Recent years have seen a remarkable expansion in economists' ability to measure corruption. This, in turn, has led to a new generation of well-identified, microeconomic studies. We review the evidence on corruption in developing countries in light of these recent advances, focusing on three...

Evidence on the implementation of India's National Rural Employment Guarantee Act suggests that the available work is often rationed by local leaders in poor areas, and that this is an important factor limiting the scheme's impact on poverty. The paper offers explanations for this empirical...

In 2005, as the result of a World Trade Organization mandate, India began to implement product patents for pharmaceuticals that were compliant with the 1995 Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). We combine pharmaceutical product sales data for India with a newly gathered...

Recruiting female teachers is frequently suggested as a policy option for improving girls' education outcomes in developing countries, but there is surprisingly little evidence on the effectiveness of such a policy. We study gender gaps in learning outcomes, and the effectiveness of female...

We use China's recent anti-corruption campaign as a natural experiment to examine the (market expected) equilibrium consequences of (anti-)corruption. We argue that the announcement of inspections of provincial governments by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) on May 17,...

Political corruption is considered a major impediment to economic development, and yet it remains pervasive throughout the world. This paper examines the extent to which government audits of public resources can reduce corruption by enhancing political and judiciary accountability. We do so in...

Performance pay for tax collectors has the potential to raise revenues, but might come at a cost if taxpayers face undue pressure from collectors. We report the first large-scale field experiment on these issues, where we experimentally allocated 482 property tax units in Punjab, Pakistan into...

We analyze how expropriation risk reduces incentives for innovation and reallocates resources from the innovative sector, building on Romer's(1990) model. Our framework predicts the R&D expenditure, the share of human capital in R&D, the number of patents, technical progress, and economic growth...

Although a global cap-and-trade system is seen by many researchers as the most cost-efficient solution to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, developing countries governments refuse to enter into such a system in the short term. Hence, many scholars and stakeholders, including the European...