Sweet cash: Women’s demand for healthcare in developing countries
Agrawal et al. explore the role of gender-based preferences for demand of healthcare. Using CPHS data they find that the positive income shock – generated by a change in the mandated rates of contribution to the EPF – leads to a 11.6% decline in healthcare expenses driven by less expenditure on ...
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Chirantan Chatterjee Shubhangi Agrawal Somdeep Chatterjee 
27 April, 2023
- Articles
Content Type: Articles
Topic: Human Development
Year: 2023
Empowering patients with information to improve hospital accountability
Despite the expansion of free healthcare for the poor throughout India, many hospitals continue to charge patients out-of-pocket fees. In this study, Dupas and Jain investigate whether informing patients of their benefits helps hold hospitals accountable. They survey dialysis patients in Rajasthan ...
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Pascaline Dupas Radhika Jain
- 24 April, 2023
- Articles
Content Type: Articles
Topic: Human Development
Year: 2023
The costs of extreme competition for government jobs
Indian states have highly competitive examinations for public service recruitment, with many youth remaining unemployed for long periods to compete for these government vacancies. Kunal Mangal looks at the effect of a government hiring freeze in Tamil Nadu on candidate application behaviour and long...
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Kunal Mangal
- 21 April, 2023
- Articles
Content Type: Articles
Topic: Governance
Year: 2023
AI and services-led growth: Evidence from Indian job adverts
Using a new dataset of online vacancies from India’s largest jobs website, Copestake et al. document near-exponential growth in the demand for artificial intelligence-related skills in the services sector since 2016, coinciding with the take-off in developed countries. They find that the demand f...
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Alexander Copestake Ashley Pople Katherine Stapleton Max Marczinek
- 19 April, 2023
- Articles
Content Type: Articles
Topic: Productivity & Innovation
Year: 2023
Hindu-Muslim fertility differentials in India: An update
Building on past research, Saswata Ghosh and Pallabi Das estimate the state- and district-level fertility differentials between Hindus and Muslims using data from the latest round of the NFHS. They show that although the fertility transition has advanced further in most states during the last decade...
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Pallabi Das Saswata Ghosh
- 18 April, 2023
- Articles
Content Type: Articles
Topic: Social Identity
Year: 2023
Implicit costs of factor allocation for Indian firms
Looking at variations in factor misallocation across states, Chaurey et al. measure trends in factor adjustment costs incurred by firms between 1999 and 2014. They find that adjustment costs for labour and land across India fell during this period, with the decline in labour adjustment costs declini...
- Articles
Content Type: Articles
Topic: Productivity & Innovation
Year: 2023
The unintended positive consequences of India’s safe motherhood programme
India’s flagship maternal health intervention, Janani Suraksha Yojana, provided conditional cash transfers to women opting for institutional deliveries. In this study, Chatterjee and Poddar document large positive spillovers of this programme on children’s educational outcomes. They find that th...
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Prashant Poddar Somdeep Chatterjee
- 11 April, 2023
- Articles
Content Type: Articles
Topic: Human Development
Year: 2023
Weighty evidence? Poverty estimation with missing data
Attempts have been made to estimate poverty in India with biased survey data, by adjusting household weights to remove the bias. Based on simulation exercises with artificially contaminated household surveys, Drèze and Somanchi illustrate the limitations of this method. Its ability to correct pover...
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Anmol Somanchi Jean Drèze
- 10 April, 2023
- Perspectives
Content Type: Perspectives
Topic: Poverty & Inequality
Year: 2023
Low-tech and teacher support interventions during school closures
School closures during Covid-19 significantly impacted early childhood education, especially in households without sufficient parental engagement. Using data from households affiliated with Balwadis and preschools in Mumbai and Pune, Vernekar et al. find that those with access to a structured educat...
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Aditya Narayan Rai Avinash Reddy Pichhili Karan Singhal Nisha Pankaj Vernekar Pooja Pandey
- 03 April, 2023
- Articles
Content Type: Articles
Topic: Human Development
Year: 2023
Bank failures: what’s the Fed’s role?
Silicon Valley Bank is the largest bank failure in the US since the 2008 financial crisis. Viral Acharya and Raghuram Rajan reflect on this and attribute the bank’s collapse to more than bankers’ mismanagement. They outline the systemic monetary policy drivers for it, and the bloating of uninsur...
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Raghuram Rajan Viral Acharya
- 31 March, 2023
- Perspectives
Content Type: Perspectives
Topic: Money & Finance
Year: 2023
The complexity of female empowerment interventions
In the final post of I4I’s month-long campaign to mark International Women’s Day 2023, Siwan Anderson unpacks the complex dimensions and interactions between measures of female empowerment. She highlights the sobering and unintended perils of policy interventions that aim to increase women’s e...
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Siwan Anderson
- 30 March, 2023
- Perspectives
Content Type: Perspectives
Topic: Social Identity
Year: 2023
How women in politics impact maternal mortality
In the twelfth post of I4I’s month-long campaign to mark International Women’s Day 2023, Bhalotra et al. show that mortality during and after childbirth remains high, even where the knowledge and resources to avoid this are available, and demonstrate that raising the share of women in parliament...
- Articles
Content Type: Articles
Topic: Governance
Year: 2023