degradation in One's Own Backyard: Who Gains and Who Loses from Sand Mining in India
    with Sushant Banjara and Varun K
    Draft
    Presented at: LSE Environment Camp, IPWSD (Columbia), MWIEDC
    Sand, the backbone of modern construction, makes up 85% of global mineral extraction. Its large-scale removal—especially from fragile river ecosystems—has raised serious environmental concerns, particularly in developing countries experiencing construction booms and lacking strong environmental regulation. Yet, the full extent of these effects, their social and economic consequences, and how they are distributed across communities remain poorly understood. This project combines novel administrative data with satellite imagery in a difference-in-differences framework to estimate the causal impacts of sand mining in Bihar, India. We find that sand mining increases flood inundation rates and flood frequency by 1.5 and 2 percentage points, respectively, from a baseline of 10%. Agricultural output, measured by vegetation index, declines by 5%. Despite these environmental costs, sand mining raises local income—proxied by nightlight intensity—by 10–20% in nearby villages. Income gains are broadly distributed within villages, reaching both wealthier and poorer households, but are concentrated among socially dominant groups, particularly upper castes and OBCs. These findings help explain why illegal sand mining continues with local support despite environmental harm and regulatory efforts. The unequal balance of economic benefits on social groups highlights the need for targeted policies—those that mitigate flooding, ensure sustainable mining, and compensate marginalized communities bearing the brunt of net harm. To characterize the mechanisms for heterogeneous effects of sand mining, we are now beginning a large-scale field survey.

Work in Progress

  1. Rural Household Water Access in India
    with Devika Lakhote

Teaching