The project studies the existing market structures that affect day labourers in Pakistan, focusing on easing search frictions and matching costs.
This project aims to understand how to strengthen state institutions by improving citizen trust and perceptions of state-delivered services, particularly dispute resolution (e.g., criminal and justice-delivery services).
This pilot intervention is designed to improve service delivery and political accountability. The intervention connects legislative representatives and rural voters in on-going two-way communication using Interactive Voice Response (IVR) technology available through any cell phone.
The project aims to conduct rigorous impact evaluation for two major initiatives designed to address challenges faced on basic legal functions and ensure women’s de facto rights in two key areas: their legal share of inheritance and key rights in marriage.
CERP-based researchers engaged with the Government of Punjab to deploy a methodology for measuring value for money of procured generic goods and developed a web portal named Punjab Online Procurement System (POPS). CERP researchers also designed and evaluated policy interventions to improve performance of procurement officers.
In South Asia, three quarters of ultra-poor households report casual labour as the dominant form of income. In urban areas, short-term construction jobs are found through social connections or by going to a “labour stand”, essentially an intersection where low-skilled labourers wait each morning for employers looking to hire for a day or two. While spot markets like this are generally thought of to be the free-market ideal, these markets appear to be rife with failures including information asymmetries, wage rigidity and large search costs for employees and employers. The presence of these frictions often increases dependence on social relationships.
This project seeks to answer why exactly employers hire workers from their social network, what are the mechanisms at play and, in response to variation in the hiring process, how do workers change their investment in social capital versus productivity?
These questions will be tested through an RCT with a construction firm in Pakistan. Different aspects of the hiring process between contractors and labourers will be varied while observing the resulting effect on hiring patterns by contractors, labourer productivity and laborer investment in their social capital.
2019 – Ongoing
International Growth Center (IGC)
Private Enterprise Development in Low-Income Countries (PEDL)
Productivity, Social and Professional Networks, Market Frictions, Management and Organisations