Econ-on-Mics

For interested listeners, Prof. Kanika recommends looking at the work on labour and gender by Ashwini Deshpande, Anisha Sharma, and Lisa Ho. She also recommends these must-read books:
1. Woman's Role in Economic Development by Ester Boserup: Published in 1970 and using data collected across various developing countries, the book provides insights into how women contribute to the economy in traditional settings and how this role transforms as these countries transition from agrarian societies to industrial and service-led ones.
2. Understanding the Gender Gap by Claudia Goldin: While this book is based on the experiences of women in the US, many lessons and patterns discussed are also relevant to the experience of developing countries currently.
3. Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez: This book weaves the narrative of how women's needs often get neglected in policy-making and even technological development, the primary reason being that the world has been designed to suit the needs of an average male.

1. The Economics of Climate Change in Argentina: The book includes research by Argentinean economistson agricultural yields, human health impacts, carbon emissions, climate policy, and economic growth. The book sheds light on the challenges and opportunities for sustainability in the region, appealing to policymakers, academics, and anyone concerned about climate change and its implications in LatinAmerica.
2. No Brainers and Low-Hanging Fruit in National Climate Policy: This book, with contributions from economists working in more than 18 countries, provides timely and concise recommendations onachievable and efficient climate change policies that can be fast-tracked into implementation.

Dr. Heather Schofield is an Assistant Professor in the Perelman School of Medicine and The Wharton School and Vasanthi Pillai, PhD researcher in the Professorship of Behavioral Science for Disease Prevention and Health Care at the Technical University of Munich discuss a range of research areas including sleep, Ramadan fasting and its impact on the economic production in agriculture, loneliness and cognitive endurance. She briefly also talks about the Behavioral Development Lab (BDL) at Chennai which she co-founded with two other researchers. BDL focuses on integrating behavioural economics and development economics to understand the causes and consequences of poverty

Dr. Heather also delves deeper into how she picks a research idea and the intermediary methods that ultimately lead to the fruition of a research project. She focuses on her paper - The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor and how using actigraphy was central to tracking sleep patterns and motor movements among the respondents. 

She also discusses her study Ramadan Fasting and Agricultural Output” which studies overlaps between Ramadan and the labour-intensive portions of cropping cycles and provides a very interesting insight into the correlation between religiosity and growth. Given that this is a rather unexplored issue, religious influence is rarely analyzed when constructing/discussing labour policies

In conclusion, Dr. Heather also provides extremely valuable advice that researchers should be mindful of while conducting research. 

Dr. Charity Troyer Moore, Director for South Asia Economics Research at Yale University’s MacMillan Center along with Shambhavi Sawhney, Data Associate at Good Business Lab revisit the seminal paper - On her Own Account: How Strengthening Women's Financial Control Affects Labour Supply and Gender Norms. Dr. Charity along with co-authors Dr. Rohini Pande, Dr. Simone Schaner and Dr. Natalia Rigol focused on answering whether greater control over earned income incentivises women to work and influence gender norms. 

Dr. Charity recounts her experience while working in Delhi and noticing how public spaces were dominated by men. She describes at length her experience of working with the government and the bureaucratic hurdles the research team faced. Given her extensive field research experience, she discusses how the nature of survey questions may incentivise respondents to withhold information, thereby affecting the quality of data collected.

Furthermore, she discusses how the solution to spousal discordance on key issues at the household level is access to economic opportunities for women which leads to more bargaining power for them.

S. Anukriti, Research Economist at The World Bank unpacks the complexities of restrictive social norms and women’s social networks through her paper titled “Curse of the Mummy-ji: the influence of Mothers-in-law on Women in India” in an engaging conversation with Sakshi Hallan, a Research Analyst at The World Bank.

Using primary data from Jaunpur district in rural Uttar Pradesh, the study characterises the social networks of young married women. Adopting an instrumental variables approach, the study then shows how co-residence with a mother-in-law affects the daughter-in-law’s access to family planning and reproductive health resources by imposing restrictions on the daughter-in-law’s ability to form social connections outside of her household.

“It could be that you have a very well-intentioned programme but it overlooks how the mother-in-law will either perceive that program or will prevent the daughter-in-law from accessing it or maybe she is actually going to be a supportive influence”

 Anandi Mani walks the listeners through her paper - Sex Workers, Stigma, and Self-Image: Evidence from Kolkata Brothels along with  host Avantika Prabhakar, a PhD candidate in Economics at the University of Virginia.

The second episode focuses on the paper which studies the link between self-image and behavior among those who face stigma due to poverty and social exclusion. Anandi speaks of her experiences, collaborating with Dr. Smarajit Jana and Durbar; an organisation working for sex workers’ rights.

Using a randomized field experiment with sex workers in Kolkata (India), the paper examines whether a psychological intervention to mitigate the adverse effects of internalized stigma can induce behavior change. The study findings show significant improvements in participants' self-image, their savings choices, and health clinic visits. Anandi shares the potential of purely psychological interventions to improve the life choices and outcomes of marginalized groups.

Monica Biradavolu, Founder and CEO of QualAnalytics and host Ambika Chopra, Senior Research Associate at J-PAL South Asia discuss an approach which combines mixed-methods data collection and machine learning.

The host and the speaker discuss the paper ‘Using machine learning and qualitative interviews to design a five-question women’s agency index’. Together they highlight the challenges, success, and some interesting behind-the-scenes of the paper. Monica shares her experiences and how her perception of ‘women’s agency’ evolved while working on the paper.

"What seems like the perfect example of agency to one woman might not be the same for another. It’s important to acknowledge such subjectivities and caveats  in surveys when  gathering  pre-planned data."

Monica, on the basis of her field experiences, also talks about the scope of using ML in designing such short surveys.