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...

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...