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• Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2020

  Food Security and Human Mobility During the COVID-19 Lockdown

  Prithwiraj Choudhury, Wesley W. Koo, Xina Li, Nishant Kishore, Satchit Balsari and Tarun Khanna

  During the COVID-19 crisis, millions of migrants around the world face food insecurity. This could force migrants to travel during the pandemic, exposing them to health risks and accelerating the spread of the virus. Anecdotal evidence demonstrates the importance of enforcing food security policies to tide the crisis. However, the effects of these policies on containing mobility during the crisis remain unknown. Using mobility data from Facebook, we demonstrate that a policy to guarantee food security that has attracted attention from the Supreme Court of India—portable ration cards—is related to lower mobility during India’s COVID-19 lockdown. Intra-state portable ration cards, which give migrants access to food when they move within their state, are associated with 12% lower intra-state mobility. This effect is particularly strong for states that have fully implemented the policy compared to states that have partially implemented it. However, inter-state portability of ration cards is not related to reduced inter-state mobility, suggesting frictions in implementing the policy across state borders. We also find that food distribution activities by ration shops and civil society actors at the local level are associated with reduced mobility both within states and across state borders. Our study provides generalizable lessons for policymakers around the world: food security policies are essential for helping migrants restrict their travel during the pandemic. Policy implementation requires lead time; therefore, central governments need to coordinate with local actors to increase food distribution to migrants in the immediate term.

  Keywords: COVID-19; migrants; food security; mobility; Health Pandemics; Food; Distribution; Policy; Global Range;

  Citation:

  Choudhury, Prithwiraj, Wesley W. Koo, Xina Li, Nishant Kishore, Satchit Balsari, and Tarun Khanna. "Food Security and Human Mobility During the COVID-19 Lockdown." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 20-113, May 2020.  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | May 2020

  Gavi and COVID-19: Pandemic of the Century

  Tarun Khanna and Sid Misra

  Gavi has helped immunize over 760 million children in the world's poorest countries over the past 20 years saving 13 million lives. How should Gavi respond to the need for a vaccine for the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic?

  Keywords: vaccine; Pandemics; healthcare; COVID-19; Health Pandemics; Health Care and Treatment; Emerging Markets; Crisis Management; Alliances;

  Citation:

  Khanna, Tarun, and Sid Misra. "Gavi and COVID-19: Pandemic of the Century." Harvard Business School Case 720-451, May 2020.  View Details

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• Article | Journal of Law, Economics & Organization | March 2020

  Do Managers Matter? A Natural Experiment from 42 R&D Labs in India

  Prithwiraj Choudhury, Tarun Khanna and Christos A. Makridis

  We exploit plausibly exogenous variation in the staggered entry of new managers into India’s 42 public R&D labs between 1994 and 2006 to study how alignment between the CEO and middle-level managers affect research productivity. We show that the introduction of new lab managers aligned with the national R&D reforms raised patenting and multinational licensing revenues by 58% and 75%, respectively, and scientist research productivity, including a 16%, 10%, 11%, and 22% increase in h-indices, number of coauthors, publications, and citations per scientist, respectively. Using natural language processing (NLP) techniques on the set of research abstracts produced among these scientists, we also find that overall mood and sentiment increased by 8.5% following the first managerial change.

  Keywords: incentives; innovation; productivity; Management; Alignment; Research and Development; Innovation and Invention; Performance Productivity; India;

  Citation:

  Choudhury, Prithwiraj, Tarun Khanna, and Christos A. Makridis. "Do Managers Matter? A Natural Experiment from 42 R&D Labs in India." Journal of Law, Economics & Organization 36, no. 1 (March 2020): 47–83.  View Details

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