Gokul Gopalan Ramachandran

I am a final (sixth) year PhD candidate in Economics at the University of Warwick, and I am on the 2026/27 economics job market. My research is on panel data econometrics, with a focus on Granular Instrumental Variables and Interactive Fixed Effects models. My PhD supervisors are Eric Renault and Kenichi Nagasawa. I am funded by the Economic and Social Research Council’s Midlands Graduate School Doctoral Training Partnership.

My job market paper studies Granular Instrumental Variables (GIV) in panels where both the cross section and the time series are large. I derive the asymptotic theory for the GIV estimator when the panel contains dominant units. I then characterise how identification and inference change when those dominant units are absent, and propose inference that remains valid when the instrument is weak.

Before I started my PhD, I spent close to a decade in public service in the Indian Administrative Service. During this period, I held leadership roles in designing and executing economic policies. These roles included serving as the Chief Executive of a district with a population of 1.1 million and as Acting Secretary in the Finance Department of the Government of Kerala, India.

I have a Master’s in Public Affairs from Princeton University, where I was a Karl E. Prickett Fellow in Public and International Affairs.

I enjoy visiting museums, running, and playing tennis, and I like learning about economic and political history, especially of the 19th and early 20th centuries. On Saturday mornings you can find me at my nearest parkrun.

Find book reviews and commentaries on interesting new papers in my blog.