Samarth Gupta

Samarth Gupta is an Assistant Professor at Ahmedabad University. Prior to this he was an Associate Fellow at NCAER. He obtained his PhD in Economics from Boston University. His research interests include organization economics, personnel economics and labour economics.

Business sentiments and labour markets
The Covid-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns have had a significant adverse impact on jobs and livelihoods. Using 2006-2021 data from a survey on business sentiments, this article examines fluctuations in firms’ hiring of temporary/casual and permanent workers across three major economic events – the Global Financial Crisis, demonetisation, and the Covid-19 crisis. It shows that firms use temporary workers to adjust to changes in the demand of their products in response to macroeconomic uncertainty – increasing vulnerability among workers.

How do private players respond to public entry in pharmaceutical markets?
In 2012, the government of West Bengal outsourced the operation of key public pharmacies to private players – creating fair-price shops for selected generic medicines. How has the private sector responded to this policy intervention? Analysing the impact on prices of different categories of medicines, this article finds that the private sector response hinges on the extent to which consumer preferences are ‘sticky’.
