Service standards in the provision of health and education in the states in India are low on average and also characterized by large inter-state disparities. These disparities are due to differences in fiscal capacity, differences in revenue effort and differences in priority accorded to the...

In most democracies, the majority of education expenditures is financed by the government. In non-democracies, we observe a wide variation in the mix of public and private funding of education. In addition, countries with high inequality tend to rely more heavily on private schooling. We develop...