While social mobility in advanced economies has received extensive scholarly attention, crucial knowledge gaps remain about the patterns and determinants of income, educational, and occupational mobility in developing countries. Focusing on intergenerational mobility, we find that estimates...

There has been increasing ‘flexibilisation’, in the formal labour markets of both developed and developing countries. Labour institutions and globalisation are often taken to be causally related to this phenomenon, but the evidence remains inconclusive. In India, there has been an increasing...

There is a global trend of substituting permanent workers by workers on fixed term contracts, job outsourcing and production subcontracting. Labour institutions and globalisation are often taken to be causally related to this phenomenon, but the evidence remains inconclusive. In India, there has...

Is the informal sector in India a means of exploitation or a means of accumulation? One view takes the informal sector to be a site for primitive capital accumulation, with underpaid workers working in abysmal conditions. Another view takes the informal sector to be the venue for economic...

Empirical studies on total factor productivity growth (TFPG) in developing countries highlight trade openness, research and development and market structure as being the most important determinants of TFPG. The role of institutions remains overlooked in the literature on the determinants of...

We examine the political economy causes of India's growth acceleration in the early 1990s, the periods of high growth in the 1990s and early 2000s, and the subsequent slowdown since 2011, drawing from the ESID conceptual framework (Pritchett and Werker 2013) and periodisation of growth episodes...

This paper focuses on the role of finance constraints in determining the lack of transition of firms in India from very small family firms, which are the predominant type of firms in the informal sector, into larger informal firms that employ non-family labour. Using a rich firm-level data-set...