There has been increasing 'flexibilisation', in the formal labour markets of both developed and developing countries. Labour institutions and globalisation are often taken to be causally related to this phenomenon, but the evidence remains inconclusive. In India, there has been an increasing use of temporary workers employed through contractors (contract workers), who are not represented by trade unions and who do not fall under the purview of the labour laws that are applicable to directly employed workers (formal workers) in formal labour markets. We develop a model of labour demand where firms choose a mix of contract workers and formal workers, rather than formal workers alone. Then we test the model using state-industry-year panel data for Indian manufacturing from 1998 to 2005. We find that both pro-worker labour institutions and increased import penetration lead to greater use of contract labour in Indian manufacturing.
Information and communication technologies (ICTs) provide new opportunities and new challenges for developing economies. ICT adoption, digitalization and automation provide formidable new opportunities in terms of increased efficiency and productivity, the creation of new services and occupations and increased connectivity among agents. However, the extent to which developing economies are able to reap these potential benefits is contingent on a set of other social, economic and institutional dimensions. While economic growth and rising productivity are the major expected outcomes of digitalization, digital divides and related forms of exclusion and inequalities are commonly observed too. India, one of the largest economies in the world, with a remarkable pace of ICT diffusion, represents a relevant case to investigate the impacts of digitalization on economic development. The present book collects a series of novel contributions on this theme, studying the Indian experience in an international crosscountry perspective. This introductory chapter presents background information on the Indian case, introduces the main themes on the relationships between ICTs, socioeconomic development and digital divides and provides a summary and road map to the chapters included in the book. On the whole, the main message of this book is that the impact of ICTs is contingent upon other assets, capabilities and institutional conditions. National policies should therefore not only promote digitalization as such but also ensure its co-evolution and complementarity with a variety of other country-specific factors.
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