This paper provides sufficient conditions under which the negotiated wage in unionized oligopolistic industries with centralized negotiations is independent of a number of product market features (such as the number of firms, the degree of product substitutability, or the type of market...

In developing countries with weak institutions, there is implicitly a large reliance on elections to instill norms of accountability and reduce corruption. In this paper we show that electoral discipline may be ineffective in reducing corruption when political competition is too high or too low....

Production processes are often organised in teams, yet there is limited evidence on whether and how social connections and financial incentives affect productivity in tasks that require coordination among workers. We simulate assembly line production in a lab-in-the-field experiment in which...

We construct a model of redistributive politics where the central government is opportunistic and uses its discretion to make transfers to state governments on the basis of political considerations. These considerations are the alignment between the incumbent parties at the central and state...

We consider the largely unexpected shock caused by the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in India to assess whether major crises that impact the well-being of a large number of individuals can be catalysts for civic activism. Exploiting state-level variation in COVID-19 peaks and...

We use high frequency worker level productivity data from garment manufacturing units in India to study the effects of caste-based social networks on individual and group productivity when workers are complements in the production function but wages are paid at the individual level. Using...

This paper studies the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the gendered dimensions of employment and mental health among urban informal-sector workers in India. First, we find that men's employment declined by 84 percentage points post-pandemic relative to pre-pandemic, while their monthly earnings...

This paper proposes new composite measures of relative and dynamic state performance to improve governance and delivery of public programs in developing countries with a federal structure. We rank the performance of 19 major Indian states on two large development programs launched by the Indian...

Using a cluster randomized control trial, we study the role of women's social networks in improving female labor force participation. In the first treatment arm, a hyper-local digital job search platform service was offered to a randomly selected group of married couples (non-network treatment)...

This chapter surveys recent literature on social networks and labour markets, with a specific focus on developing countries. It reviews existing research, in particular, on the use of social networks for hiring and the consequences of networks for on-the-job outcomes, including emerging...