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Productivity & Innovation

Wartime mobilisation and economic development in India

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Technological advancement and employment changes: Recent trends in India

What is the impact of rapid technological advancements on employment in the Indian economy? In this post, Kathuria and Dev analyse ‘Consumer Pyramids Household Survey’ data to explore this questio...

  • Perspectives

Feminisation of India’s industrial workforce

In recent years, the average annual growth rate in manufacturing employment has exceeded that of aggregate employment in India. In this post, Goldar and Aggarwal demonstrate that this trend is accompa...

  • 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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How worker investments can fuel productivity in India’s manufacturing sector

In the second article in the Ideas@IPF2023 series, Adhvaryu et al. synthesise some facts on India’s declining manufacturing productivity and variations across states and industries. They examine exi...

  • Perspectives

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...

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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 labou...

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The gendered employment effects of mobile internet access in developing countries

In the third post of I4I’s month-long campaign to mark International Women’s Day 2023, Goldberg and Chiplunkar look at 3G internet coverage in 14 countries, and find that access to mobile internet...

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Bringing skilling and productive employment closer to women

On International Women’s Day, Farzana Afridi considers a key issue in the creation of good jobs for women – the provision of skilling. She discusses the lack of physical and financial access to sk...

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Formalisation of informal manufacturing enterprises in India

Employment in India’s organised manufacturing sector has grown rapidly since 2004. This article finds that about 15% of this growth can be attributed to the formalisation of previously informal ente...

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I4I@10 | First Ashok Kotwal Memorial Lecture: The future of development

What is the 'fourth' fundamental law of capitalism? Will capital ‘inherit the earth’? Has the pandemic quickened the intuitive appeal of the capital-labour substitution? Should sovereign funds be ...

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Creative destruction and catch-up growth in India

In this post, Peters and Zilibotti compare the size of firms in India and the US, and find that the 90% of firms in India have four employees or less, and attribute it to the absence of creative destr...

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The promise of technology for women’s employment

The growth of digital labour platforms holds tremendous potential to improve employment outcomes for India’s young, urban population. In this post, Farzana Afridi discusses the challenges in leverag...

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Mirroring realities: Digital technology through the eyes of women microentrepreneurs

The expansion of markets from physical spaces to e-commerce platforms during the pandemic widened the pre-existing digital gender divide in India. Employing the method of ‘auto-photography’, the t...

  • Notes from the Field

The role of political connections of firms during a crisis

Research has shown that political connections matter for a firm during times of economic crisis. This article refers to a unique data set of political connections of firms in India, and finds that fir...

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Changing the frame: Making small firms compete like large ones

Although small firms have natural advantages, they face constraints when it comes to reach and scale; this prevents them from competing with larger firms. Pankaj Chandra shares business models from It...

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Recent Contributors

Aneesha

Aneesha Parvathaneni

University of Michigan

Dean

Dean Yang

University of Michigan

Raavi

Raavi Aggarwal

CECFEE, ISI Delhi

Ratna

Ratna Sahay

NCAER & CGD

Aakash

Aakash Dev

NCAER

Radhicka

Radhicka Kapoor

International Labour Organisation

P.P.

P.P. Krishnapriya

Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University

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Rajat Kathuria

Shiv Nadar University

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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...

  • Explainers

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