Religious Divisions and Production Technology: Experimental Evidence from India

Abstract

This paper implements a field experiment in India to study whether the effects of religious diversity on productivity and attitudes depend on a firm’s production technology. I randomly assigned Hindu and Muslim workers at a manufacturing plant in West Bengal to mixed or homogeneous teams. Production tasks are categorized as high or low dependency based on the degree of continuous coordination required. Mixed teams are less productive than homogeneous teams in high-dependency tasks, but this effect attenuates completely in 4 months. In low-dependency tasks, diversity does not affect productivity. However, mixing improves Hindu workers’ out-group attitudes only in high-dependency tasks.