•  
Main Banner Image
Productivity & Innovation

Creating good jobs for young Indians: Insights from recent research

  • Perspectives

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

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

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...

  • Perspectives
68 posts
Refine list by:
--Please Select--
--Please Select--

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 ...

  • Articles

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...

  • Articles

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...

  • Articles

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 ...

  • Videos

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...

  • Articles

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...

  • Articles

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 ...

  • Articles

Covid-19 lockdown and migrant workers: Survey of vocational trainees from Bihar and Jharkhand - II

Covid-19 and the associated lockdowns have led to widespread job losses, and a subsequent exodus of migrant workers from the cities. In this note, Chakravorty et al. discuss findings from their survey...

  • Notes from the Field

Would a four-day work week benefit women?

In February 2021, the Indian government stated that it may allow firms the flexibility of having a four-day work week, while retaining the norm of 48 hours of work per week. In this post, Koustav Maju...

  • Perspectives

Can technology mitigate the impact of heat on worker productivity?

Exposure to high heat causes productivity losses, with reduction in cognitive function as a key channel. A direct reduction in heat exposure via technologies such as air conditioning is not possible f...

  • Articles

India’s new labour codes: A pre-condition for long-run growth

The Ministry of Labour and Employment has recently notified four new labour codes, which are expected to be implemented from April 2021. Assessing the impact of the policy changes around hiring-and-fi...

  • Perspectives

‘Outside’ managers’ productivity, firm dynamics, and economy growth

In developed countries, many industrial giants have humble beginnings as small, family-owned businesses, but nonetheless expand to hundreds of thousands of employees over time by relying on professio...

  • Articles

Recent Contributors

Jitendra

Jitendra Aswani

MIT Sloan

Nikita

Nikita Mujumdar

Deputy Managing Editor, I4I

Samarth

Samarth Gupta

Ahmedabad University

Chirantan

Chirantan Chatterjee

University of Sussex

Animesh

Animesh Ghosh

Ashoka Centre for a People-centric Energy Transiti

Anandjit

Anandjit Goswami

Ashoka Centre for a People-centric Energy Transiti

Rakesh

Rakesh Kacker

Ashoka Centre for People-centric Energy Transition

Sharmistha

Sharmistha Baig

Ashoka Centre for a People-centric Energy Transiti

View all Contributors

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