This case follows Sethu Sethunarayanan, Director of the non-profit Center for the De-velopment of Disadvantaged People (CDDP), which is dedicated to the improvement of the Irula tribe in rural villages of southeast India. The Irulas specialize in catching rats, an activity which provides the...

While considerable concern has emerged about the impact of religion on economic development, little is actually known about how religion impacts the decision making of individuals. This paper examines the influence of religion on the decision for people to become an entrepreneur. Based on a...

The theoretical literature identifies three important entrepreneurial dimensions, namely discovering new opportunities, responsiveness to uncertainty, and coordination of a firm. In the empirical literature, past experience has been identified as having an important influence on organizational...

Entrepreneurship literature (Parker 2004) has rarely considered spatial location as a micro-determinant of occupational choice, although there are compelling reasons to posit that spatial location influences economic behavior. Using Bayesian semiparametric methodologies and geoadditive...

The vast majority of firms in developing economies are micro and small enterprises owned by families whose members also provide the labour to the units. Often, they fail to grow in size even with the relaxation of credit constraints. In this paper, we show that frictions in the labour market...

Occupational transition from salaried to self-employment is an important issue in developed economies, but is even more critical in emerging economies, as individuals' occupational choices can drive economic development. Using data on 3637 individuals from India, we examine the effect of...

The outstanding export performance of South Asian countries (India in particular) over the 1990s has prompted some observers to see in it the roots of an export-led growth similar to that of its Southeast Asian neighbors. We employ export unit values (UVs) cum real competitiveness analysis to...

India has undertaken extensive reforms in its manufacturing sector in the last two decades. However, an acceleration of growth in manufacturing, and a concomitant increase in employment, has eluded India. What might be holding the sector back? Using Annual Survey of Industries data at the...

Using data from more than 6,000 manufacturing firms in India for 1996–2008, we investigate the impact of financial constraints on the exporting behavior of Indian manufacturing firms while also focusing on the link between exchange rate movement and exports. We find that there is a strong...

We investigate the characteristics of manufacturing firms in India that generate better quality employment and the relationship between quality employment and firm performance using multiple measures of employment quality. Larger firms tend to generally provide better quality employment...