Commodity taxes have three distinct roles: (1) revenue collection, (2) interpersonal redistribution, and (3) resource allocation. The paper presents an integrated treatment of these three concerns in a second-best general equilibrium framework, which leads to the 'generalised Ramsey rule' for...

This paper presents a case study of credit transactions in Palanpur, a north Indian village. Drawing on detailed informtion from all borrowers and lenders in the village, we examine a number of issues related to the functioning of rural credit markets. These include the segmentation of the...

During the last few years, there has been a devastating wave of forced evictions of tribal communities from forest land around the country, which needs to be stopped as soon as possible. Unfortunately, recent reports suggest that forced evictions continue in many places, with unrelenting...

Spurred by a recent Supreme Court order, many Indian states have introduced cooked mid-day meals in primary schools. This article reports the findings of a recent survey which suggests that this initiative could have a major impact on child nutrition, school attendance and social equity....

In spite of India's rapid economic growth, there has been a sustained decline in per capita calorie consumption during the last twenty-five years. While the decline has been largest among better-off households, it has taken place throughout the range of household per capita total expenditure....

Commodity taxes have three distinct roles: (1) revenue collection, (2) interpersonal redistribution, and (3) resource allocation. The paper presents an integrated treatment of these three concerns in a second-best general equilibrium framework, which leads to the "generalised Ramsey rule for...

The paper presents an analysis of the coexistence of daily-wage and piece-rate contracts in agrarian economies. We show that, when individual effort is taken into account, daily-wage labourers typically form a convex set in the space of working ability. The most able and the least able labourers...

There has been a significant decline in fertility in many parts of India since the early 1980s. This paper reexamines the determinants of fertility levels and fertility decline, using panel data on Indian districts for 1981 and 1991. We find that women's education is the most important factor...

This paper presents an analysis of the determinant of school participation in rural north India, based on a recent household survey which includes detailed information on school characteristics. School participation especially among girls, responds to a wide range of variables, including...

En términos históricos, la mejora de las condiciones de vida que se ha llevado a cabo en el mundo en desarrollo durante las últimas décadas ha sido bastante extraordinaria.