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Productivity & Innovation

Share of manufacturing in India’s total employment: No mean performance

  • Perspectives

Patent protection in India: Impact on innovation, pricing and competition

When stronger patent laws were introduced in India, there were fears that it would lead to higher prices without substantial gains in innovation. This article provides evidence that stronger patent pr...

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Subcontracting linkages in India’s informal economy

Subcontracting relationships with larger firms are considered key to facilitating the growth of informal enterprises. Using four rounds of National Sample Survey data on Indian informal manufacturing ...

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Bringing work home: Flexible work arrangements as ‘gateway jobs’ for women

Millions of women stay out of the workforce despite having a desire for paid work, often because available opportunities are incompatible with traditional norms of household roles. Based on an experim...

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Hindu-Muslim integration and firm output in Indian manufacturing: Evidence from a field experiment

Evidence suggests that ethnic diversity can lower firm output due to poor social ties and taste-based discrimination among workers. Based on an experiment in a manufacturing plant in West Bengal, this...

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Automation and inequality

Public discourse around automation has seen some take a fairly alarmist view – with concerns around its impact on employment, wages, the labour share of national income, and inequality. Others take ...

  • Videos

Automation and inequality

Public discourse around automation has seen some take a fairly alarmist view – with concerns around its impact on employment, wages, the labour share of national income, and inequality. Others take ...

  • Podcasts

Temperature, labour reallocation, and industrial production

While it is well-established that agricultural production is vulnerable to weather shocks, less is known about how those affected respond or the economic consequences of any responses. Analysing data ...

  • Articles

Trade, internal migration, and human capital: Who gained from India’s IT boom?

The Indian economy experienced trade expansion and an IT boom during 1993-2004. How did the spectacular growth in a high skill-intensive sector – concentrated in a few big cities – affect inequali...

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Debt contract enforcement and product innovation

Weak enforcement of debt contracts can have undesirable consequences for financial development, as difficulty in recovering claims from distressed firms causes banks to reduce lending. Leveraging the ...

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Contract labour and firm growth in India

There is considerable evidence indicating that the Industrial Disputes Act (IDA), 1947 – which made it illegal for large companies to downsize – had a powerful disincentive effect for entrepreneur...

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Intellectual property rights and wage inequality

Technology has become central to most everyday activities. But will incentives for technological change – such as those induced by Covid-19 – cause deeper distortions in the global economy, especi...

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Inequality, labour market trends, and the welfare State

All around the world, rising levels of inequality – particularly in the last 3-4 decades – have been recognised as a major issue. In this context, David Green (University of British Columbia) and ...

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Alleviating financial concerns to enhance worker productivity

Financial constraints can have psychological consequences and affect productivity by making workers more distracted during work. Based on an experiment among small-scale manufacturing workers in Odish...

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Dealing with worker absenteeism in labour-intensive industries

Worker absenteeism in labour-intensive industries causes productivity losses for firms, and reduced potential for productivity-based incentives for workers. Based on a study in Karnataka, this article...

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Short-term illness and intra-household labour substitution

For poor, agricultural households, health shocks strain limited resources on medical expenses, and result in loss of potential productive work-days. Based on data from rural India, this article shows ...

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Bishwanath Goldar

Institute of Economic Growth

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Apoorva Gupta

Heinrich Heine University

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Joel Stiebale

Heinrich Heine University

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Ejaz Ghani

Pune International Centre

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Surbhi Kesar

SOAS University of London

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Suhani Jalota

Stanford University

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Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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University of British Columbia

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Most Popular Productivity & Innovation Posts

The impact of robotisation on the world economy: A forward-looking review

Robots have long existed in human imagination and only recently in the real world. The baggage of past imagination often intrudes into our understanding of how real robots will affect our economic liv...

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Tripura’s bamboo sector: Potential and challenges

About a third of the total area of Tripura is covered by bamboo, and bamboo has emerged as a key thrust area for the state’s industrial development. Based on a field visit that was undertaken to stu...

  • Notes from the Field

An offline alternative for Aadhaar-based biometric authentication

While decision on the constitutionality of Aadhaar by the Supreme Court of India remains a matter of speculation, it has become abundantly clear that most of the use cases for Aadhaar-based biometric ...

  • Perspectives