30 January, 2023Hindu-Muslim integration and firm output in Indian manufacturing: Evidence from a field experiment
Evidence suggests that ethnic diversity can lower firm output due to poor social ties and taste-based discrimination among workers. Based on an experiment in a manufacturing plant in West Bengal, this...
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Arkadev Ghosh 
23 May, 2022
- Articles
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 ...
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Dilip Mookherjee Pascual Restrepo
- 04 May, 2022
- Videos
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 ...
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Parikshit Ghosh David Green
- 14 October, 2021
- Videos
AI and services-led growth: Evidence from Indian job adverts
Using a new dataset of online vacancies from India’s largest jobs website, Copestake et al. document near-exponential growth in the demand for artificial intelligence-related skills in the services...
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Alexander Copestake Max Marczinek Ashley Pople Katherine Stapleton
- 19 April, 2023
- Articles
Implicit costs of factor allocation for Indian firms
Looking at variations in factor misallocation across states, Chaurey et al. measure trends in factor adjustment costs incurred by firms between 1999 and 2014. They find that adjustment costs for labou...
- Articles
The gendered employment effects of mobile internet access in developing countries
In the third post of I4I’s month-long campaign to mark International Women’s Day 2023, Goldberg and Chiplunkar look at 3G internet coverage in 14 countries, and find that access to mobile internet...
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Gaurav Chiplunkar Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg
- 10 March, 2023
- Articles
Bringing skilling and productive employment closer to women
On International Women’s Day, Farzana Afridi considers a key issue in the creation of good jobs for women – the provision of skilling. She discusses the lack of physical and financial access to sk...
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Farzana Afridi
- 08 March, 2023
- Perspectives
Formalisation of informal manufacturing enterprises in India
Employment in India’s organised manufacturing sector has grown rapidly since 2004. This article finds that about 15% of this growth can be attributed to the formalisation of previously informal ente...
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Bishwanath Goldar
- 01 March, 2023
- Articles
I4I@10 | First Ashok Kotwal Memorial Lecture: The future of development
What is the 'fourth' fundamental law of capitalism? Will capital ‘inherit the earth’? Has the pandemic quickened the intuitive appeal of the capital-labour substitution? Should sovereign funds be ...
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Debraj Ray I4I Team
- 30 January, 2023
- Videos
Creative destruction and catch-up growth in India
In this post, Peters and Zilibotti compare the size of firms in India and the US, and find that the 90% of firms in India have four employees or less, and attribute it to the absence of creative destr...
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Michael Peters Fabrizio Zilibotti
- 27 January, 2023
- Articles
The promise of technology for women’s employment
The growth of digital labour platforms holds tremendous potential to improve employment outcomes for India’s young, urban population. In this post, Farzana Afridi discusses the challenges in leverag...
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Farzana Afridi
- 19 January, 2023
- Perspectives
Mirroring realities: Digital technology through the eyes of women microentrepreneurs
The expansion of markets from physical spaces to e-commerce platforms during the pandemic widened the pre-existing digital gender divide in India. Employing the method of ‘auto-photography’, the t...
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Aneysha Roy
- 29 November, 2022
- Notes from the Field
The role of political connections of firms during a crisis
Research has shown that political connections matter for a firm during times of economic crisis. This article refers to a unique data set of political connections of firms in India, and finds that fir...
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Yutong Chen Gaurav Chiplunkar Sheetal Sekhri Anirban Sen Aaditeshwar Seth
- 07 November, 2022
- Articles
Changing the frame: Making small firms compete like large ones
Although small firms have natural advantages, they face constraints when it comes to reach and scale; this prevents them from competing with larger firms. Pankaj Chandra shares business models from It...
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Pankaj Chandra
- 13 September, 2022
- Perspectives
Introduction to e-Symposium: The good jobs challenge in India
One of the primary concerns for India is the question of jobs – specifically good quality jobs. Why has India lagged in creating opportunities for its working age population, and how different secto...
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Kunal Sen Nirvikar Singh
- 12 September, 2022
- Symposium
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Tweets by Ideas4IndiaMost 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...
- Siddhartha Mitra
- 25 July, 2018
- 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...
- Bornali Bhandari
- 13 April, 2018
- 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 ...
- Subhashis Banerjee Subodh V. Sharma
- 24 September, 2018
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