The Indian banknote demonetization in 2016 was one of the most significant international events of that year. Overnight, 86% of Indian currency in circulation was declared invalid unless exchanged for new bills. The sudden and unexpected demonetization constituted a...

We use the construction of India's Golden Quadrangle (GQ) central highway network, together with comprehensive loan data drawn from the Reserve Bank of India, to investigate the interaction between infrastructure development and financial sector depth. We identify a...

A debt trap occurs when someone takes on a high-interest rate loan and is barely able to pay back the interest, and thus perpetually finds themselves in debt (often by refinancing). Studying such practices is important for understanding financial decision-making of...

India's most recognized celebrity chef Sanjeev Kapoor has been an integral part of the country's food industry since 1993. As a celebrity chef, Kapoor enjoyed a 17-year run of his hit TV cooking show 'Khana Khazana', published more than 100 cookbook titles in multiple...

The 1994 discovery of arsenic in ground water in Bangladesh prompted a massive public health effort to test all tubewells in the country and convince nearly one-quarter of the population to switch to arsenic-free drinking water sources. According to numerous sources,...

A text that has found renewed interest among scholars of early modern India is the Persian compendium of religion called Dabistān-i Ma āhib. Written between 1645 and 1658, the Dabistān presents a lively ethnographic and historical account of customs and habits of...

Mahindra Finance is a non-banking lender operating mainly in the rural and semi-urban areas of India. Set up in 1991, the company had grown to become a market leader with assets of $8.5 billion and a presence in 3,30,000 villages across India. Since most of Mahindra's...

Developing countries increasingly use biometric identification technology to improve the reliability of administrative information and deliver social services more efficiently. This paper exploits the random placement of biometric devices in tuberculosis (TB) treatment...

Which managerial skills, traits, and practices matter most for productivity? How does the observability of these features affect how appropriately they are priced into wages? Combining two years of daily, line-level production data from a large Indian garment firm with...

Internationalizing firms often find developing host-country resources challenging as they simultaneously attempt to replicate the resources that worked well in their home country and adapt them to fit the context of the host country. On the basis of a longitudinal...

Why do some entrepreneurs thrive while others fail? We explore whether the advice entrepreneurs receive about managing their employees influences their startup's performance. We conducted a randomized field experiment in India with 100 high-growth technology firms...

As 2018 drew to a close, India prepared to once again carry out the largest democratic exercise in human history, as in less than six months more than 850 million eligible voters would have the chance to choose their representatives to the Lok Sabha—the country’s lower...

We conduct a field experiment at an entrepreneurship bootcamp to investigate whether interaction with proximate peers shapes a nascent startup team's performance. We find that teams whose members lack prior ties to others at the bootcamp experience peer effects that...

Teaching Note for HBS No. 715-414.

In 2015, a surprise presidential election result seemed to imperil Chinese investments in Sri Lanka, which were associated with China’s Belt and Road Initiative to build global infrastructure. In the previous decade, China had undertaken two major projects in the...

I like to offer seminars on Case Method Teaching to professors who would like to improve their case-method teaching.

Founded in 1963 by Bhavarlal Jain (Bhau), who believed in “providing solutions for every problem,” Jain Irrigation in 2018 had a global footprint and $1.1 billion in revenue. Bhau had insisted that his business add value to farmers' lives and promote sustainable...

In January 2018, Husk Power had just raised $20 million to scale operations for a second time. From 2007 through 2013, Husk built 80 biomass waste (primarily rice husk from rice mills) plants that provided electricity to 250,000 villagers and shop owners spread across...

This article contributes to the literature on political risk in business and economic history by examining both new perspectives (risk encountered by companies domestically, rather than risk for foreign investors) and new settings (emerging markets economies in Latin...

Background Improving patients’ tuberculosis (TB) knowledge is a salient component of TB control strategies. Patient knowledge of TB may encourage infection prevention behaviors and improve treatment adherence. The purpose of this study is to examine how TB knowledge...