Miscellany

The SHRUG: A new high-resolution data platform for research on India

The Socioeconomic High-resolution Rural-Urban Geographic Dataset on India (SHRUG) is a new data source that describes socioeconomic development in India. In this post, Asher, Lunt, and Novosad describ...

Samuel Asher Tobias Lunt Paul Novosad
13 March, 2020

Perspectives

I4I 2020 highlights: Note from the Editor-in-Chief

As we near the end of 2020, Editor-in-chief Ashok Kotwal reflects on the unprecedented and momentous year that was, and presents key highlights from I4I.

Ashok Kotwal
24 December, 2020

Perspectives

How effective are unenforced mandates for corporate social responsibility?

By enacting the Companies Act in 2013, India became the first country in the world to mandate spending by large corporations on socially responsible initiatives. Using firm data from 2010 and 2016, th...

Sangeeta Bansal Madhu Khanna
05 April, 2021

Articles

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T.N. Srinivasan: An economist for all seasons

In a tribute to Prof. T.N. Srinivasan, Niranjan Rajadhyaksha writes that the death of Prof. Srinivasan – the iconoclast who laid the intellectual groundwork for India’s economic reforms – marks ...

Niranjan Rajadhyaksha
20 November, 2018

Perspectives

T.N., fondly remembered

Prof. T.N. Srinivasan, an acclaimed Indian economist and Professor Emeritus at Yale University, passed away on 11 November in Chennai. In this post, Prof. Rohini Somanathan of the Delhi School of Econ...

Rohini Somanathan
19 November, 2018

Perspectives

The particulars of social policy in India: Evidence, State capacity, and policy design

Economist-activist Jean Drèze has argued that economists are no better equipped to comment on development policy design than other social science researchers and other stakeholders, and that policyma...

Apurva Bamezai M.R. Sharan
12 September, 2018

Perspectives

Evidence, policy, and politics

Commenting on the concept of evidence-based policy, Jean Drèze argues that the relation between evidence and policy needs further thought. Based on his involvement with social policy in India, he bel...

Jean Drèze
03 August, 2018

Perspectives

Research, for whom?

In this note, Dr Abhay Bang discusses the importance of research in development. Giving examples from his 30 years of experience of working in the social sector, he contends that the power of knowledg...

Abhay Bang
27 July, 2018

Notes from the Field

On research in development economics

In an interview with a student at Fudan University, China, Dilip Mookherjee (Member of the I4I Editorial Board) discusses Chinese growth; India-China comparison; and research in development economics.

Dilip Mookherjee
06 July, 2018

Perspectives

Research gaps and policy priorities: Evidence from Bihar

The gap between research and policy priorities has always presented an enormous challenge both for academics and policymakers. With a scarcity of rigorous evidence in certain areas, this gap is partic...

Kumar Das
09 May, 2018

IGC Research on India

Ashok Kotwal speaks with Jean Drèze

I4I Editor-in-Chief Ashok Kotwal speaks with Jean Drèze, visiting Professor at Ranchi University and an ‘economist-activist’ who has been working in India at the grassroots level for a long time...

Jean Drèze Ashok Kotwal
28 March, 2018

Notes from the Field

Understanding cultural persistence and change

When does culture persist and when does it change? This column examines a determinant that has been put forth in the anthropology literature: the variability of the environment from one generation to...

Paola Giuliano Nathan Nunn
07 March, 2018

Articles

Economics among the road scholars

Jholawala Economics’ is a derogatory term that the urban elites use to dismiss the arguments of social activists without having to contend with them. However, some of the jholawalas are indeed first...

Jean Drèze
22 December, 2017

Perspectives

Fundamental errors in the voting booth margins

Psychologists have long documented that we over-attribute people's actions to innate characteristics rather than to circumstances. This column shows that when we commit this ‘fundamental attribution...

Edward Glaeser Giacomo Ponzetto
17 November, 2017

Articles

Introducing a new feature: – ‘Explainers’

Our day-to-day lives are tossed around due to economic changes, resulting sometimes from government policies and sometimes by unidentifiable forces of the world economy. Governments always label every...