Department of History

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

The study examines the role of the largest public works program in the world—the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS)—in buffering the negative effects of early childhood exposure to rainfall shocks on long-term health outcomes. Exploiting the spatial and temporal variation in NREGS coverage, the study estimates the extent to which nutritional shocks in early childhood can be offset by access to the program. The study employs a unique identification strategy by integrating detailed administrative records of drought shock and phased rollout information of NREGS with household-level panel data—the Young Lives survey—conducted over three waves (2002, 2007, and 2009–10) in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India. Using individual fixed effects estimation, the study finds that while the policy does not help correct for long-term past health deficiencies it is useful in buffering recent drought shocks, which vary by policy relevant subgroups.

Department of Economics

Fulltext

Economic Development and Cultural Change

Can the major public works policy buffer negative shocks in early childhood? Evidence from Andhra Pradesh, India

This paper exploits the closure of senior secondary schools in urban China from 1966 to 1971 in order to identify the causal intergenerational transmission effects of education. The paper uses the instrumental variable approach to examine the intergenerational causality of educational transmission at the senior secondary schooling level in urban China. The exogenous variation in parental senior secondary educational attainment both over time and across regions allows us account for selection bias and thus identify the causal intergenerational transmission effect in education. We further show that our conclusion is robust to alternative identification strategies and data sets. © 2016 John Wiley &amp; Sons Ltd

World University root node

Review of Development Economics

Understanding the Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital: Evidence from a Quasi-natural Experiment in China

The Scheduled Tribes and Castes (STs and SCs) are the two most disadvantaged social groups in India. Previous studies have usually grouped the STs and SCs together as one disadvantaged group and have compared their educational and occupational mobility with the higher castes. We instead seek to compare health outcomes of the STs with not only the upper castes but also especially the SCs. We find that STs consistently perform poorly even relative to the SCs in terms of knowledge and usage of modern contraceptives, antenatal and postnatal healthcare, incidence of anemia and child immunization. However, female infant mortality is significantly higher among SCs than among STs, with no significant difference in male infant mortality between these groups. We find that ST women enjoy high social status and thus are unlikely to face impediments in accessing healthcare due to social norms that restrict women's autonomy. Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition methodology reveals that the health disparity between the STs and SCs for some key outcomes cannot be fully explained by differences in attributes between them. Suggestive evidence indicates that the health disparity can be likely attributed to the potentially greater marginalization that STs face even relative to SCs when accessing healthcare. This indicates the necessity to study STs in isolation from SCs so that policy can be designed to specifically target and mitigate health inequalities prevalent even among the most disadvantaged social groups.

World Development

Comparing Health Outcomes Across Scheduled Tribes and Castes in India

Department of Biology

Current Science

Scientific advancements in independent India

With the aid of simple theoretical tools used in classroom lectures, the implications of the recent "demonetisation" exercise in India are analysed. It lends support to conclusions reached by other authors on the impact of demonetisation with the aid of available data. Following Robert Lucas's Nobel lecture, the merits of economic policies that assume the form of random shocks to an economic system are questioned. &nbsp;

Other Publications

Economic and Political Weekly

Theoretical analysis of 'demonetisation'

Gender-neutral parental leave

We administered the Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS) and the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R) to 61 students at an elite university in India. Student scores on the CAS were slightly higher than scores obtained previously in the U.S. and England, suggesting slightly higher amounts of celebrity worship. We examined the pattern of relationships between the five personality factors measured by the NEO PI-R and the three subscales of the CAS, and found only one significant relationship, that between CAS BP and Conscientiousness. That is, participants who scored higher on the CAS subscale indicative of borderline pathology tended to be less conscientious. Choice of one’s favorite celebrity reflected the globalization of American pop culture.&nbsp;

North American Journal of Psychology

The Relationship between Attitudes toward Celebrities &amp; the Five Factor Personality Inventory at an Elite Indian University: A Brief Report

Speaks (2014) defends the view that propositions are properties: for example, the proposition that grass is green is the property being such that grass is green. We argue that there is no reason to prefer Speaks's theory to analogous but competing theories that identify propositions with, say, 2-adic relations. This style of argument has recently been deployed by many, including Moore (1999) and King (2007), against the view that propositions are n-tuples, and by Caplan and Tillman (2013) against King's view that propositions are facts of a special sort. We offer our argument as an objection to the view that propositions are unsaturated (non-0-adic) relations.

Thought

Speaks's Reduction of Propositions to Properties: A Benacerraf Problem

Department of Philosophy

Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung

The Universal Measurer

Using a survey dataset collected from Andhra Pradesh, India, we test if multiple borrowing is equivalent to over-borrowing. Results suggest that over-borrowing and multiple loans are not necessarily synonymous. As the number of credit agencies in a village increases, the average loan burden of villagers does not increase. We also find evidence of substitution of formal sources of credit for informal ones with increased presence of formal credit institutions. Such substitution is greater with addition of microcredit institutions than with other formal lending agencies. Our results indicate that joint liability setup seems to ensure that individuals at a greater risk of non-repayment are discouraged from obtaining microcredit.