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CSRD is organising a seminar by Arjan Verschoor

CSRD is organising a seminar by Arjan Verschoor

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CSRD is organising a seminar by Arjan Verschoor
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Centre for the Study of Regional Development

School of Social Sciences, JNU

invites you all to a seminar on

Learned helplessness and poverty traps among farmers in eastern Uganda

by

Arjan Verschoor

Professor of Development Economics

School of International Development

University of East Anglia, Norwich (UK)

Date: January 18, 2018,  3:30 pm

Venue: Cartographic Lab, CSRD, SSS III (Ist Floor) 

Abstract : Learned helplessness is a psychological condition in which control over outcomes is perceived to be lower than it actually is. It tends to take root in situations in which the relationship between effort and outcomes is “noisy”: when many factors interfere with that relationship, so that it is difficult to detect. Promising new opportunities to improve one’s livelihood may then be shunned, when people underestimate the degree of control they have over turning these into a success. We designed economic experiments in which a sense of learned helplessness was induced in order to study investment behaviour that required effort to be successful. We implemented these experiments among a sample of farmers from Bugisu, in eastern Uganda. We find that persistence in an investment task is lower when learned helplessness is experimentally induced, which suggests that learned helplessness is among the psychological factors that may contribute to a poverty trap.

 

Brief note about the speaker : Arjan Verschoor is a Professor of Development Economics at the University of East Anglia in the UK. He has some 25 years of experience of policy advice, research management, applied economic research and consultancy, working in Pakistan, India, Uganda, Ghana and Zambia, and with large cross-country datasets and datasets from India, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Uganda. Recent research themes are agricultural investment and insurance; gender inequality; experimental economics in developing countries; measuring pro-poor growth; and aid effectiveness.

 

A warm welcome to the modified and updated website of the Centre for East Asian Studies. The East Asian region has been at the forefront of several path-breaking changes since 1970s beginning with the redefining the development architecture with its State-led development model besides emerging as a major region in the global politics and a key hub of the sophisticated technologies. The Centre is one of the thirteen Centres of the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi that provides a holistic understanding of the region.

Initially, established as a Centre for Chinese and Japanese Studies, it subsequently grew to include Korean Studies as well. At present there are eight faculty members in the Centre. Several distinguished faculty who have now retired include the late Prof. Gargi Dutt, Prof. P.A.N. Murthy, Prof. G.P. Deshpande, Dr. Nranarayan Das, Prof. R.R. Krishnan and Prof. K.V. Kesavan. Besides, Dr. Madhu Bhalla served at the Centre in Chinese Studies Programme during 1994-2006. In addition, Ms. Kamlesh Jain and Dr. M. M. Kunju served the Centre as the Documentation Officers in Chinese and Japanese Studies respectively.

The academic curriculum covers both modern and contemporary facets of East Asia as each scholar specializes in an area of his/her interest in the region. The integrated course involves two semesters of classes at the M. Phil programme and a dissertation for the M. Phil and a thesis for Ph. D programme respectively. The central objective is to impart an interdisciplinary knowledge and understanding of history, foreign policy, government and politics, society and culture and political economy of the respective areas. Students can explore new and emerging themes such as East Asian regionalism, the evolving East Asian Community, the rise of China, resurgence of Japan and the prospects for reunification of the Korean peninsula. Additionally, the Centre lays great emphasis on the building of language skills. The background of scholars includes mostly from the social science disciplines; History, Political Science, Economics, Sociology, International Relations and language.

Several students of the centre have been recipients of prestigious research fellowships awarded by Japan Foundation, Mombusho (Ministry of Education, Government of Japan), Saburo Okita Memorial Fellowship, Nippon Foundation, Korea Foundation, Nehru Memorial Fellowship, and Fellowship from the Chinese and Taiwanese Governments. Besides, students from Japan receive fellowship from the Indian Council of Cultural Relations.