New Release Books by Amrita Dhillon

Voting Over a Distributed Ledger: An Interdisciplinary Perspective presents the case that electronic voting can improve accessibility, leading to some positive outcomes. It can also lead to faster counting and can be cost efficient. The authors document the various problems with centralized electronic voting systems and show how the blockchain can potentially overcome these problems. The authors introduce the concept of distributed ledger technology (DLT) (blockchains are a special case of DLT) and how they can improve both the accessibility and trust properties of an online voting system. This monograph is organized as follows. Section 2 focuses on centralized on-line voting systems (i.e., that do not use distributed ledger technology), describing their general architecture and outlining their vulnerable areas for manipulation. Section 3 describes from scratch the distributed ledger technology and how its promising features can be used for online voting. Section 4 focuses on a special case of distributed ledgers, called blockchains, and analyses the multiple ways (consensus protocols) on reaching agreement on voting data. Section 5 discusses a possible conceptualization on using a blockchain based infrastructure for voting systems. Section 6 presents existing blockchain based voting systems by categorizing them according to the extent that they use this technology, concluding with details of a recent academic implementation. Finally, Section 7 concludes with open questions for economists and other social scientists working in this area.

The authors examine how institutions that enforce contracts between two parties, producers and consumers, interact in a competitive market with one-sided asymmetric information and productivity shocks. They compare an informal enforcement mechanism, reputation, the efficacy of which is enhanced by consumers investing in "connectedness," with a formal mechanism, legal enforcement, the effectiveness of which can be reduced by producers by means of bribes. When legal enforcement is poor, consumers connect more with one another to improve informal enforcement. In contrast, a well-connected network of consumers reduces producers' incentives to bribe. In equilibrium, the model predicts a positive relationship between the frequency of productivity shocks, bribing, and the use of informal enforcement, providing a physical explanation of why developing countries often fail to have efficient legal systems. Firm-level estimations confirm the partial equilibrium implication of the model

We use high frequency worker level productivity data from garment manufacturing units in India to study the effects of caste-based social networks on individual and group productivity when workers are complements in the production function but wages are paid at the individual level. Using exogenous variation in production line composition for almost 35,000 worker-days, we find that a 1 percentage point increase in the share of own caste workers in the line increases daily individual productivity by about 10 percentage points. The lowest performing worker increases her effort by more than 15 percentage points when the production line has a more homogeneous caste composition. Production externalities that impose financial costs due to worker's poor performance on co-workers within her social network can explain our findings. Our results suggest that even in the absence of explicit group-based financial incentives, social networks can be leveraged to improve both worker and group productivity.

Production processes are often organized in teams, yet there is limited evidence on whether and how social connections and financial incentives affect productivity in tasks that require coordination among workers. We simulate assembly line production in a lab-in-the-field experiment in which workers exert real effort in a minimum-effort game in teams whose members are either socially connected or unconnected and are paid according to the group output. We find that group output increases by 18%, and coordination improves by 30-39% when workers are socially connected with their co-workers. These findings can plausibly be explained by the higher levels of pro-social motivation between co-workers in socially connected teams.