Department of Economics

Ashoka University is a private university located in Sonipat, Haryana, India, focusing on liberal arts and sciences. It was established in 2014.&nbsp;It is guided by an academic council of academics and scholars from around the world. The council sets the university&#39;s academic standard, advising on matters of curriculum, faculty hiring and research.&nbsp;

Ashoka University offers a full-time 3 (+ 1) year undergraduate programme. The University comprises of&nbsp;2500 plus students, with a mix of both national and international students.&nbsp; &nbsp;

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Ashoka University

In this paper we examine the gender matching effects in learning outcomes by studying the sorting behaviour of teachers and students by gender across private and public schools.We develop a theoretical framework behind the selection mechanism process which is grounded in the economic framework of systematic gender norms. Using contextual gender norms that are relevant to a developing country context, our theoretical model of matching behaviour predicts that the relative gain in learning outcomes is higher for female students under female teachers. We find support for our theoretical predictions when we test them using Young Lives Survey (YLS) data collected from Andhra Pradesh. © 2021 University of Venice

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Research in Economics

Identity and learning: A study on the effect of student-teacher gender matching on learning outcomes

Journal of Development Economics

Can political parties improve minority wellbeing? Evidence from India's “Silent Revolution”

Journal of Dynamics and Games

TRIBUTES TO BILL SANDHOLM

Economic Theory

Evolutionary robustness of dominant strategy implementation

Economic and Political Weekly

Viewing Caste Inequality Upside Down The Perversity of Special Schemes for Brahmins in South India

Ekonomicky casopis

The Motor Vehicles Industry in Slovakia, 2005 – 2015

Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization

Perceptions, biases, and inequality

We study the impact of a consumption tax reform on firm capital and productivity by examining India's replacement of the sales tax with a value-added tax (VAT). Unlike the sales tax, the VAT allowed firms to offset their tax liability with VAT paid on capital inputs, effectively reducing the tax-related cost of capital. Exploiting the staggered adoption of the tax reform across Indian states, we show that VAT adoption increased firm capital by 3%. The effects are driven by financially-constrained firms – an important source of heterogeneity in a developing country context. We also document a corresponding improvement in the productivity of financially-constrained firms. Our findings thus suggest that beyond revenue generation, consumption tax reforms can have the additional effect of stimulating investment and productivity in resource-constrained environments.

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies

Consumption Tax Reform and the Real Economy: Evidence From India's Adoption of a Value-Added Tax

Examining high frequency national-level panel data from Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) on paid work (employment) and unpaid work (time spent on domestic work), this paper examines the effects of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic on the gender gaps in paid and unpaid work until December 2020, using difference-in-differences (D-I-D) for estimating the before (the pandemic) and after (the pandemic set in) effects, and event study estimates around the strict national lockdown in April 2020. The DID estimates reveal a lowering of the gender gap in employment probabilities which occurs due to the lower probability of male employment, rather than an increase in female employment. The first month of the national lockdown, April 2020, saw a large contraction in employment for both men and women, where more men lost jobs in absolute terms. Between April and August 2020 male employment recovered steadily as the economy unlocked. The event study estimates show that in August 2020, for women, the likelihood of being employed was 9% points lower than that for men, compared to April 2019, conditional on previous employment. However, by December 2020, gender gaps in employment were at the December 2019 levels. The burden of domestic chores worsened for women under the pandemic. Men spent more time on housework in April 2020 relative to December 2019, but by December 2020, the average male hours had declined to below the pre-pandemic levels, whereas women’s average hours increased sharply. Time spent with friends fell sharply between December 2019 and April 2020, with a larger decline in the case of women. The hours spent with friends recovered in August 2020, to again decline by December 2020 to roughly one-third of the pre-pandemic levels. The paper adopts an intersectional lens to examine how these trends vary by social group identity.

Economia Politica

The Covid-19 pandemic and gendered division of paid work, domestic chores and leisure: evidence from India’s first wave

How do countries with differing political institutions respond to national crises? We examine policy responses to the coronavirus pandemic in a sample of 125 countries, using high frequency data on two measures: (i) containment policies, i.e., closure of public spaces and restrictions on movement of people, and (ii) health policies, i.e., public information campaigns, testing, and contact tracing. We have four main findings. First, non-democracies impose more stringent policies prior to their first Covid-19 case, but democracies close the gap in containment policies and surpass non-democracies in health policies within a week of registering their first case. Second, while policy responses do not differ by governance systems (presidential or parliamentary), elected leaders who performed better in the last election, or face an election farther in the future, impose more aggressive policies. Third, democracies with greater media freedom respond more slowly in containment policies, but more aggressively in health policies. Lastly, more conducive norms (such as trust in the elected government) systematically predict a more aggressive policy response. Our results remain robust to allowing countries with different economic, social, and medical characteristics to have different evolution of policy responses. Our analysis therefore suggests that political institutions and the incentives of the political leaders embedded therein significantly shape the policy response of governments to a national crisis.

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

Political institutions and policy responses during a crisis