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Productivity & Innovation

India’s data workers: The human labour making machines learn

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Night shift bans and female employment in Indian manufacturing

Between 2014 and 2017, seven Indian states amended their regulations to allow women to work night shifts in factories, with the condition that employers provide female-friendly amenities. This article...

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Exit barriers as entry barriers: Explaining India’s odd development path

Despite an abundance of low-skilled labour, India never experienced the kind of take-off in labour-intensive manufacturing seen in other countries at similar income levels. This article argues that a ...

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Planning for ‘jobs of the future’ in a changing world

Following decades of structural transformation, in the coming years, external factors including climate change, increasing automation, and global economic policies will all play a role in determining ...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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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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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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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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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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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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