In this paper, the authors examine the role of management in agricultural productivity, by evaluating a mobile-phone based agricultural advice service provided to farmers in India. Demand for advice is high; and advice changes practices, increasing yields in cumin (28%) … Read More
Publications
Adaptation to Persistent Drought & Groundwater Depletion: Evidence from Karnataka
This report presents findings from a study that seeks to address the gap in literature on the combined impacts of the multi-year drought and continuing groundwater depletion afflicting Karnataka on various household outcomes; and the adaptation strategies adopted by farmers … Read More
Does Women’s Banking Matter for Women? Evidence from Urban India
In many developing countries, women are prevented to take full advantage of the benefits of living in an urban area. In India, while one of every two men participates in the labor market, it is the case just for one … Read More
Natural Calamities and Social Safety Programs
This factsheet presents evidence from a recent IFMR LEAD, BIGD, IGC feasibility study on utilizing a mobile money platform to deliver cash transfers to vulnerable populations, in Northwest Bangladesh.
Open Government Data and Evidence-based Socio-economic Policy Research In India: An Overview
Public entities are one of the main producers of socio-economic data around the world. The Open Government Data (OGD) movement encourages these entities to make their data publicly available in order to improve transparency and accountability, which are the two … Read More
Understanding the Advice of Commissions-motivated Agents: Evidence from the Indian Life Insurance Market
In this paper, authors share findings from a series of field experiments to evaluate the quality of advice provided by life insurance agents in India. Agents overwhelmingly recommend unsuitable, strictly dominated products, which provide high commissions to the agent. Agents … Read More
Role of Temporal Diversity in Inferring Social Ties Based on Spatio-temporal Data
The last two decades have seen a tremendous surge in research on social networks and their implications. In this paper, the authors introduce DAIICT Spatio-Temporal Network (DSSN), a spatiotemporal dataset of 0.7 million data points of continuous location data logged … Read More
Providing New Homes for Climate Change Exiles. Climate Policy (Vol. 6:2)
Given a certain pre-existing commitment to sea-level rise due to the long thermal lags of the ocean system, several million people living in coastal areas and small islands will inevitably be displaced by the middle of the century. These climate … Read More
Financing Instruments for Addressing Climate Change and Pollution: Lessons Learned from Maharashtra
The State of Maharashtra has been a pioneer in implementing fiscal instruments to address air pollution and climate change related issues. In the process, the State has also generated significant revenues that were supposed to be utilized towards vehicular pollution … Read More
Environmental Literacy in Sikkim
This report presents the context and approach for a baseline assessment of environmental literacy conducted in the state of Sikkim.