Mass media can play a key role in enabling citizens to monitor the actions of incumbents and to use this information in their voting decisions. Thiscan lead to government which is more accountable and responsive to itscitizens’ needs. In spite of the intuitive plausibility of the proposition,...

The Indian Green Revolution, which began in the late 1960s,offers an exemplary case for studying the nature of evidence andhow it travels between academia and the public sphere, betweendifferent academic disciplines and over time. Initial assessmentsof the Green Revolution’s effects were...

The findings set out in this Report challenge the perception of low population support for rights overall - and the view that the public think rights are a “charter” for criminals and terrorists. They support the reasoning of the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) that economic and...

[...]The analysis of competitive markets culminated in the fundamental theorems of welfare economics which elucidated the (restrictive) conditions under which resource allocation by markets would achieve Pareto efficiency. The first fundamental theorem says that all perfectly competitive...

We examine associations of mass media and information and communicationstechnologies (ICT) as knowledge-based infrastructures on some economicdevelopment outcomes. We .nd that several mass media and ICT penetration variablesare negatively associated with three development outcomes: corruption,...

The determinants of government responsiveness to its citizens is a key issue in politicaleconomy. Here, we develop a model based on the solution of political agency problems.Having a more informed and politically active electorate strengthens incentives for governmentsto be responsive. This...

This paper examines pre-colonial interaction among polities along the Konkan coast, from Surat to Goa, during the long half-century c.1680-1756. Specifically it uses the dynasty of the Angrias, who were deemed pirates by the European powers but were actually an integral part of the Maratha...

This article, based on two books (Barr and Diamond 2008, forthcoming), sets out a series of principles for pension design rooted in economic theory: pension systems have multiple objectives, analysis should consider the pension system as a whole, analysis should be framed in a second-best...

This Report is about Reforming pensions in China, Chile and elsewhere.

This report is the first policy study of the China Economic Research and AdvisoryProgramme, in which eminent economists from China and abroad have participated. Thereport focuses on the problems faced by China in the reform of its social security system.On the basis of economic principles and...