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Publications (31)
Working Paper
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The documented under-representation of marginalized groups in business ownership and the labour market is a concerning issue. This study explores how caste disparities in small-firm entrepreneurship impact on firm performance in India, focusing on the informal sector. Our examination shows a...
Working Paper
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Two well established stylized facts of economic development are a strong correlation between investment and income, and large differences in investment rates across countries. Construction is the largest component of investment. This paper examines the implications of heterogeneity in construction...
Journal Article
We design a lab-in-the-field experiment involving naturally occurring groups operating in three South-African townships. We introduce an incentives-based mechanism named 'participatory incentives' consisting of monetary incentives that are awarded conditional on the group reaching a threshold of...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that involving beneficiaries in charity decision-making ensures better governance processes. This study provides the first experimental test of the effects of beneficiaries’ participation in the decision of how to spend a charity's funds. We consider four different...
Working Paper
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– An exploration based on a multidimensional measure of financial inclusion
Using a nationally representative household survey data set from Ghana, this paper provides empirical evidence regarding the role of financial inclusion or financial exclusion in household welfare. We first compute a multidimensional index of financial inclusion, and then we examine the effect of...
Journal Article
– Mandated political representation and murders
This study provides the first country-wide research evidence that an affirmative action policy may induce a backlash. I exploit the timing of the implementation of castebased electoral quotas across and within the states of India. The results show that the implementation of the electoral quotas...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– Evidence from the Han and ethnic minorities in China
This study investigates the unexpected impact that enforcing birth control policies in China has upon the educational stratification between the Han majority, the policy target group, and ethnic minorities, a partially excluded group. Exploring county-level variation in the value of fines levied for...
Working Paper
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This paper examines the income inequality implications of a ‘premature deindustrialization’ trend in middle-income countries. To identify the premature deindustrialization phase, we arrive at five conditions based on the trends in employment and value-added share of manufacture. Among these five...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– New evidence on the relationship between structural transformation and inequality
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 are in different stages of structural transformation, being either structurally underdeveloped...
Journal Article
We implement a lab-in-the-field experiment among childcare workers in Chandigarh, India, to evaluate discriminatory attitudes of the Hindu workers toward Muslim children. We use a third-party allocation game that controls for selfish payoff-maximizing preferences across the treatments and focus...
Working Paper
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– New evidence on the relationship between structural transformation and inequality
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 are in different stages of structural transformation, being either structurally under-developed...
Journal Article
– The case of indigenous Australians
This paper provides new insights on the labour market discrimination faced by indigenous Australians one of the most disadvantaged indigenous populations in developed countries. Combining two large, nationally representative datasets, we decompose the employment gap between indigenous and non...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
We take school admission mechanisms to the lab to test whether the widely-used manipulable Immediate Acceptance mechanism disadvantages students of lower cognitive ability and whether this leads to ability segregation across schools. Results show this to be the case: lower ability participants...
Blog
Racial wage inequality and discrimination have pervaded South African society for centuries. Apartheid legislation cemented these disparities by institutionalizing white job reservation and many other unfair practices. While racial wage gaps started to decline towards the end of apartheid in 1994...
– The case of the Assam insurgency
Girls in India face many challenges. From the moment they are conceived, they are less likely to be born as compared to boys. This presence of “missing girls” appears to be linked to access to ultrasound technology. Moreover, girls also get breastfed for a shorter duration and get fewer childcare...
Working Paper
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– An analysis of attitudes towards redistribution across groups in Africa
Inequalities between ethnic or racial groups, defined as horizontal inequalities, are pervasive and persistent. They persist due to cumulative and reinforcing inequalities arising from unequal access to different types of capital. Affirmative action policies can provide promising opportunities for...
Displaying 16 of 31 results