This paper discusses the two leading views of history and political institutions. For some scholars, institutions are mainly products of historical logic, while for others, accidents, leaders, and decisions have a significant impact. Given the possibility that policy decisions indeed make a...

This paper presents the results of two experiments conducted in Mumbai and Vadodara, India, designed to evaluate ways to improve the quality of education in urban slums. A remedial education programme hired young women from the community to teach basic literacy and numeracy skills to children...

This paper examines how unhedged currency exposure of firms varies with changes in currency exibility. A sequence of four time-periods with alternating high and low currency volatility in India provides a natural experiment in which changes in currency exposure of a panel of firms is measured,...

Institutions in developing countries, particularly those inherited from the colonial period, are often thought to be subject to strong inertia. This study presents the results of a unique randomized trial testing whether these institutions can be reformed through incremental administrative...

This paper estimates the effect of access to transportation networks on regional economic outcomes in China over a twenty-period of rapid income growth. It addresses the problem of the endogenous placement of networks by exploiting the fact that these networks tend to connect historical...

It is conventional wisdom that it is possible to reduce exposure to indoor air pollution, improve health outcomes, and decrease greenhouse gas emissions in the rural areas of developing countries through the adoption of improved cooking stoves. This belief is largely supported by observational...

Prior to the Asian financial crisis, most Asian exchange rates were de facto pegged to the US Dollar. In the crisis, many economies experienced a brief period of extreme flexibility. A `fear of floating' gave reduced flexibility when the crisis subsided, but flexibility after the crisis was...

Traditional explanations for trade misinvoicing -- high custom duties and weak domestic economies — are less persuasive in a world of high growth emerging markets who have low trade barriers. A 35- country data set over a 26 year span, covering both industrialised and developing...

This paper connects experience with emissions trading, from programs like the U.S. Rain program, to lessons for implementation of a Trading Pilot Scheme in India. This experience suggests that four areas are especially important for successful implementation of an emissions trading scheme.

A decomposition in the ownership of shares by foreigners is offered into three parts: the change in insider shareholding, the change in market capitalisation and the change in the fraction of outside shareholding that is held by foreigners. As an example, this decomposition is applied to help...