Vidhya Soundararajan
I am a Research Director at CAFRAL. I am an applied micro economist, and is interested in studying the effects of various economic shocks (financial/trade/regulatory) on firm behaviour, performance, and productivity. My recent research looks at the impact of import competition on contract labor, informality, and firm performance, and the effects of employment protection laws on firm behaviour. I am also interested in research questions at the intersection of labor regulation, monopsony, labor markets, and firm’s financial performance. I obtained my Ph.D. in Applied Economics from Cornell University in 2016.
Research Areas
Firms, finance, labor economics, international economics
Working Papers
Import Competition, Formalization, and the Role of Contract Labor (with Pavel Chakraborty and Rahul Singh). accepted, World Bank Economic Review.
IZA discussion paper. Ideas for India.
Implementation of Labor Laws and Informality (with Ritam Chaurey and Gaurav Chiplunkar). R&R, JPE: microeconomics
SSRN working paper. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4204033
Chau, Nancy H. and Kanbur, Ravi and Soundararajan, Vidhya, Employer Power and Employment in Developing Countries. IZA Discussion Paper No. 15514, https://ssrn.com/abstract=4204332
Publications
Contract Employment as a Worker Discipline Device (with Arnab Basu and Nancy Chau), Journal of Development Economics, 149 (2021): 102601 IZA discussion paper.
Political activism as a determinant of strategic transfers: Evidence from an Indian public works program. (with Nancy Chau and Yanyan Liu) , European Economic Review 132 (2021): 103631. IZA discussion paper.
Estimating Small Area Population Density using Satellite Imagery: An Application to Sri Lanka (with Ryan Engstrom and David Newhouse). PLOS ONE, 15(8): e0237063. World Bank working paper.
Wage Fairness in a Subcontracted Labor Market (with Nancy Chau and Arnab Basu). Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. 168 (2019): 24-42. IZA discussion paper
Heterogeneous Effects of Imperfectly Enforced Minimum Wages in Low-Wage Labor Markets, Journal of Development Economics.140 (2019): 355-374.
Regional Inequality Compared: The Cases of India and Brazil (with Barbosa, Alexandre de Freitas and Gerry Rodgers). Indian Journal of Economics, Special Centennial Issue. Vol. XCVI, No. 383. 2016.
Construction workers: amending the laws for more safety. Economic and Political Weekly. Vol -XLVIII No. 23, June 08, 2013.
Books, Book Chapters, Other papers
“Contract Employment in Developing Countries,” (with Arnab K. Basu and Nancy Chau). Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics, K. Zimmermann (ed.). 2020.
Rodgers, Gerry and Soundararajan, Vidhya. 2016. Patterns of Inequality in the Indian Labour Market 19832012. Academic Foundation and Institute for Human Development.
What dimensions of women’s empowerment matter most for child nutrition: evidence using nationally representative data from Bangladesh. IFPRI Discussion paper 01192 (with Priya Bhagowalia, Purnima Menon, Agnes Quisumbing). permanent working paper
Media
How to Successfully Set a Minimum Wage in India, Oct 24 2018. Live Mint.
The MSME sector is critical in times of Covid-19, Apr 03, 2020. Hindustan Times
Disentangling the labour laws debate: What does the evidence really say? , May 25, 2020. Hindustan Times
Need focus on removing obstacles to ‘good’ jobs, Jan 20, 2021, Hindustan Times