Kishen Shastry on the Political Economy of Hindu Monastic Institutions (Mutts) in Karnataka

This is the 2026 job market series, where I speak with young scholars entering the academic job market about their latest research on India. On this episode, I spoke with Kishen Shastry who is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, Judge Business School. He received his Ph.D. in economics in 2026 at the University of Cambridge where his research focus was economics of religion and informal institutions. We discussed his job market paper titled, "The Political Economy of Informal Institutions in India."

We talked about the economics of religion, the role of long standing monastic institutions in India, how they are regulated by the state, and their impact on education, structural transformation, political competition in India, and much more.

Recorded August 25th, 2026.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

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Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:32 - Hindu Mutts and Their Relationship to Structural Transformation 00:07:33 - Understanding Mutts 00:16:25 - Mutts in the Education Marketplace 00:22:45 - Mutts and the Regulatory Regime 00:27:47 - Stitching Together the Data 00:33:03 - Mutt Autonomy and Adjustment to Market Demands 00:37:30 - The Propagation Effect of Mutts 00:40:40 - Parsing Effects 00:43:10 - Mutts' Impact on Political Competition 00:46:05 - The Intersection of Mutt's "Club Goods" and Political Influence 00:52:37 - Outro