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Publications (38)
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– Indonesia and India compared
We examine the nature of labour market inequality in Indonesia and India, using a common conceptual approach drawing from the job ladder framework. In the framework, we differentiate between self-employment and wage-informal and between formal, upper tier informal, and lower tier informal jobs. We...
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The documented under-representation of marginalized groups in business ownership and the labour market is a concerning issue. This study explores how caste disparities in small-firm entrepreneurship impact on firm performance in India, focusing on the informal sector. Our examination shows a...
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Two well established stylized facts of economic development are a strong correlation between investment and income, and large differences in investment rates across countries. Construction is the largest component of investment. This paper examines the implications of heterogeneity in construction...
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We examine how village-level social group dominance affects the educational and occupational mobility of minority and other social groups in rural India across multiple generations. We distinguish between upper caste and own-group dominance and examine the mechanisms underpinning inequality in...
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Using nationally representative data on employment and earnings, this paper documents a fall in wage inequality in India over the last two decades. It then examines the role played by increasing minimum wages for the lowest skilled workers in India in contributing to the observed decline. Exploiting...
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– An interpretative survey
When India became a republic in 1950, the economy was primarily agrarian, with three-fifths of output originating from agriculture. In the sixty years since independence, there has been a significant transformation of economic activity away from agriculture, with less than one-fifth of output now...
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– Experimental evidence from sub-Saharan Africa
Can digital labour market platforms reduce search frictions in either formal or informal labour markets? We study this question using a randomized experiment embedded in a tracer study of the work transitions of graduates from technical and vocational colleges in Mozambique. We implement an...
The volume, Social Mobility in Developing Countries: Concepts, Methods, and Determinants, brings together leading scholars from a range of social science disciplines working on a variety of issues related to social mobility. Three motivations guide this joint effort: identifying important knowledge...
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While the short-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on lives and livelihoods are well understood, we know little about the effect of the pandemic for longer-term outcomes such as corruption. We look at the historical data on political and economic crises to assess what we can learn from the long...
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We argue that tax revenues and political institutions placing constraints on the executive power may reinforce each other over time and so co-evolve in the long run. This may also bring a shift in the composition of revenues, from taxes levied on a narrow base to broadly levied taxes.To test these...
The volume, Social Mobility in Developing Countries: Concepts, Methods and Determinants, brings together leading scholars from several disciplines to advance research practice on social mobility. Three sets of motivations guide this joint effort: identifying important knowledge gaps; bringing...
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– Evidence from the Indian informal sector
We examine the patterns and correlates of the productivity gap between male-owned and female-owned firms for informal enterprises in India. Female-owned firms are on average 45 per cent less productive than male-owned firms, with the clearest productivity gaps observed at the lower end of the...
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– Evidence from global microdata
This paper investigates gender inequality in vulnerable employment: forms of employment typically featuring high precariousness, inadequate earnings, and lack of decent working conditions. Using a large collection of harmonized household surveys from developing countries, we measure long-term trends...
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It is widely believed that clientelism—the giving of material goods in return for electoral support—is associated with poorer development outcomes. However, systematic cross-country evidence on the deleterious effects of clientelism on development outcomes is lacking. In this paper we examine the...
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– Insights from the Hrishipara diaries
In this paper, we examine the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the livelihoods of the poor. We use an unusually rich data set from a ‘financial diaries’ study known as the Hrishipara Daily Diaries Project. The data set tracks the economic and financial transactions of 60 individuals and...
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Most studies of intergenerational mobility focus on adjacent generations, and there is limited knowledge about multigenerational mobility—that is, status transmission across three generations. We examine multigenerational educational and occupational mobility in India, using a nationally...
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This paper examines industrialization trends in developing countries. It uses the GGDC/UNU-WIDER Economic Transformation Database, which provides time series of employment and real and nominal value added annually by 12 sectors in 51 countries for the period 1990–2018. Until the early 2000s de...
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– Evidence from Ghana
In this paper, we provide causal evidence of the impact of stringent lockdown policies on labour market outcomes at both the extensive and intensive margins, using Ghana as a case study. We take advantage of a specific policy setting, in which strict stay-at-home orders were issued and enforced in...
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What drives livelihood diversification among predominantly rural households in developing countries and how can welfare-enhancing patterns be established and sustained in the long run? A large literature has focused on whether income diversification is a means of survival or a means of accumulation...
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– Disentangling the roles of trend and cycle
Resource mobilization continues to be an important policy challenge for developing economies, raising questions as to what determines differences in saving behaviour across countries. Using a panel of 47 economies with at least 40 years of continuous time series data, we causally identify, using a...
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– India’s informal sector firms
How does informal economic activity respond to increased financial inclusion? Does it become more entrepreneurial? Does access to new financing options change the gender configuration of informal economic activity and, if so, in what ways and what directions? We take advantage of nationwide data...
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– A development perspective
This paper reviews the recent literature on the developmental effects of resource abundance, assessing likely effects and channels with respect to income inequality, poverty, education, and health. To date, this area has received less analysis although it is relevant to the Sustainable Development...
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– Evidence from Cameroon
We examine the intergenerational mobility of women relative to men, using paired mother-daughter and father-son data on occupation and education for Cameroon. We find that both in occupation and education, intergenerational mobility is higher for sons than for daughters. The intergenerational...
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– Patterns, correlates, and consequences
The Indian labour market is characterized by a high level of informality, with large numbers of workers in poorly paid ‘lower-tier’ informal jobs, and somewhat better paid ‘upper-tier’ informal jobs, which do not have the same benefits and security of tenure as formal jobs. We examine the likelihood...
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Whether cash transfers have unintended behavioural effects on the recipient household’s labour supply is of considerable policy interest. We examine the ‘intent to treat effect’ of the Indira Gandhi National Old-Age Pension Scheme on prime-age women’s labour supply decisions in India, where female...
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The COVID-19 pandemic represents an unprecedented global crisis. The task for economic policy is to help keep people alive, enterprises afloat, and households out of poverty. The pandemic has macroeconomic dimensions. First, it affects macroeconomic stability and growth. Second, the tools of...
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In many low-income transition countries, where formal institutions such as courts do not function effectively, informal institutions are often used by firms to minimize transaction risks. We examine the role of informal institutions, in the forms of relational contracting and social networks, in...
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– An investigation of India’s employment guarantee programme
Administrative failures in anti-poverty programmes are widespread in developing countries.We focus on one such administrative failure—the persistent delay in paying beneficiaries on time in India’s iconic anti-poverty programme, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). Using a life cycle...
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– A survey of structural transformation and inequality dynamics
This paper discusses the ‘developer’s dilemma’—a tension emerging from the fact that developing countries are simultaneously seeking structural transformation and broad-based growth to raise incomes of the poor. Simon Kuznets originally hypothesized that structural transformation may have a tendency...
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– Theory and evidence from India
What motivates individuals to become politicians? This is an important question in decentralized democracies, where local politicians play a key role in public goods provision. However, and in emerging economies, bureaucratic hurdles and administrative failures introduce uncertainty about the...
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– Resource rents, fiscal capacity, and political institutions in developing economies
States’ fiscal capacity plays a pivotal role in developing economies, but it is less clear what its determinants are or what explains cross-country differences. We focus on the impact of natural resources. Standard arguments suggest that natural resources rents may reduce incentives to invest in...
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– Dead end or steppingstone?
Despite rapid economic growth in recent decades, informality remains a persistent phenomenon in the labour markets of many low- and middle-income countries. A key issue in this regard concerns the extent to which informality itself is a persistent state. Using panel data from Ghana, South Africa...
Displaying 32 of 38 results