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Teacher Truancy in India: The Role of Culture, Norms and Economic Incentives

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  • Basu, Kaushik

    (Cornell U)

Abstract

Social scientists often emphasize how ‘culture’ and ‘social norms’ can be important determinants of economic behavior and development. This raises questions of the relative importance of economic incentives and these other more social variables, like culture, and of how they interact with one another. This paper uses some recent stylized facts concerning the problem of teacher truancy in India and constructs a simple model to illustrate the interaction between the ‘economic’ and the ‘social.’ It discusses how this enriches our view of policy-making for improving economic performance. [This is text of the Vera Anstey Memorial Lecture, delivered by the author at the 88th Annual Conference of the Indian Economic Association in Visakhapatnam, on 28 December 2005.] BREAD Working Paper 112. [The paper will appear in a forthcoming issue of Indian Economic Journal.]
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  • Basu, Kaushik, 2006. "Teacher Truancy in India: The Role of Culture, Norms and Economic Incentives," Working Papers 06-03, Cornell University, Center for Analytic Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecl:corcae:06-03
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    1. Assar Lindbeck & Sten Nyberg & Jörgen W. Weibull, 1999. "Social Norms and Economic Incentives in the Welfare State," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(1), pages 1-35.
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    6. Basu, Kaushik, 2003. "Prelude to Political Economy: A Study of the Social and Political Foundations of Economics," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199261857, Decembrie.
    7. Basu, Kaushik & Genicot, Garance & Stiglitz, Joseph E., 2000. "Unemployment and Wage Rigidity When Labor Supply Is a Household Decision," Working Papers 00-10, Cornell University, Center for Analytic Economics.
    8. Basu, Kaushik, 2005. "Labor Laws and Labor Welfare in the Context of the Indian Experience," Working Papers 05-17, Cornell University, Center for Analytic Economics.
    9. Michael Kremer & Nazmul Chaudhury & F. Halsey Rogers & Karthik Muralidharan & Jeffrey Hammer, 2005. "Teacher Absence in India: A Snapshot," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 3(2-3), pages 658-667, 04/05.
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    12. Kaushik Basu (ed.), 2004. "India's Emerging Economy: Performance and Prospects in the 1990s and Beyond," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262025566, December.
    13. Kaushik Basu, 2006. "Labor Laws and Labor Welfare in the Context of the Indian Experience," Economic Studies in Inequality, Social Exclusion, and Well-Being, in: Alain Janvry & Ravi Kanbur (ed.), Poverty, Inequality and Development, chapter 0, pages 183-204, Springer.
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    1. Edlund, Lena & Ku, Hyejin, 2011. "The African Slave Trade and the Curious Case of General Polygyny," MPRA Paper 52735, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 16 Dec 2013.
    2. Vimala Ramachandran & Suman Bhattacharjea & K M Sheshagiri, 2011. "Primary School Teachers: The Twists and Turns of Everyday Practice," Working Papers id:4303, eSocialSciences.

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