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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...

  • Perspectives

How R&D tax credits can drive price competition in Indian industries

In the last few decades, tax credits have been introduced in many developing countries to incentivise investment in research and development (R&D). Looking at the staggered introduction of R&D tax cre...

  • Articles

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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The future of work from home

With the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic, work from home became the norm in 2020. However, even though mobility restrictions have been lifted, many workplaces all over the world continue to follow a m...

  • Podcasts

The future of work from home

With the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic, work from home became the norm in 2020. However, even though mobility restrictions have been lifted, many workplaces all over the world continue to follow a m...

  • Videos

Birth versus worth: Impact of the caste system on entrepreneurship in India

The prevalence of the caste system has restricted social mobility in India. This article further looks at how caste disparities have contributed to the misallocation of resources across firms. It quan...

  • Articles

Leveraging digital labour markets to increase employment opportunities

India’s relatively young population, the pace of adoption of smartphones and digital technology, and rapid urbanisation has contributed to the growth of digital labour markets. In recent years, we h...

  • Videos

Leveraging digital labour markets to increase employment opportunities

India’s relatively young population, the pace of adoption of smartphones and digital technology, and rapid urbanisation has contributed to the growth of digital labour markets. In recent years, we h...

  • Podcasts

Hindu-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...

  • 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 ...

  • 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 ...

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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...

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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 ...

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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...

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Samarth Gupta

Ahmedabad University

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Chirantan Chatterjee

University of Sussex

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Animesh Ghosh

Ashoka Centre for a People-centric Energy Transiti

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Anandjit Goswami

Ashoka Centre for a People-centric Energy Transiti

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Rakesh Kacker

Ashoka Centre for People-centric Energy Transition

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Sharmistha Baig

Ashoka Centre for a People-centric Energy Transiti

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Rahul Singh

Ahmedabad University

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Tanya Jain

Ahmedabad University

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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...

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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...

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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