Economic Research Methodologies

This graph published in The Economist shows how dramatically the #economics discipline has shifted toward empirical research at the expense of theory and modeling. It matches my observations as a researcher who does some economics but is not an economist in an Economics department. Empirical research is often really valuable, but the de-emphasis on theory and modeling has problematic consequences from my point of view. Empirical methods are backward-looking. They use data to learn about the world that was, whereas theory and modeling enable researchers to investigate worlds that could, or should, exist in the future. For example, you can use empirical methods to evaluate a public #policy that was implemented in the past, but not a novel policy idea that hasn't been tried yet in the real world (and may be very hard to experiment with on a small scale). For research on the #energytransition in particular, the heavy reliance on empirical work limits the ability of #economics to keep pace with real-world developments. Given the long timelines of collecting and releasing data, analyzing it, writing a paper, submitting and revising it several times, and getting it published, a lot of the empirical findings I see coming out now are based on data from 10+ years ago. Consider what has happened in the meantime to #solar PV and #battery costs, #energy policies, market designs, geopolitics, etc. Are some of the empirical findings being published today even relevant anymore? As a generalization, I find that researchers in #engineering are more optimistic about the success and pace of the energy transition than researchers in economics and business. There are several possible reasons for this, but I think that the increasing dominance of backward-looking empirical work (often based on old data) in economics is one of them. Empirical research is important and we should absolutely study the world through data. But ideally it should complement, rather than replace, theory and modeling.

I have spent years studying labor history and economics. And one claim keeps getting repeated incorrectly. “Women fought for the right to work.” No. That’s not what happened. Women have always worked. The real fight was about something far less romantic and far more important. Getting paid. Let’s break the claim. Assumption: Women were historically excluded from work. False. Women worked in farms, households, textile units, informal markets, and family businesses for centuries. They produced economic value long before modern jobs existed. What they lacked wasn’t work. It was recognition. And compensation. During the Industrial Revolution, women made up a large share of factory labor. Yet they were paid significantly less than men for similar output. Unpaid domestic labor? Even more invisible. Cooking, cleaning, child-rearing : All essential to the economy. All counted as “not work.” Convenient, right? Conclusion: The movement was not about entering the workforce. It was about redefining what counts as work — and who gets paid for it. That’s a very different battle. And it’s still ongoing. Even today, wage gaps persist. Unpaid labor still disproportionately falls on women. And many forms of work remain undervalued simply because of who performs them. So the next time someone says “Women wanted the right to work” Ask a better question: Work was never the issue. Why wasn’t it worth paying for?

Is it really ‘non-work’ if it consumes your entire day? As a housewife with a kid, I can tell you firsthand how difficult it is to balance personal and professional life. Yet, much of the work that women do, especially at home, goes uncounted. More than 50% of women in rural and urban areas are engaged in domestic duties. And for over 80% of them, the reason for not joining the formal labor force is personal commitments like child care. But the main concern is this work is often not considered “real work.” Women spend an average of five hours per day on unpaid domestic activities, compared to just 1.5 hours for men. Yet, none of this counts toward the official labor statistics. We cook, clean, care for the elderly, help kids with studies, and manage the home, but why does this vital contribution remain invisible? If we start recognizing domestic work as part of the labor force, we could redefine women’s participation in the workforce and bridge the gender gap. Because, let’s face it, just because it doesn’t come with a paycheck doesn’t mean it’s not hard work. It’s time we counted every effort, every hour, and every contribution. Only then will we truly understand the full extent of women’s labour in our society? #workingwomen #workingmoms #womenatwork #worklifebalance

After a long wait, the working paper for the Many-Economists Project: The Sources of Researcher Variation in Economics. We had 146 teams perform the same research three times, each time with less freedom. What source of freedom leads to different choices and results? https://lnkd.in/d5CMMjhf In general, we're all aware that when we perform research, there are a zillion decisions to make. Sometimes there's a right and a wrong way to do things. Sometimes it's more arbitrary. No shocker that we have "researcher degrees of freedom." But in econ, which of those DOFs are important? We have researchers estimate the impact of DACA on employment rates for those eligible for DACA. At first they can do it however they like. Second they have to use a shared research design. Third it's a shared design AND we clean your data for you. What happens? We find huge differences in the methods used, including just how big the sample sizes of "eligible people" are. But compared to other many-analyst projects, variation in the actual effects is fairly small - an IQR of just 3.1pp in the effect size, although there are outliers. As we add more restrictions, things get interesting. Forcing a shared research design actually leads to *less* agreement on effect size (although more on sample size). This is partially driven by improper adherence to the specified research design. The thing that moves the needle is cleaning everyone's data, which leads to a narrowing in the effect distribution, even as modeling choices continue to differ. This makes sense - we don't teach or discuss standardized/best data-cleaning practices. So there's big variance in how we do it. Other things don't matter at all - researcher background or experience, for example. We also had a peer review element that seemed to have no effect whatsoever on later stages of research! The paper is full of descriptives and I hope you check it out. The author list is very long and I won't even attempt to tag everyone, but please do tag yourself on this thread if you're an author. Big thanks to the Sloan foundation for funding.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘁𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝗮𝘀 𝗮𝗻 𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗰 𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗮𝗹𝘆𝘀𝘁 The assumption that university research fuels local economic growth is seductive. But is it always true? My new research with Han Wang —just out in Regional Studies— on the local economic impact of Swedish higher education institutions (HEIs) suggests otherwise. Sweden has invested heavily in HEI research capacity. Many of its universities and research institutions have certainly reached world-class standards in terms of research. Yet, at the local level, their economic impact has been underwhelming. No clear link exists between research intensity and local income levels; in some cases, the relationship is even negative. The expansion of new HEIs, particularly following decentralisation, has not automatically translated into economic dynamism. A crucial factor contributing to this modest outcome is the disconnect between academic research and the needs of local businesses. Firms are more likely to collaborate when research aligns with their market priorities. However, Swedish universities often prioritise independent academic pursuits over industry engagement, partly because researchers retain intellectual property rights. Without robust incentives or structured outreach programs, partnerships falter, and the role of universities in driving local economic growth remains limited. Of course, economic benefits may well extend beyond the immediate region, but assessing that impact would require further research. What this study makes clear, however, is that simply increasing research funding does not guarantee local prosperity. Without stronger ties between universities and businesses, knowledge remains an untapped resource rather than a driver of economic change. For a more detailed analysis, refer to the full article at: https://lnkd.in/dAjdWU4Y

For the longest time, I have been bothered by the tokenism around Women's Day. If it's about taking a pause and truly seeing women and noticing how they are different, and not the "other", I am all onboard. It's just the performativity of roses, cards, special deals and the pinks that really gets me. For 10 years now, I have been breaking my head on the invisibilisation and otherisation of women, in different ways. Over the last few years especially, some of us committed to research about women at the last mile - the millions still invisible to the formal economy and financial services: “Women of Bharat” maps the diversity of women and defines ~15 distinct segments in rural and urban India. And these are large segments! (~3.8M women shop owners in villages earning ~₹8K/month, ~4M in cities earning ~₹20K — and that's not even the largest segment!) Almost all segments are still financially underserved. “Financial Inclusion for Rural Transformation” was led by some of India’s finest economists and tracked 30,000+ rural households over 15 years. Despite all policy action women are still 11.3% less likely than men to own and use a bank account. But when the first woman in a family gets an account, her share of household resources jumps 46%! “She's legenDAIRY” made the invisibility visceral. Women are 70% of the dairy workforce, do 60% of the labour, but the husband gets paid. She wakes at 4am and her name isn't on the cattle deed. We identified parameters on which loans related data about women is(nt) captured/reported by FIs and RBI. We’re simply submitting that "Gender Disaggregation of Data" isnt hard but absolutely critical to make real progress towards women’s financial inclusion. More on this soon.   And then there are the “People of Bharat” portraits - real women, real lives. Imli from Ambikapur, Pinky from Aurangabad, Veena from Jorhat, Pushpa, Jayashri, Revaben - each a full, complex, striving person but largely invisible to the systems designed to serve them. And we took the research all the way to action. Our toolkits like “The Trust Toolkit” not just drew upon our research but heavily drew on the exceptional work of partners like Swadhaar FinAccess and Scaling Trust. Last I checked, we have coached 300+ founders and executives from financial services on building women centricity into their products. All of this coaching based on hard research backed toolkits. This is only a fraction of our efforts towards making women at the last mile visible to and understood by bankers, insurers, fintechs, and policymakers and the financial services industry. All of this in service on making women centric finance not just a social responsibility. Tokenism may leave you with a warm fuzzy feeling. Hard work and pushing boundaries may leave you with a blazing fire in the belly. When it comes of women at the last mile, we must all choose the latter. Happy Women’s Day! Most pages hyperlinked, if LinkedIn allows! All studies open access. 

From commenting on the news to making the news — this one feels different. ✨ Delighted to have spoken about our latest research on News9 & Sneha Koshy — because this time, it wasn’t just analysis of someone else’s data. It was our own. Delhi. The national capital. A city overflowing with venture capital, startups, and a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem. And yet — 4 out of 5 women in Delhi are not okay when it comes to workforce participation. That is the headline finding from a study we, at Nikore Associates, are proud to have led as research partner, commissioned by YFLO Delhi and the The Vedica Scholars Programme for Women — a rigorous, district-level look at educated women’s workforce participation across the city. What struck me most was the missing middle — women with bachelor’s degrees, from middle-income households, who are neither in distress employment like lower-income women, nor insulated by professional degrees. They are simply… out of the labour force. Care work is a major reason. And the math explains the trade offs: if a salary of ₹20,000–30,000 is entirely consumed by childcare costs at the same price point, the rational economic choice becomes dropping out of the workforce altogether. Less than 5% expect workplace childcare facilities. And they can’t even imagine “taking help” from their husbands! Family support for childcare still means mothers and mothers in law pitching in! This isn’t a story of ambition. It’s a story of structural failure — of care infrastructure, of opportunity, of policy design. We moved beyond surface explanations and listened to women across the city. The insights call for a deeper conversation on how work, care, safety, and opportunity are structured in urban India. Grateful to YFLO Delhi and Vedica for trusting Nikore Associates to anchor this research — and to News9 for the platform to take it to a wider audience. So proud of my team led by Abhishek Choudhary and Mozaien Tak, and to Dr. Upasana Diwan & RUKMINI DEVI INSTITUTE OF ADVANCED STUDIES (RDIAS) for being our survey partner! The data is out. The conversation has just begun. #WomensWorkforce #GenderEconomics #Delhi #FemaleLaborForceParticipation #CareEconomy #WomenAndWork #GenderPolicy

As someone who cares deeply about equity and empowerment, I’ve been reflecting on the latest findings from India’s 2024 Time Use Survey-and the numbers are both eye-opening and personal. Here are some facts that hit close to home: 🔴Women still carry the invisible load On average, women in India spend nearly 5 hours a day on unpaid domestic work. Men? Just 1.5 hours. That’s a gap of over 3 hours, every single day. 🔴Caregiving is a silent commitment Women dedicate about 12-16 hours daily to caring for children, elders, or the sick-almost double the time men spend. It’s a labour of love, but also a labour that rarely gets acknowledged. 🔴Most women do unpaid work, every day: 84% of women participate in unpaid household activities daily, compared to less than half of men. 🔴Work outside the home doesn’t lessen the load Even as more women join the workforce (now 1 in 4 women aged 15–59), their unpaid responsibilities at home barely change. The “second shift” is very real. 🔴The economic value is enormous, but invisible If we counted women’s unpaid work, it would add up to 15–17% of India’s GDP. Yet, it’s rarely recognized in policy or paychecks. 👉This isn’t just data-it’s our reality These numbers reflect what so many of us see in our own families, communities, and workplaces. The expectation that women will “just handle it” is deeply ingrained, but it’s time we talk about it openly. ✅ Recognizing and redistributing unpaid work isn’t just about fairness-it’s about unlocking potential, well-being, and opportunity for millions of women (and for society as a whole). 📌Have you noticed this imbalance in your own life or workplace? ▶What small changes could we all make to share the load more equally? Let’s work together to make the invisible, visible. May 1 is Labor Day. Its time to recognize the unpaid labour of women all over the first world. But if her labour stopped for a day, the world would too. Pic - Me and My trainer on my internship. (athavathu Mom and me before my wedding) #GenderEquity #WomenAtWork #UnpaidLabour #Leadership #Equality #India

A year ago today, I defended my doctoral research on the narratives of nine Black women who authentically shared their experiences navigating a white-dominant environment. I’ll never forget the impact this research has had on my life and my journey as a practitioner. Also, I am so thankful to the countless Black women who have made it their life’s work to continue to share our narratives so that scholars like me can have someone to look up to, lean in on, and build from. Happy Defense Day to me 🎉 check out a synopsis of my work below. 💜 Abstract Within the context of white-dominant workplaces, research shows that Black women experience various levels of visibility ranging from invisibility to hypervisibility. These variances often cause them to result in utilizing tactics to negotiate their identities to fit their organization's needs. This research explores this negotiation and the costs, benefits, and sacrifices that occur when Black women participate in identity negotiation. By analyzing their lived experiences through the use of critical participatory action research along with a critical phenomenology approach, this research frames the intersection between visibility, whiteness, and the impacts of experiencing a culture that promotes the need for Black women to give up pieces of themselves at the expense of their agency and authenticity. #Blackwomen #IdentityNegotiation #CodeSwitching #Visibility #Sacrifice #CulturalContractsTheory #BlackFeministTheory #OrganizationalCulture #ActionResearch #BlackWomenIntheWorkplace #DEI

We've found the real reason women are leaving the workforce, and it is not what most people think. We have all heard the popular narrative. Women leave because they prioritise family. They opt out and become less committed. Our survey of 200+ working women across India tells a very different story.  - 58% have left or considered leaving a job because of inadequate caregiving or childcare support.  - 44% experience burnout very often, not occasionally, not sometimes. Very often.  - 71% have considered quitting due to unresolved health concerns that their workplace never addressed. These women don't lack ambition, do they? They lack support. They could be managing PCOS and thyroid conditions in silence. They probably returning from maternity leave into workplaces with no structured reintegration. They might be caring for young children and elderly parents simultaneously, with no flexibility, no acknowledgement, and no path forward that did not require sacrificing their health to keep their job.   This is not a fringe finding. The McKinsey and Lean In Women in the Workplace 2024 report, which is based on data from over 280 organisations and insights from more than 15,000 employees, found that despite gains in representation at senior levels, women continue to see their gender as a barrier to advancement, and the workplace has not gotten meaningfully better for women over the past decade. The same report notes that women are far more likely to handle most childcare and housework than their partners, even when both work full time, and women who shoulder the bulk of family responsibilities report lower mental wellbeing and more stress.    The compounding of health pressures, caregiving responsibilities, and unsupportive workplace structures does not just affect individual women. It affects retention, team performance, institutional knowledge, and the diversity of leadership pipelines. The cost is not abstract.   At Humm Care, we keep coming back to one truth: women are not choosing to leave. They are being pushed out, slowly and quietly, by workplaces that were never designed with them in mind. The research, both ours and global, is overwhelming on this point. The good news is that this is fixable. Women told us exactly what they need: flexibility, confidential access to specialist care, caregiving support, and managers who are trained to lead with empathy rather than assumption. The solutions exist. What is needed now is the will to act on them. If this resonated, share it with someone who leads a team or shapes workplace policy. That's where change starts!