We investigate how worker absenteeism and turnover affects firm productivity, and whether employing a mix of migrant and local workers can mitigate the costs of labour input volatility. Using detailed administrative data from a large textile firm in southern India, we develop and estimate a recursive framework in which a firm chooses its composition of resident and migrant workers to minimise expected costs while meeting a target level of output. Since output is generated through a concave production function, volatility in attendance reduces output and raises costs. Migrant workers are more consistently present and work longer hours, but they quit sooner than local workers and take longer to be replaced. We combine estimates of the attendance probabilities, exit hazard rates, and production function in a simulation to examine how hours worked, and output vary across different workforce compositions. The combination of migrant and local workers that minimizes input volatility, maximizes output per hour, and reduces labour costs involves a higher share of migrants than is currently observed at the firm. The ‘migrant premium’ is positive, suggesting that an additional migrant is more valuable to the firm at the margin. However, frictions in hiring and retaining migrants -- such as integrating them into the local community -- prevent the firm from operating at this optimal level. 

Assigning peers to the same team may improve productivity but may also increase the risk of coordinated absenteeism and turnover. I examine this trade-off using administrative data from a garment factory in India that employs young, female internal migrant workers. First, I estimate the effect of peers on productivity, addressing the reflection problem by using initial training test scores as an instrument. I find that a one percentage point increase in average peer productivity raises individual productivity by 2.3 percentage points, with stronger effects among peers from the same state. I then estimate a Cox proportional hazard model, which suggests that higher peer quit rates significantly increase a worker’s own risk of exit. These results highlight a trade-off: assigning peers to the same team may improve productivity but may also heighten the risk of turnover. I plan to estimate a structural model to quantify this trade-off.

This paper explores the welfare impacts of internal migration in India to explain why mobility remains low and static despite the spatial disparities in wages. In a quantitative analysis, I investigate the impact of migration on changes in consumption expenditure and self-reported well-being, using panel data from the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. I instrument for migration using village migration history to address potential endogeneity from migrant self-selection. The quantitative analysis illuminates an empirical puzzle – while migrants benefit from greater consumption growth compared to non-migrants, they fare no different in terms of subjective well-being. Based on these findings, I hypothesize that the consumption premium for migration may be necessary to compensate for the non-monetary disutility experienced in the destination. In a qualitative analysis, I test the hypothesis in a comparable sub-sample, interviewing rural respondents who had returned to their home locality despite the potential monetary returns to migration. Those who had previously migrated reported a lower subjective well-being in the destination, reflecting incorrect expectations regarding the non-monetary costs or the consumption premium associated with migration.

This paper examines the relationship between human capital and the gender gap in earnings using high-quality panel data spanning 12 years from Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam. We construct latent stocks of cognitive and non-cognitive skills measured during adolescence, and investigate the relationship between these skills and subsequent earnings acquired in early adulthood. Our results suggest that women earn significantly less than men in all four countries, even after accounting for differences in carefully constructed skill endowments. Interestingly, the gender gap in earnings decreases at higher cognitive skill levels in two out of the four countries. We find that these country-level variations are driven by differences in employment status as opposed to differences in earnings among the employed, and may reflect disparities in unpaid care work. We further explore how the gender earnings gap varies in the context of the COVID-19 crisis. While earnings decreased for both men and women during this period, the pre-pandemic relationships between human capital and gender gaps persisted and were strengthened.