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Showing all Projects in India
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Job portals and labour market frictions
The constraints to the growth of medium-sized firms is a question of great policy relevance given their large role in the economies of developing countries. Academic research holds that the dearth of adequately skilled workers is an important factor limiting firm growth (IGC 2014). More recent empirical work (Hardy and McCasland, 2015) suggests that labour market frictions...
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Tax policy and firms: Evidence from West Bengal
Our aim in this project is to investigate How the Value-Added-Tax (VAT) affects firms' compliance and production decisions in a large developing economy. How the tax system affects the overall economic efficiency of production networks, in particular by distorting the quantity and quality of supplier-buyer matches. The impact of a tax reform that lowered...
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Judicial institutions and economic development: Examining micro-evidence from India
The questions examining the relationship between a country’s legal environment and its economic outcomes are important. These are motivated by theories linking judicial efficiency and economic outcomes as developed under the new institutional economics (North, 1990 and Williamson, 1995). First, as a regulator, the judiciary is responsible for enforcing the rules of law....
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The impact of community-driven accountability on land rights governance: Evidence from a homestead land titling initiative
How and under what circumstances can civic mobilisation improve local governance and service delivery? This project seeks to contribute to debates on this question through a multimethod analysis of a homestead land entitlement support program in rural Gaya District, Bihar. Homestead land entitlement in much of the developing world represents a cornerstone on which...
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Mapping the urban world: Integrating high-resolution satellite imagery and night light data
Tracking how an economy allocates resources across space and time is difficult. Reliable data sources, particularly from developing countries, are scarce. Those that do exist (e.g., population censuses) are typically measured at low frequencies, difficult to obtain, hard to compare across countries, and available only for coarse spatial units (e.g., districts or counties)....
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Promoting energy and water efficiency in irrigation through direct and indirect incentives
Groundwater irrigation has revolutionised agriculture in India, but in many areas, over-extraction is now worsening water quality, increasing poverty, and overloading the electric grid. Meanwhile, plenty of water- and energy-efficient techniques and technologies exist – such as micro-irrigation – but adoption remains low. What is the best way for governments, utilities,...
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How do disclosures affect financial choices? The case of life insurance in India
Insurance is one of the most popular investment avenues in India. Recent miss-selling scandals in insurance (as well as financial products more generally) have brought a renewed focus on how best to regulate their sale. This has meant rules on commissions paid to distributors of these products, increased fiduciary responsibilities, as well as improved disclosures. Removing...
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Rapid response project on Indian firm data
In March 2015, IGC organised a Workshop on Industry Data, held in Delhi. The workshop provided an opportunity for academics, policy makers and government agencies to discuss difficulties they face with using or collecting datasets on Indian firms, and define the steps for a way forward to improve the quality of the data available in these areas. To prepare for the...
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Does restricting subsidised power and water supply reduce growth? Evidence from the dark zones of Gujarat
The provision of heavily subsidised electricity to agricultural consumers in India is widely considered to be a major choke on India's energy sector. Most state governments resort to rationing the duration or access to agricultural power supply, with little information on the associated trade-offs and the impacts on growth. This study will investigate the impacts of one...
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Improving school governance at scale: A randomised evaluation of the Madhya Pradesh School Quality Assessment programme
Weak governance is a critical constraint in delivering quality education in developing countries. This project undertakes a randomised evaluation of the Madhya Pradesh School Quality Assessment Programme (MPSQA) - one most ambitious recent attempts by a developing country government to improve education governance at scale. The programme is a comprehensive attempt to...