Case studies
IIM Ahmedabad Case IIMA/ECO366EX , with Vertika Bansal, Shivam Kumar and Priyanka Sarda.
The case analyses the impact of introducing fee caps on education services in the Indian state of Gujarat. Prior to 2017, tuition for private sector education in Gujarat was unregulated. The fee charged by these schools was contentious for two reasons – information asymmetry faced by parents and a huge year-on-year increase in the tuition fee. When parents opposed this, the Gujarat government introduced the Fee Regulation Act, 2017 (FRA) to regulate the fee charged by private schools by fixing an upper ceiling on the annual tuition fee at INR 15,000, INR 25,000, and INR 27,000 for the primary, secondary, and higher secondary classes, respectively. The case discusses the impact of this policy on several stakeholders – schools, teachers, parents and students.
IIM Ahmedabad Case IIMA/CMHS0046TEC, with Pallavi Wats.
IIM Ahmedabad Case IIMA/CMHS0045TEC, with Pallavi Wats.
Harvard Business Case ISB127-PDF-ENG, with Sisir Debnath and Dibya Deepta Mishra.
This case study illustrates various incentives in the healthcare system using recent research in economics. Healthcare is important but it is difficult to objectively measure it from the perspective of providers, patients and third parties. Hence, incentives are used to motivate behavior in both providers and patients. The design of incentives is an enduring challenge and the case study tries to motivate managers to think through this problem in more detail.
Harvard Business Case ISB096-PDF-ENG, with Kalyani Chaudhuri.
Every manager faces the problem of motivating employees to show up to work, focus on the assigned task, and work hard. In the absence of strong motivations to work or close monitoring by managers, employees tend to shirk, a phenomenon that economists call 'moral hazard'. In view of this problem, the worker's employment contract should be designed so that a part of the payoff (both monetary and non-monetary) is conditional on performance. In tasks where the manager can directly observe and monitor the worker's effort, designing such a conditional contract is easy. For example, a salesperson is offered a bonus directly depending upon the number of items he sells. However, when the effort is not so easily observable, overcoming potential moral hazard becomes harder. Using different policy experiments conducted with teachers in India, Kenya and United States, this case study explores how to motivate school teachers to turn up for class, teach well and put in maximum effort towards educating their students.
Harvard Business Case ISB059-PDF-ENG, with Rohini Ray.
This note summarizes recent research on how information technology (such as mobile phones or internet) can be used to reduce costs associated with searching for prices, as well as the associated increases in social welfare.
Harvard Business Case ISB033-PDF-ENG, with Priyanka Sarda.
Why is allocating courses to students in universities a challenging task? How difficult is it for institutions to strike a balance between the students' preferences over courses and what they can make available given the feasibility and other constraints? What are the plausible short-term and long-term effects of this demand-supply mismatch on students' university experiences and career aspirations? What are the relative pros and cons of allocation mechanisms such as course auctions, rank-order lists and random serial dictatorship used by academic administrators? Can universities design better systems that are simpler, fairer and cannot be gamed yet put students in courses they want? This case attempts to answer these questions by primarily examining the course allocation problem as a two-sided matching issue.
Harvard Business Case ISB032-PDF-ENG.
Does discrimination on the basis of gender, religion or ethnic origin exist in the job market? Why do employers use these factors in hiring decisions? Is discrimination equally prevalent in different sectors and in the presence of countervailing information? Are reasons for job market discrimination justified? What are possible strategies for combating job market discrimination? This case examines these questions in the context of hiring in the entry level white collar job market in an emerging economy.