Trade expert Sushil Mohan, in a paper published by the IEA, argues that non-tariff barriers are an important impediment to trade for less developed countries and need to be brought to the forefront of the trade debate.Non-tariff barriers are an important impediment to trade for less developed...

One particularly significant piece of labour legislation in India is the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970 (CLA,1970), which regulates labour hired by firms through the offices of a labour contractor - such labour being referred to as 'contract' labour in India. This paper...

The paper begins with a discussion of Indian labour law and the increasing use of "contract labour" in Indian formal manufacturing. We question the widespread perception that employment of contract labour provides flexibility to employers in terms of adjustment in response to demand and...

The present study attempts to investigate the factors affecting a firm's decision to hire contract workers. We use information from a specially commissioned survey of manufacturing firms undertaken in 2014 by ICRIER, as part of a World Bank funded project 'Jobs and Development: Creating...

This study uses enterprise survey data from a sample of 26 countries to address the question "why are there too few women at the top of firms?". That is, it asks why the proportion of firms with females at the top is low in relation to the share of females in full-time employment. To reduce the...

This study considers the economic impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on commercial enterprises in four Central American countries - El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. At the time of analysis, neither the pandemic nor its economic consequences had fully run their course....

This paper examines the relationship between mega-regional trade Agreements and diet-related health given that such Agreements aim to liberalize 'substantially all trade and investment' that could potentially impact on health through tariff elimination and stronger intellectual property...

We study the impact of the odd-even transportation policy (environmental regulation), among other controlled factors on Delhi's pollution levels using panel data. We have daily data on five different pollutants from 9th April 2015 through 29th July 2018 and also pollutant's data over nine...

In a unique attempt, our paper aims to provide a quantitative economic assessment of the impact of "Make in India", a flagship program for industrialization, launched by the Government of India in 2014, combining it with the global trade war of 2017-18. We analyze whether the expected favourable...

This study uses evidence from World Bank enterprise surveys of a sample of firms from six countries in Southern Europe. It examines the early evidence of the effects of Covid-19 on labour markets. The evidence and the analysis are provided at a time when the pandemic is still in progress. The...