India's development experience over the past fifty years suggests that the increasing importance of the services sector deserves analysis.  The literature on structural change has emphasised changing patterns of demand as an explanation for the increasing importance of the services sector.  In...

One of the core goals of a universal health care system is to eliminate discrimination on the basis of socioeconomic status.  We test for discrimination using patient waiting times for non-emergency treatment in public hospitals.  Waiting time should reflect patients' clinical need with...

This paper identifies the effect of neighborhood peer groups on childhood skill acquisitions using observational data.  We incorporate spatial peer interaction, defined as a child's nearest geographical neighbors, into a prodiction function of child cognitive development in Andhra Pradesh,...

Regular use of effective health-products such as insecticide-treated mosquito nets (ITN) by a household benefits its neighbors by (a) reducing chances of infection and (b) raising awareness about product-effectiveness, thereby increasing product-use.  Due to their potential social benefits and...

For some observers, the dramatic growth of the services sector in India reflects rapid strides made by educated professionals.  Some others see it as the expansion of an employer of last resort.  Given this heterogeneity, the object of the paper is to analyze the nature of employment being...

We study the role of the propensity scores in estimating treatment effects for the treated with a multi-valued treatment.  Assume assignment to one of the multiple treatments is random given observed characteristics.  Valid causal comparisons for the subpopulation who has been treated a...

I use a randomised conditional cash transfer program from Indonesia to provide evidence on peer effects in consumption of poor households.  I combine this with consumption visibility data from Indonesia to examine whether peer effects in consumption differ by a good's visibility.  In line with...

I describe a new static (sealed-bid) auction for multiple substitute goods.  As in a two-sided simultaneous multiple round auction (SMRA), bidders bid on multiple assets simultaneously, and bid-takers choose supply functions across assets.  The auction yields more efficiency, revenue,...

In response to the Great Financial Crisis, the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and many other central banks have adopted unconventional monetary policy instruments.  We investigate if one of these, purchases of long-term government debt, could be a valuable addition to conventional...

Inflation targeting central banks will be hampered without good models to assist them to be forward-looking.  Many current inflation models fail to forecast turning points adequately, because they miss key underlying long-run influences.  The world is on the cusp of a dramatic turning point in...