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
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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Tanya Jain
Rahul Singh
Chetan Subramanian
28 February, 2022
- 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...
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Marianne Bertrand
Chang-Tai Hsieh
Nick Tsivanidis
02 December, 2021
- 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...
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Sourav Bhattacharya
Pavel Chakraborty
Chirantan Chatterjee
25 October, 2021
- 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 ...
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Parikshit Ghosh
David Green
14 October, 2021
- 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...
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Supreet Kaur
Sendhil Mullainathan
Suanna Oh
Frank Schilbach
29 September, 2021
- 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...
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Achyuta Adhvaryu
Jean-François Gauthier
Shalin Gor
Saumya Joshi
Anant Nyshadham
Jorge Tamayo
08 September, 2021
- 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 ...
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Abhishek Dureja
Digvijay S. Negi
27 August, 2021
- 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...
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Bhaskar Chakravorty
Clément Imbert
Maximilian Lohnert
Poonam Panda
Roland Rathelot
Apurav Yash Bhatiya
28 July, 2021
- Notes from the Field
Would a four-day work week benefit women?
In February 2021, the Indian government stated that it may allow firms the flexibility of having a four-day work week, while retaining the norm of 48 hours of work per week. In this post, Koustav Maju...
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Koustav Majumdar
20 April, 2021
- Perspectives
Can technology mitigate the impact of heat on worker productivity?
Exposure to high heat causes productivity losses, with reduction in cognitive function as a key channel. A direct reduction in heat exposure via technologies such as air conditioning is not possible f...
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Anna Custers
Prathap Kasina
Deepak Saraswat
Anjali P. Verma
16 April, 2021
- Articles
India’s new labour codes: A pre-condition for long-run growth
The Ministry of Labour and Employment has recently notified four new labour codes, which are expected to be implemented from April 2021. Assessing the impact of the policy changes around hiring-and-fi...
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Aakanksha Shrawan
11 March, 2021
- Perspectives
‘Outside’ managers’ productivity, firm dynamics, and economy growth
In developed countries, many industrial giants have humble beginnings as small, family-owned businesses, but nonetheless expand to hundreds of thousands of employees over time by relying on professio...
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Ufuk Akcigit
Harun Alp
Michael Peters
26 February, 2021
- Articles
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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
- Perspectives