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Mehtabul Azam
Mehtabul Azam is a Associate Professor at the Oklahoma State University and a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). He obtained his Ph.D. in Economics from Southern Methodist University, USA and M.A. in Economics from Delhi School of Economics, India.
His primary interests are in the field of labour and development economics. Specific topics of interests include skills, education, mobility, poverty and social protection, and programme evaluation. He also has contributed in many reports published by the World Bank. In 2005, he was invited by the Government of India to serve on the Prime Minister’s High-Level Committee on the Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community in India.
More information about his research is available at the following website: https://sites.google.com/site/mehtabazam/home/research
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Assessing teacher quality in India
Research in the US has pointed out that the most important determinant of the quality of education is the quality of teachers but that students’ achievement is not linked to observable teacher characteristics such as qualification or experience. Using data from selected private schools in Uttar Pradesh, this column estimates the contribution or ‘value added’ of teachers to student scores in external examinations.
Defining Teacher Quality in India
Using administrative data from linked private schools from one of districts in India that matches 8,319 pupils to their subject-specific teachers at the senior secondary level, the project estimates the importance of individual teachers on student outcomes in the high-stake senior secondary exam (at the end of twelfth grade).
Does it pay to speak English in India?
There is a widely held belief that there are sizeable economic returns to English-language skills in India. This column seeks to estimate the wage returns to English skills in India. It is found that being fluent in English increases the hourly wages of men by 34% and of women by 22%. But the effects vary. Returns are higher for older and more educated workers and lower for less educated, younger workers, suggesting that the complementarity between English skills and education appears to have strengthened over time.