IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/28462.html

A Division of Laborers: Identity and Efficiency in India

Author

Listed:
  • Guilhem Cassan
  • Daniel Keniston
  • Tatjana Kleineberg

Abstract

Workers’ social identity affects their occupation, and therefore the structure and prosperity of the aggregate economy. We estimate a general equilibrium Roy model of this phenomenon in the Indian caste system, where work and identity are particularly intertwined. New data on occupation, wages, and caste’s traditional occupations and social status show that workers are over-represented in their traditional occupations and under-represented in socially higher or lower occupations. We consider counterfactuals removing castes’ hierarchical and occupational links. Despite more efficient human capital allocation, aggregate output gains are small–in some counterfactuals negative–due to weaker caste networks and reduced learning across generations.

Suggested Citation

  • Guilhem Cassan & Daniel Keniston & Tatjana Kleineberg, 2021. "A Division of Laborers: Identity and Efficiency in India," NBER Working Papers 28462, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28462
    Note: DEV IFM LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w28462.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Suanna Oh, 2023. "Does Identity Affect Labor Supply?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 113(8), pages 2055-2083, August.
    2. Boken, Johannes & Gadenne, Lucie & Nandi, Tushar & Santamaria. Marta, 2022. "Community Networks and Trade," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1442, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    3. Goraya, Sampreet Singh, 2023. "How does caste affect entrepreneurship? birth versus worth," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 116-133.
    4. Bharathi, Naveen & Malghan, Deepak & Rahman, Andaleeb, 2023. "Ethnic diversity and economic development with spatial segregation," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 222(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • E71 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on the Macro Economy
    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
    • J62 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Job, Occupational and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28462. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.