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Vidhya Soundararajan
Vidhya Soundararajan is Assistant Professor at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. She is a labour economist whose studies include work on labour institutions and policies/regulations and their collective implications for workplaces and workers in developing countries. Improving overall employment levels and worker welfare, and understanding and alleviating impediments to workplace productivity growth are running threads in her research. Vidhya has published in peer reviewed journals such as the Journal of Development Economics, European Economic Review, Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organization, and PLoS ONE. She has worked on in consulting assignments with the World Bank, and the erstwhile Planning Commission of India. She holds a Ph.D. in applied economics from Cornell University.
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Import competition, formalisation, and role of contract workers
Given the recent expansion in the participation of developing countries in global trade, it is important to understand the role of trade in the composition of employment in these countries. Analysing the case of Indian manufacturing and Chinese imports, this article shows that import competition leads to an increase in the share of formal-sector employment – driven by greater usage of contract workers in the formal sector – and higher aggregate labour productivity.
