A joint project of Professor Nishith Prakash, has been awarded funding from The Danish Council for Independent Research. The award is approximately $600,000 USD.

Details of the project can be found below.

Project title: The Economic and Behavioral Impacts of Anti-Discrimination Policies in the Context of Caste: Learning from Household Surveys, Lab Experiments and Randomized Controlled Trials
P.A.: Nabanita Datta Gupta (Aarhus School of Business)
Institution: Aarhus University
Amount: Danish Kr. 3,478,625

Recent years have seen an increased interest in the economic and non-economic impacts of affirmative action policies across the social sciences, with a majority of the work focusing on developed economies. Unresolved issue relating to the effective design of such policy are how to minimize stigma effects and stereotyping effects, at what ages interventions should take place, and whether these policies carry disincentives for skill investment and if there are any effects on the majority. Affirmative action policy has been adopted in a larger scale in India than elsewhere, with a nation-wide program of reservation (quotas) of new jobs, political seats and slots in higher educational institutions for the historically discriminated lowest-caste groups in Indian society. Yet, surprisingly little evidence exists on the causal effects of reservation, in particular, whether such policies better the outcomes of the intended groups more than they would have in the absence of such programs. The aim of the research project is to bring reliable empirical evidence on the economic and behavioral implications of anti-discrimination policies in employment and education, across both children and adults, to better understand the linkages of policies, caste and education and labor market outcomes across the life-cycle, and to find ways to erase persistent inter-group inequalities. The findings are also expected to shed light on current Danish and European research on increasing social segmentation, polarization and out-group discrimination due to migration. 

For more information, please see the following link: http://fivu.dk/en/research-and-innovation/funding-programmes-for-research-and-innovation/who-has-received-funding/2013/grants-from-the-danish-council-for-independent-research-social-sciences-fse-may-2013?set_language=en&cl=en

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