Aishwarya Kekre on Land Fragmentation and Its Impact on Structural Transformation

This is the 2026 job market series, where I speak with young scholars entering the academic job market about their latest research on India. We are launching our series with Aishwarya Kekre, who is a PhD Candidate in Economics at the University of Virginia. Her research focus is at the intersection development, trade and spatial Economics. We discussed her job market paper, "Barriers to Structural Transformation: The Role of Agricultural Land Fragmentation."

We talked about the reasons for land fragmentation in India, its impact on manufacturing enterprises, on employment in both agriculture and manufacturing, profitability of small farms, how it impacts overall structural transformation, and much more.

Recorded August 21st, 2026.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

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Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:36 - Land Fragmentation and Structural Transformation: Surprising Trends 00:08:10 - Understanding Land Fragmentation 00:15:17 - Measuring the Impact of Land Fragmentation 00:21:13 - The Effect of Declining Farm Size on Manufacturing 00:26:30 - Measuring Fragmentation 00:31:11 - The Magnitude of the Distortions 00:36:20 - Impacts on Manufacturing Employment 00:39:45 - Modeling This Problem 00:49:04 - Potential Policy Implications 00:56:07 - Outro