Experiment In India Research Articles

Does the Invisible Hand Efficiently Guide Entry and Exit? Evidence from a Vegetable Market Experiment in India

Does the Invisible Hand Efficiently Guide Entry and Exit? Evidence from a Vegetable Market Experiment in India

Does CSR Reduce the Role of Dividends in Managing the Agency Problem? Evidence from a Quasi-Natural Experiment in India

Does CSR Reduce the Role of Dividends in Managing the Agency Problem? Evidence from a Quasi-Natural Experiment in India

Does CSR Reduce the Role of Dividends in Managing the Agency Problem? Evidence from a Quasi-Natural Experiment in India

Does CSR Reduce the Role of Dividends in Managing the Agency Problem? Evidence from a Quasi-Natural Experiment in India

Poverty-related bandwidth constraints reduce the value of consumption

Poverty confers many costs on individuals, primarily through direct material deprivation. We hypothesize that these costs may be understated: poverty may also reduce human welfare by decreasing the experiential value of what little the poor are able to consume via reduced bandwidth (cognitive resources)-exerting a de facto "tax" on the value of consumption. We test this hypothesis using a randomized controlled trial in which we experimentally simulate key aspects of poverty that impair bandwidth via methods commonly used in laboratory studies (e.g., memorizing sequences) and via introducing stressors commonly associated with life in poverty (e.g., thinking about financial security and experiencing thirst). Participants then engaged in consumption activities and were asked to rate their enjoyment of these activities. Consistent with our hypothesis, the randomly assigned treatments designed to reduce bandwidth significantly and meaningfully reduced ratings of the consumption activities, with the strongest effects on the consumption of food. Our results shed additional light on how the consequences of poverty on human welfare may compound and motivate future work on the full scope of returns to poverty alleviation efforts.

Bankruptcy law, creditors’ rights and financing choices: Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in India

ABSTRACT In this study, we examined the impact of changes in creditors’ rights on the financial policy of Indian firms in a quasi-natural experimental set up. Using the implementation of Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) in 2016 as an exogenous policy shock, we investigated the changes in quantitative (leverage) and qualitative (debt maturity and debt heterogeneity) aspects of the financial policy. Overall, our findings indicated that the strengthening of creditors’ rights had a negative impact on debt ratio and debt heterogeneity and a positive impact on long-term debt maturity structure. These results were observed mainly in those firms that had a high probability of bankruptcy in the pre-implementation period.

Gender inequality and caste: Field experimental evidence from India

Using a field experiment in India where patients are randomly assigned to rank among a set of physicians of the same gender but with different castes and years of experience, we show that the differences in patients’ physician choices are consistent with gender-based statistical discrimination. Labor market experience cannot easily overcome the discrimination that female doctors suffer. Further, we find that gender discrimination is greater for lower caste doctors, who typically suffer from caste discrimination. Given the increasing share of professionals from a lower caste background, our results suggest that the ‘intersectionality’ between gender and caste leads to increased gender inequality among professionals in India.

Bankruptcy law, creditors’ rights, and cash holdings: Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in India

In this study, we examined the impact of change in creditors’ rights on corporate cash holdings. By using the bankruptcy code implemented in India in 2015 as a quasi-natural experimental setting, we compared the changes in excess cash in the control and treatment groups during the pre- and post-regulation periods. Our analysis revealed that the treatment firms responded to the change in creditors’ rights by decreasing their excess cash, whereas no change was observed in the control firms. This finding confirms the substitution effect that exists between external debt finance and internal cash in financing firm investments.

Educative Interventions to Combat Misinformation: Evidence from a Field Experiment in India

Misinformation makes democratic governance harder, especially in developing countries. Despite its real-world import, little is known about how to combat misinformation outside of the United States, particularly in places with low education, accelerating Internet access, and encrypted information sharing. This study uses a field experiment in India to test the efficacy of a pedagogical intervention on respondents’ ability to identify misinformation during the 2019 elections (N = 1,224). Treated respondents received hour-long in-person media literacy training in which enumerators discussed inoculation strategies, corrections, and the importance of verifying misinformation, all in a coherent learning module. Receiving this hour-long media literacy intervention did not significantly increase respondents’ ability to identify misinformation on average. However, treated respondents who support the ruling party became significantly less able to identify pro-attitudinal stories. These findings point to the resilience of misinformation in India and the presence of motivated reasoning in a traditionally nonideological party system.

Stigma and misconceptions in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic: A field experiment in India

A hidden cost of the COVID-19 pandemic is the stigma associated with the disease for those infected and groups that are considered as more likely to be infected. This paper examines whether the provision of accurate and focused information about COVID-19 from a reliable source can reduce stigmatization. We carry out a randomized field experiment in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India, in which we provide an information brief about COVID-19 by phone to a random subsample of participants to address stigma and misconceptions. We find that the information brief decreases stigmatization of COVID-19 patients and certain groups such as religious minorities, lower-caste groups, and frontline workers (healthcare, police), and reduces the belief that infection cases are more prevalent among certain marginalized social and economic groups (Muslims, low caste, rural-poor population). We provide suggestive evidence that improved knowledge about the prevention and transmission of COVID-19 and reduced stress about the disease are important channels for the reduction in stigmatization.

Stigma and Misconceptions in the Time of the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Field Experiment in India

A hidden cost of the COVID-19 pandemic is the stigma associated with the disease for those infected and groups that are considered as more likely to be infected. This paper examines whether the provision of accurate and focused information about COVID-19 from a reliable source can reduce stigmatization. We carry out a randomized field experiment in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India, in which we provide an information brief about COVID-19 by phone to a random subsample of participants to address stigma and misconceptions. We find that the information brief decreases stigmatization of COVID-19 patients and certain groups such as religious minorities, lower-caste groups, and frontline workers (healthcare, police), and reduces the belief that infection cases are more prevalent among certain marginalized social and economic groups (Muslims, low caste, rural-poor population). We provide suggestive evidence that improved knowledge about the prevention and transmission of COVID-19 and reduced stress about the disease are important channels for these effects.

Coupling Labor Supply Decisions: An Experiment in India

Coupling Labor Supply Decisions: An Experiment in India

Gender Inequality and Caste: Field Experimental Evidence from India

Using a field experiment in India where patients are randomly assigned to rank among a set of physicians of the same gender but with different castes and years of experience, we show that the differences in patients’ physician choices are consistent with gender-based statistical discrimination. Labor market experience cannot easily overcome the discrimination that female doctors suffer. Further, we find that gender discrimination is greater for lower caste doctors, who typically suffer from caste discrimination. Given the increasing share of professionals from a lower caste background, our results suggest that the 'intersectionality' between gender and caste leads to increased gender inequality among professionals in India.

The Impact of Domestic Travel Bans on Covid-19 is Nonlinear in Their Duration

Domestic mobility restrictions to control the spread of COVID-19 are widespread in developing countries, and have trapped millions of migrant workers in hotspot cities. We show that bans can increase cumulative infections relative to a counterfactual san restrictions. A SEIR model shows bans’ impacts are nonlinear in duration. We empirically test this hypothesis using a natural experiment in India as well as data from China, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Africa, and Kenya. Although very short and long restrictions limit the spread of disease, moderately lengthy restrictions substantially increase infections. This suggests significant caution before imposing mobility restrictions in developing countries.

Can Technology Mitigate the Impact of Heat on Labor Productivity? Experimental Evidence from India

This paper analyses the role of technology in reducing heat-induced labor productivity losses. For this, we use a field experiment in India which randomized the use of productivity-augmenting digital mode versus classic paper-and-pen mode for conducting 2000 household surveys. Combining this experimentally induced variation in survey mode with day-to-day variation in temperature, we estimate the impact of survey mode on surveyor productivity as temperature rises. We find that as temperature rises and working conditions start to deteriorate, using digital-mode results in 5 percent higher surveyor-productivity compared to paper surveys. These relative productivity gains are mainly concentrated in extremely hot days - where the adverse impact of heat is likely at its peak. Further analysis shows that these impacts are not driven by differences in effort of surveyors or differences in the characteristics of respondents, thereby pointing to the role of technology in reducing the adverse effects of heat.

What Works for Water Conservation? Evidence from a Field Experiment in India

What Works for Water Conservation? Evidence from a Field Experiment in India

Consumer behaviour and climate action: insights from a Randomised Control Trial experiment in India's residential cooling sector

Air-conditioning is expected to be the largest consumer of residential energy in India in the future. Good consumer practices related to servicing air-conditioners (ACs) are critical for maintaining high operational efficiency of ACs and reducing leakages of high global warming potential (GWP) refrigerant gases. Little information, however, is available about the knowledge and practices of Indian AC consumers in terms of their operational practices. The Government of India's ‘India Cooling Action Plan (ICAP)’ recommends a massive consumer awareness program to inform and change AC user behaviour. Within this context of the ICAP that aims to provide access to sustainable cooling to its masses while minimising its environmental impacts, we undertake a survey and a Randomised Control Trial (RCT) experiment including Indian consumers. The survey and experiment together aim to understand the AC servicing behaviour of Indian consumers and experiment with alternative interventions to influence their behaviour and glean insights for India's energy and climate policies. The behavioural experiment is a unique and novel methodological contribution to India's cooling and climate debate. This research is a first-of-its-kind RCT study of Indian consumers' AC servicing practices. We find that the AC users' knowledge of the importance of preventive servicing is much lower than required. The interventions were successful in enhancing general awareness related to the importance of servicing practices, but not in enhancing technical knowledge related to specific good servicing practices. Our analysis shows that consumers who know about the economic benefit of servicing are more likely to undertake preventive servicing. Our findings highlight the presence of information asymmetry in the Indian residential cooling market and argue that this needs to be addressed for achieving the desired behavioural change and actions to mitigate climate change.

Increasing utilization of public health insurance programs: Evidence from an experiment in India

Abstract Unlike most social programs that involve regular delivery of benefits (such as subsidized food or monthly cash transfers), public health insurance programs are used based on need. When households face health shocks, they are often unaware of how to avail health insurance benefits. This is especially true for households in remote rural regions of developing countries where the likelihood of low awareness about public health insurance programs is higher due to low levels of literacy, distance from healthcare facilities and limited opportunities to learn from others’ experiences. Conventional information, education and communication (IEC) methods such as information pamphlets and outreach through health camps are not always effective in disseminating information to these hard-to-reach populations. In this paper, we present results from a quasi-experiment that uses village-level awareness meetings to disseminate information about a public health insurance program in 61 villages of a district in southern India. We find that awareness meetings, though relatively more expensive than conventional IEC methods, not only increase utilization of the program but also provide government agencies a unique opportunity to monitor the implementation of the program in remote locations.

Do Politicians Discriminate Against Internal Migrants? Evidence from Nationwide Field Experiments in India

AbstractRural‐to‐urban migration is reshaping the economic and social landscape of the Global South. Yet migrants often struggle to integrate into cities. We conduct countrywide audit experiments in India to test whether urban politicians discriminate against internal migrants in providing constituency services. Signaling that a citizen is a city newcomer, as opposed to a long‐term resident, causes incumbent politicians to be significantly less likely to respond to requests for help. Standard “nativist” concerns do not appear to explain this representation gap. We theorize that migrants are structurally disposed to participate in destination‐area elections at lower rates than long‐term residents. Knowing this, reelection‐minded politicians decline to cater to migrant interests. Follow‐up experiments support the hypothesis. We expect our findings to generalize to fast‐urbanizing democracies, with implications for international immigration too. Policywise, mitigating migrants’ de facto disenfranchisement should improve their welfare.

Your Secrets are Safe with Me? Audience Response to the Exit of Partners with Brokerage Advantage

The choice of a firm’s exchange partner is an important decision that affects the quality of resources a firm gets. These partners generate social capital by acting as conduits of information flow between a firm and the market. The position where these exchange partners are situated within the organizational network enables access to valuable proprietary information about firms. Hence, the exit of such an exchange partner holding information advantage is expected to invoke a response from the market participants. We tested this by exploiting a unique natural experiment in India where the government made it mandatory for firms to change their auditors at least once every 10 years. We observe a positive response when firms lose an exchange partner holding diverse network positions. However, the response to losing the same is negative when firms associated with the partner are tainted with earnings management or corporate illegality. It is observed that the market is keen to let go of exchange partners with an informational advantage. However, if an exchange partner with information advantage is exiting a tainted entity then the market reacts negatively due to possible fear of unearthing potentially harmful information about the firm in future.

Feedback spillovers across tasks, self-confidence and competitiveness

Does feedback on success in a task increase individuals' beliefs about their chance to succeed in a subsequent, unrelated, task? Does feedback on failure have a symmetric effect? Is the distortion of beliefs, possibly due to motivated beliefs, mistakes in updating or the feeling of having a lucky day, heterogeneous across individuals, in particular according to their status in the society? Conducting an artefactual field experiment in India with participants from different castes, we show that feedback on success in a forced competition in a first task increases winners' self-confidence and competitiveness in the subsequent task. Such feedback spillovers on self-confidence are asymmetric and heterogeneous according to status and more likely for already more confident individuals.