•  
Main Banner Image
Productivity & Innovation

Trade, internal migration, and human capital: Who gained from India’s IT boom?

  • Articles

Alleviating financial concerns to enhance worker productivity

Financial constraints can have psychological consequences and affect productivity by making workers more distracted during work. Based on an experiment among small-scale manufacturing workers in Odish...

  • Articles

Inequality, labour market trends, and the welfare State

All around the world, rising levels of inequality – particularly in the last 3-4 decades – have been recognised as a major issue. In this context, David Green (University of British Columbia) and ...

  • Videos

Debt contract enforcement and product innovation

Weak enforcement of debt contracts can have undesirable consequences for financial development, as difficulty in recovering claims from distressed firms causes banks to reduce lending. Leveraging the ...

  • Articles
35 posts
Refine list by:
--Please Select--
--Please Select--

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 ...

  • Videos

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 ...

  • Podcasts

Temperature, labour reallocation, and industrial production

While it is well-established that agricultural production is vulnerable to weather shocks, less is known about how those affected respond or the economic consequences of any responses. Analysing data ...

  • Articles

Trade, internal migration, and human capital: Who gained from India’s IT boom?

The Indian economy experienced trade expansion and an IT boom during 1993-2004. How did the spectacular growth in a high skill-intensive sector – concentrated in a few big cities – affect inequali...

  • Articles

Debt contract enforcement and product innovation

Weak enforcement of debt contracts can have undesirable consequences for financial development, as difficulty in recovering claims from distressed firms causes banks to reduce lending. Leveraging the ...

  • Articles

Contract labour and firm growth in India

There is considerable evidence indicating that the Industrial Disputes Act (IDA), 1947 – which made it illegal for large companies to downsize – had a powerful disincentive effect for entrepreneur...

  • Articles

Intellectual property rights and wage inequality

Technology has become central to most everyday activities. But will incentives for technological change – such as those induced by Covid-19 – cause deeper distortions in the global economy, especi...

  • Articles

Inequality, labour market trends, and the welfare State

All around the world, rising levels of inequality – particularly in the last 3-4 decades – have been recognised as a major issue. In this context, David Green (University of British Columbia) and ...

  • Videos

Alleviating financial concerns to enhance worker productivity

Financial constraints can have psychological consequences and affect productivity by making workers more distracted during work. Based on an experiment among small-scale manufacturing workers in Odish...

  • Articles

Dealing with worker absenteeism in labour-intensive industries

Worker absenteeism in labour-intensive industries causes productivity losses for firms, and reduced potential for productivity-based incentives for workers. Based on a study in Karnataka, this article...

  • Articles

Short-term illness and intra-household labour substitution

For poor, agricultural households, health shocks strain limited resources on medical expenses, and result in loss of potential productive work-days. Based on data from rural India, this article shows ...

  • Articles

Covid-19 lockdown and migrant workers: Survey of vocational trainees from Bihar and Jharkhand - II

Covid-19 and the associated lockdowns have led to widespread job losses, and a subsequent exodus of migrant workers from the cities. In this note, Chakravorty et al. discuss findings from their survey...

  • Notes from the Field

Recent Contributors

Dilip

Dilip Mookherjee

Boston University

Pascual

Pascual Restrepo

Boston University

Jonathan

Jonathan Colmer

University of Virginia

Devaki

Devaki Ghose

World Bank

Chetan

Chetan Subramanian

Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

Rahul

Rahul Singh

Ahmedabad University

Tanya

Tanya Jain

IIM Bangalore

Marianne

Marianne Bertrand

University of Chicago

View all Contributors

Most Popular Productivity & Innovation Posts

The impact of robotisation on the world economy: A forward-looking review

Robots have long existed in human imagination and only recently in the real world. The baggage of past imagination often intrudes into our understanding of how real robots will affect our economic liv...

  • Explainers

Tripura’s bamboo sector: Potential and challenges

About a third of the total area of Tripura is covered by bamboo, and bamboo has emerged as a key thrust area for the state’s industrial development. Based on a field visit that was undertaken to stu...

  • Notes from the Field

An offline alternative for Aadhaar-based biometric authentication

While decision on the constitutionality of Aadhaar by the Supreme Court of India remains a matter of speculation, it has become abundantly clear that most of the use cases for Aadhaar-based biometric ...

  • Perspectives