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Posts by Pushkar Maitra

Women leaders and deceptive behaviour

Are women in leadership positions more dishonest than men? Based on an artefactual field experiment in rural Bihar, this column finds that women in leadership positions deceive more than men, especia...

  • Articles

Financial inclusion for agricultural growth: An alternative approach

Traditional, group-based microcredit has had limited success at enabling farmers to expand the cultivation of risky but profitable cash crops. Evidence suggests that this is mainly because of its mech...

  • Articles

Impact of Elite Capture on the Provision of Public Services

This project studies the effectiveness of major Government programmes in JEEViKA (Bihar Rural Livelihoods Project) villages versus others to see whether the presence of self-help groups leads to impro...

  • IGC Research on India

Religion, minority status, and trust

A key factor that drives segmentation in societies is group identities along various dimensions. This column seeks to understand the effects of identity on individual behaviour. Based on an artefactu...

  • Articles

Choosing to be trained: Behavioural restrictions on participation decisions

Widespread unemployment has prompted policymakers to consider introduction of various training programmes that can help workers accumulate additional skills to obtain new jobs and/ or retain current ...

  • Articles

Vocational education: A means to an end?

Youth underemployment, especially among less educated populations perpetuates poverty. Despite the importance of youth unemployment, there is little knowledge on how to create smooth school-to-work tr...

  • Articles

Potato Traders in West Bengal: A Survey of Contractual Relations and Market Structure

This study consists of a pilot survey of a random subset of phorias (middlemen) and larger traders who operate in 72 villages of West Medinipur and Hugli districts in West Bengal and their correspondi...

  • IGC Research on India

Child malnutrition in India and what can be done about it

While many things are getting better in India, the disturbing levels of child malnutrition are hardly changing. This column explores why and asks what can be done. It calls for more conditional cash t...

  • Articles

Learning and Earning: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in India

This project estimates the short-and-medium-run effects of participating in a subsidised vocational training programme aimed at improving labour market outcomes of women residing in low-income househo...

  • IGC Research on India

Middleman Margins, Credit and Information Constraints: Potato Markets in West Bengal, India

This project investigates how potato farmers in West Bengal sell their crop to local traders, the determinants of farm-gate prices and margins earned by traders. Specifically, it examines the role of ...

  • IGC Research on India

Designing microfinance for agricultural growth

Credit and information constraints are particularly acute for farmers in developing countries, and can have a strong impact on their productivity.

  • IGC Research on India