The title and abstract of Sarthak's talk are:

Title: The effect of increasing academic competition on student welfare

Abstract: The college admissions competition is arguably the most high-stakes contest in the young person’s life. Moreover, this competition usually takes the form of a rank order contest, which are characterised by the arms race phenomenon. In such settings, the precise mechanism through which students are assigned available college seats have important implications for the choice of pre-college effort, and eventually, for the mental health of college aspirants. I study the case of the 2008 expansion in affirmative action policy in India that reserved 27% of all seats in higher education for students belonging to a particular caste group. Using nationally representative data, I analyse the potential effects of this policy on chosen levels of pre-college year of schooling across different social groups, and on the count of suicides “due to failure in examinations” between 2001-2019.