Strong labor protections for ordinary workers are often portrayed as a ‘luxury developing countries cannot afford'. No study has been more influential in propagating this perversity trope in the context of the Indian economy than the QJE article of Besley and Burgess (2004). Their article...

What will be the domestic growth and distributional effects of agricultural trade liberalization in India? How fast should Indian agriculture be liberalized and what policies should characterize the transition? This paper uses Indian agriculture to analyze medium-term transition problems that...

Labor market regulation is a controversial area of public policy in both developed and developing countries. Mainstream economic analysis traditionally portrays legal interventions providing for minimum wages, unemployment insurance and (often only a modicum of) employment protection as...