Early Career Researchers Series

Early Career Researchers Series, building on the success and intellectual foundation of our previous project, “Expanding the Frontier of Economics 1.0,” we are thrilled to announce the launch of a new webinar series.

Objective

The primary objective of this webinar series is to explore and expand the boundaries of economic thought, with a particular focus on the Global South. By doing so, we aim to foster a deeper understanding of various critical issues shaping our world today.

Key Themes

The webinar will cover a wide range of topics, including but not limited to:

1. Health: Investigating the economic aspects of healthcare systems, public health policies, and the socio-economic determinants of health in developing countries.
2. Inequality: Exploring the root causes and consequences of economic inequality, focusing on income disparity, access to resources, and social mobility.
3. Social Protection: Evaluating social protection mechanisms, their effectiveness, and their role in reducing poverty and vulnerability in the Global South.
4. Climate Change: Analyzing the economic impacts of climate change, adaptation strategies, and sustainable development practices.
5. Decolonial Thoughts: Engaging with decolonial perspectives to understand and critique the legacy of colonialism in contemporary economic practices and theories.
6. Planning Issues: Addressing urban and rural planning challenges, infrastructure development, and policy-making processes that affect economic growth and development.

Format

The webinar series will include monthly sessions featuring presentations by selected young scholars and early career researchers.

Each session will include:

• Presentations: Short presentations of research findings (30-45 min)
• Q&A Sessions: Opportunities for attendees to engage with the presenters. (15-20 min)

Webinar Topics:

Session 1: Transportation, employment and gender norms: Evidence from Indian cities

Dr Arun Balachandran, Post-doctoral Research Scientist at the Columbia Aging Center, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University in New York.

June 20, 2024, 6.30 PM Indian Standard Time

• Exploring how labor market opportunity structure limit women’s labor market participation.
• Analyzing the role of transport infrastructure in gender-gap in labour force participation and its variations by gender-norms across communities in urban India.
• ⁠India Human Development Survey and city-level data on transport infrastructure are used.
• ⁠The causal effects of differential employment status of women and men are analyzed against the size and quality of transport in Indian cities.
• ⁠Exploring the Interaction effects to understand varying impacts of transport on employment by gender-context in communities.

Session 2: Analysis of Returns to Education-Occupation Mismatch in Presence of Informality Evidence from Urban Labour market  in India

September 27, 2024, 6.30 PM Indian Standard Time

Speaker: Dr. Ravikiran Naik, Assistant Professor – of Economics. FLAME University, India. He received his Doctorate Degree in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and has completed his master’s in Economics from Gokhale Institute of Politics & Economics-Pune. He was also a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), Bangalore. Prof. Ravikiran has over nine years of work experience and was associated with the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA), Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), and Christ University- Lavasa. He is an applied economist by training and has a keen interest in the research areas involving Labor Economics, Informal employment and Entrepreneurship, Intergenerational economic mobility, and economics of education. He has published peer review articles in national & international journals. He has also co-authored a book titled ‘Women Entrepreneurs in The New Indian Middle Class: Macro & Micro Perspectives.

Abstract

This study examines the impact of education-occupation mismatch (EOM) on wages in India’s urban labor market, where informal employment is widespread. While it is generally accepted that higher education leads to higher earnings, concerns arise when the number of highly educated individuals outpaces the availability of jobs requiring their qualifications, potentially leading to credentialism rather than a more skilled workforce. Our research fills a gap in the existing literature by analyzing the combined effects of EOM and labor market informality on earnings. We estimate the returns to over-education, under-education, and adequate education across both formal and informal sectors. The findings indicate that returns to education are consistently lower in the informal sector compared to the formal sector. Workers with adequate education receive significantly higher returns in both sectors, while those with under-education suffer wage penalties regardless of their employment type. The returns to education also vary across the wage distribution: in the formal sector, adequate education yields higher returns in lower wage segments but decreases in the upper segments. Conversely, in the informal sector, returns increase steadily across the wage distribution, with the highest returns in the top decile, suggesting a convergence with the formal sector at the upper end. Additionally, returns to over-education rise along the wage distribution in both sectors, while returns to under-education remain consistently lower. These results hold across different econometric models and definitions of informality. The study underscores a significant wage penalty for workers in the informal sector who have invested in education, suggesting that policies aimed at reducing labor market informality could help mitigate EOM and decrease the associated earnings penalties.