Governments are catching up with economic theory and practice by increasingly integrating ecosystem service values into national planning processes, including benefit-cost analyses of public policies. Such analyses require information not only about today’s benefits from ecosystem services but also on how benefits change over time. We address a key limitation of existing policy guidance, which assumes that benefits from ecosystem services remain unchanged.

Questions:

1. Is tilapia production in Huila a sustainable endeavor from the Triple Bottom Line (Economic, Social, Environmental) perspective? 

Merely providing a collection service that ensures waste segregated at source is not mixed during transportation is not enough to induce households to segregate. Information campaigns are a must. 

This research brief is based on the EfD Discussion Paper titled Disentangling the chicken or egg problem of household waste sorting and segregated waste collection: A randomized control trial in India by authors Shivani Wadehra, Zihan Nie, and Francisco Alpizar 

About the study 

Executive Summary

This study analyzes high frequency productivity data from Indian garment manufacturing, exploring how caste-based social networks affect individual and group productivity. With nearly 35,000 worker-days, a 1 percentage point increase in the same-caste workers boosts daily individual productivity by at least 0.09 points. Notably, the least efficient worker's productivity rises by almost 0.17 points with a 1 point increase in caste homogeneity. These findings, robust to unobservable factors, suggest production externalities driven by within-network peer effects as potential explanations.