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Productivity & Innovation

Automation and inequality

  • Podcasts

International financial architecture and emerging economies

Policy responses to Covid-19 have been a mix of fiscal and monetary policy – with the latter doing the heavy-lifting in both developed and developing countries. Against this backdrop, in this editio...

  • Podcasts

Budget 2022-23 and outlook for the Indian economy

Several commentators have lauded the recently presented Budget 2022-23 as a ‘growth budget’, on account of the large allocations made for capital expenditure on public infrastructure. On the other...

  • Podcasts

Role of history in shaping India’s economic development

As India is now completing 75 years of Independence, two big questions loom over the conversation around India’s economic development: How successful was the Indian economy before and during colonia...

  • Podcasts

Podcasts

 

The future of work from home

With the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic, work from home became the norm in 2020. However, even though mobility restrictions have been lifted, many workplaces all over the world continue to follow a model of remote or hybrid working. This has raised questions about worker productivity, work-life bal...

Leveraging digital labour markets to increase employment opportunities

India’s relatively young population, the pace of adoption of smartphones and digital technology, and rapid urbanisation has contributed to the growth of digital labour markets. In recent years, we have seen the proliferation of gig work and labour market platforms like Uber, Urban Company, Swiggy ...

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 a more optimistic view – that short-run turbulence and long-run increases in welfare are the typic...

International financial architecture and emerging economies

Policy responses to Covid-19 have been a mix of fiscal and monetary policy – with the latter doing the heavy-lifting in both developed and developing countries. Against this backdrop, in this edition of I4I Conversations, Viral Acharya (NYU Stern School of Business) and Amartya Lahiri (University ...

Budget 2022-23 and outlook for the Indian economy

Several commentators have lauded the recently presented Budget 2022-23 as a ‘growth budget’, on account of the large allocations made for capital expenditure on public infrastructure. On the other hand, concerns have been expressed about the Budget’s potential to create jobs for the masses, al...

Role of history in shaping India’s economic development

As India is now completing 75 years of Independence, two big questions loom over the conversation around India’s economic development: How successful was the Indian economy before and during colonial rule, as compared to the postcolonial period? What is the role of history – historical events, a...

India’s new National Water Policy: A paradigm shift

In 2019, the Ministry of Jal Shakti set up a committee of independent experts – led by Dr Mihir Shah – to draft a new National Water Policy. To examine the recommendations made by the Committee, Ashwini Kulkarni speaks with Mihir Shah, beginning with a discussion of the key issues constituting t...

Economics and the environment

Published in February 2021 by the UK government, the ‘Dasgupta Review’ calls for changes in how we think, act and measure economic success to protect and enhance our prosperity and the natural world. Against the backdrop of the Review, in the fourth edition of I4I Conversations, E. Somanathan sp...

Culture and development

How did human society evolve from being organised predominantly around large kin-based networks, to one with strong notions of individualism? To examine this question, Joseph Henrich (Harvard University) and Patrick Francois (University of British Columbia) discuss the interactions between informal ...

Left and right: Examining the evolution of political ideologies

With the advent of globalisation, the struggle between the ‘left’ and ‘right’ – as defined in Marxian terms – rapidly evolved from one between economic ideologies, to cultural wars. In this context, I4I Editor-in-Chief Ashok Kotwal engages in a deep-dive with Prof. Pranab Bardhan (Univer...

Under the thumb of history?

In June 2021, Nobel Laureate Abhijit Banerjee (Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics, MIT) delivered the inaugural Shaibal Gupta Memorial Lecture organised by Asian Development Research Institute, broadly discussing the role of history in development economics. An important body of...

Covid-19: Ashok Kotwal speaks with Pronab Sen

In conversation with Ashok Kotwal on the ongoing economic crisis caused by lockdown to mitigate Covid-19 spread, Pronab Sen breaks down the problem into survival of individuals and livelihoods, and the survival of enterprises and the productive capacity of the economy. He contends that if enough is ...