Sort by:
Showing all content in India
-
Project
Do bureaucrats acculturate? Evidence from a long-running natural experiment in India
This project explores the extent cultural norms around corruption and inaction are adopted over time by bureaucrats. By utilising the random assignment of elite bureaucrats to states with varying cultures of corruption and inaction, the team studies how the bureaucrat’s environment influences their preferences, values, and behaviour. Inaction and corruption of...
-
Blog post
Poverty eradication in India: Successes and shortcomings of social protection
While social protection programmes in India have helped reduce poverty significantly, they are not without their problems. COVID-19 reversed the gains and has plunged millions into further poverty, disrupting the informal economy, and hitting migrant labourers the hardest. Schemes like MGNREGA are being sought out by the government and desperate citizens to tackle...
-
Publication - Working Paper
Financial intermediation and economic development in the state of Bihar, India: A district-level analysis
This paper analyses the relationship between financial intermediation and economic development in the state of Bihar in India. We find that the standard index of depth of financial intermediation measured by credit deposit (CD) ratio is very low in the state (30%) and has little impact on economic development at the aggregate level. However, the analysis of sectoral CD...
-
Blog post
Does the gender of your co-worker matter? Evidence from call centres in India
Gender integration in the workplace may have negative effects on employee productivity (Akerlof and Kranton 2000, Bertrand et al. 2015). This could decrease employee productivity if employees of different genders are (1) uncomfortable or distracted by each other’s presence (Kandel and Lazear 1992), (2) face communication barriers while interacting (Hamilton et al. 2012),...
-
Publication - Project Report, Working Paper
Take home rations (THR) and cash transfers for maternal and child nutrition: A synthesis of evidence in India
The futures of young children are often overwhelmingly determined by chance. There is consensus that the 1000 days since conception are critical for a child’s nutritional status and the environment in which children are born often shapes the inputs and investments they get during this formative period (Black, et al. 2013). Failure to secure a child’s wellbeing during...
-
Project
Herself and her children: How worse off are they? Impact of COVID-19 in rural Bihar
COVID-19 has created a perfect storm for global malnutrition. The crisis is expected to adversely affect the nutritional status of households—particularly vulnerable groups like women, children and aged—through livelihood and income losses related to government-mandated shutdowns and de-globalisation, freezing of food transfer schemes such as school feeding programs,...
-
Publication - Policy Brief
A roadmap for closing gender gaps in Bihar: Gender Responsive Budgeting
Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB) is a globally recognised framework to mainstream gender in public planning and budgeting processes and mechanisms. In doing so, GRB paves the way for equitable and inclusive development and has been adopted in one form or the other in over 100 countries. India has led efforts on GRB in Asia, being one of the most relevant countries...
-
Event
The impact of COVID-19 on small-holder farmers in India and the way forward
In India more than 80% of the agriculture sector comprises of small and marginal farmers (Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, 2015). Agriculture and its allied sectors are the source of livelihood of around 54.6% of the population (Economic Survey 2019-20) and its contribution was around 16.5% of the GDP. Furthermore, small-holder farmers contribute to both...
-
Blog post
Rental markets for mechanisation in India: Trends and current state
Agricultural landholdings and mechanisation levels vary considerably in the developing world. Whether smaller farmers adopt lower levels of mechanisation because returns to adoption are lower, or because there are barriers to adoption that are particularly detrimental to them remains unclear. Our project aims at estimating the impact of access to equipment rental markets on...
-
Blog post
COVID-19 and the willingness to vaccinate: Evidence from India
Vaccination is one of the success stories in modern day medicine and seen by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as a key element of the response to the current pandemic. While billions are poured into a vaccine’s development and tackling supply difficulties, policymakers should prepare for the next challenges: compliance and ability to pay. One of the most, if not the...