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Shyamal Chowdhury

University of Sydney, Australia, and IZA, Germany

I view IZA World of Labor as a very innovative way of reaching policymakers and practitioners, and I am very excited to be part of it

IZA World of Labor role

Author

Current position

Associate Professor, School of Economics, FASS, University of Sydney, Australia

Research interest

Migration, microfinance, technology adoption, economic development

Website

http://sydney.edu.au/arts/economics/staff/profiles/shyamal.chowdhury.php

Positions/functions as a policy advisor

Consultant, the World Bank, Washington DC, 2006–2007; Post-doctoral Fellow, International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington DC, 2003–2006

Qualifications

PhD Agricultural Economics, Bonn University, 2003

Selected publications

  • “Under-investment in a profitable technology: The case of seasonal migration in Bangladesh.” Econometrica 82:5 (2014) 1671–1748 (with G. Bryan and A. M. Mobarak).

  • “Sequential lending with dynamic joint liability in microfinance.” Journal of Development Economics 111 (2014) 167–180 (with P. Roy Chowdhury and K. Sengupta).

  • “Are consumers in developing countries willing to pay more for micronutrient-dense biofortified foods? Evidence from a field experiment in Uganda.” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 93 (2011): 83–97 (with J. V. Meenakshi, K. Tomlins, and C. Owori).

  • “Setting weights for aggregate indices: An application to the Commitment to Development Index and Human Development Index.” Journal of Development Studies 42 (2006): 761–771 (with L. Squire).

  • “The effect of democracy and press freedom on corruption: An empirical test.” Economics Letters 85 (2004): 93–101.

article(s)

  • Microfinance and rural non-farm employment in developing countries

    Expansion of microfinance to rural areas may reduce credit constraints, helping non-farm sector growth, employment, and development

    Shyamal Chowdhury, April 2017
    The rural non-farm sector plays an important role in diversifying income for rural households in developing countries and has the potential to emerge as a major source of employment. In some cases it has outgrown the agricultural sector, in part due to the expansion of credit through microfinance institutions that are supported by governments, donor agencies, and businesses. However, future expansion of the rural non-farm sector requires increased flexibility in credit contracts, as well as decreasing the cost of credit and the delivery of complementary inputs, e.g. skills training.
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