Between 2004/2005 and 2009/2010 there was a sharp fall in female labor force participation (LFP) in rural India. Why did this occur? We look at the four standard explanations: that more women in rural areas are now pursuing higher education and are therefore not available for work (education...

The impact of trade liberalization on productivity growth is still an empirical issue; the theoretical literature is as yet unclear on the direction of any such association. This paper develops an analytical framework and employs it to empirically test whether trade liberalization in Indian...

Can digital labour market platforms reduce search frictions in 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...

In this paper we revisit the debate on the role of industrialisation in employment generation and poverty reduction in developing countries through an interpretative survey of the literature, supplemented with relevant stylized facts. After more than four decades of development experience and...

In contrast to previous literature, which looks at the effect of democracy on long-run growth or short-run volatility of growth, we examine the effect of political institutions on medium-term growth episodes. These are episodes of accelerations and decelerations that characterise the growth...

We examine the Kuznets postulate that structural transformation leads to higher inequality using comparable panel data for a large number of developing and developed countries for 1960-2012. Countries show different paths of structural transformation, either being structurally underdeveloped,...

This paper examines the institutional and political determinants of the timing of growth episodes. We extend the earlier literature on the determinants of the onset of growth accelerations and decelerations by providing a more generalised approach to understanding growth episode transitions. We...

Whether cash transfers have unintended behavioural effects on the recipient household’s labour supply is of considerable policy interest. We examine the impact’ of the Indira Gandhi National Old-Age Pension Scheme (IGNOAPS) on prime-age women’s labour supply decisions in India, where...