How Law and Law Enforcement Affect Labour Markets In Developing Countries: An Empirical Evidence From India

This doctoral dissertation examines and investigates the impact of labour market and nonlabour market institutions on the Indian labour market. In general, some of its most important findings are of interest for other developing countries as well. It engages with the critical debate on the potential adverse effects of protective labour laws. Many scholars have looked sceptically on those effects as a bottleneck to labour market flexibility and economic development. To address the raised concerns, this dissertation empirically investigates three research questions that are interlinked with each other. The first two research questions deals with the assessment of labour market institutions that have direct implication on the Indian labour market. The third research question deals with the assessment of non-labour market institutions that has indirect implication on the labour market mediated through changing bargaining position of a woman within a family. However, this academic engagement can best be viewed as an empirical exercise exhorting how specific the Indiaࢠs labour laws and personal laws such as inheritance property rights, interact with the labour market. Moreover it also allows us to analyse how these interactions are receptive to advance our scholarship on understanding the relationship between labour market and labour market institutions that have witnessed significant changes since the beginning of economic reform of 1991 in India.