We identify birth wantedness as a source of better child outcomes. In Vietnam, the year of birth is widely believed to determine success. As a result, cohorts born in auspicious years are 12 percent larger. Comparing siblings with one another, those of auspicious cohorts are found to have 2...

The FRBM Act was reflective of the shared commitment across political parties towards fiscal conservatism. A decade later, the picture, as reflected in the Union Budget, is yet to change for the better. And given the interests that the current Government represents, a real departure from the...

The PAISA exercise uses planning and budgeting systems as the entry point, it is an attempt to build an empirical understanding of current governance processes at the grassroots to push for a larger debate on state capacity and administrative capability for building an education delivery...

A review and extended discussion is presented of The Cult of Statistical Significance: How the Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice and Lives by Deirdre McCloskey and Stephen Ziliak, a work that raises important issues related to the practice of statistics and that has been widely commented...

The challenges of providing insurance to Indian agricultural sector in a manner that is both meaningful and sustaining. Critical assessment of the existing initiative and present possible options for improvement are presented. [NABARD Occasional Paper No. 44]....