Ramani Gunatilaka
Research Fellow, Livelihood, Land & Rights
International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES)
Ramani Gunatilaka is an independent consultant in Sri Lanka and the region. Her recent work focused on women’s employment in Sri Lanka; skills deficits in Sri Lanka’s manufacturing sector; subjective well-being in China; and migration and the distribution of consumption in fishing communities in Cambodia, India, and Sri Lanka. Her ongoing research is on factors associated with firms’ demand for women workers; the demand for and supply of care workers; and access to land and women’s empowerment, in Sri Lanka.
Areas of interest
Women’s employment; labour markets; subjective well-being; income distribution and consumption poverty.Publications
- “Livelihoods, migration and mobility: The distribution of consumption expenditure in fishing communities in Cambodia, India and Sri Lanka”, in Fisherfolk in Cambodia, India and Sri Lanka: Migration, Gender and Well-Being, ed. Lund, R., Kusakabe, K. Rao, N. and Weeratunge, N ( Oxford: Routledge, 2020).
- “Women’s Labour Force Participation in Sri Lanka’s North”, in Women’s Economic Empowerment, Insights from Africa and South Asia, ed. Grantham, K., Dowie, G., and de Haan, A (Routledge)
- “Memory and Anticipation of Income: New Empirical Support for an Old Theory of the Utility Function”, in The Manchester School, 87 (5) (2018): 694 – 723.
- “Rural-Urban Migration and Happiness in China”, in World Happiness Report 2018, ed. Helliwell, J., Layard, R., Sachs, J.(2018): 67-88.
- John Knight and Ramani Gunatilaka, “Is happiness infectious?”, Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 64 (1) (2017): 1-23.