Strong labor protections for ordinary workers are often portrayed as a ‘luxury developing countries cannot afford'. No study has been more influential in propagating this perversity trope in the context of the Indian economy than the QJE article of Besley and Burgess (2004). Their article...

This book aims to reclaim the mission, relevance and intellectual orientation of development studies - something that is increasingly challenged from different directions. Confronted by the status quoist enterprise of randomized control trials (RCTs) on the one hand and the radical endeavour to...

Labor market regulation is a controversial area of public policy in both developed and developing countries. Mainstream economic analysis traditionally portrays legal interventions providing for minimum wages, unemployment insurance and (often only a modicum of) employment protection as...