The wealth accumulation of Indian parliamentarians using public disclosures required of all candidates since 2003 are studied. Annual asset growth of winners is on average 3 to 6 percentage points higher than runners-up. By performing a within-constituency com- parison where both runner-up and...

Evidence is presented to show that shared codes, religious beliefs, ethnicity - cultural proximity - between lenders and borrowers improves the efficiency of credit allocation. In-group preferential treatment is identified using dyadic data on the religion and caste of bank officers and...