Lack of access to finance is often cited as a key reason why poor people remain poor. This paper uses data on the Indian rural branch expansion program to provide empirial evidence on this issue. Between 1977 and 1990, the Indian Central Bank mandated that a commercial bank can open a branch in...

This paper investigates whether the industrial relations climate in Indian States has affected the pattern of manufacturing growth in the period 1958-92. We show that pro-worker amendments to the Industrial Disputes Act are associated with lowered investment, employment, productivity and output...

The processes of building the United States of America (USA) during the nineteenth century and the European Union (EU) since mid-twentieth century are among the major claims for the possibility of a vast, ‘imperial’-size political unit based on democratic principles. The crucial period for...

We present a dynamic comparative advantage model in which moderate reductions in trade costs can generate sizable increases in trade volumes over time. A fall in trade costs has two effects on the volume of trade. First, for given factor endowments, it raises the degree of specialization of...

Andy Rose (2000), followed by many others, has used the gravity model of bilateral trade on a large data set to estimate the trade effects of monetary unions among small countries. The finding has been large estimates: Trade among members seems to double or triple, that is, to increase by...

Interactions between economic development and financial development are studied by looking at the roles of financial institutions in selecting R&D projects (including for both imitation and innovation). Financial development is regarded as the evolution of the financing regimes. The...

The most striking difference in corporate-governance arrangements between rich and poor countries is that the latter rely much more heavily on the dynastic family firm, where ownership and control are passed on from one generation to the other. We argue that if the heir to the family firm has no...

A fundamental issue for economists is what determines civil conflict. One unsettled question is the relative importance of political freedoms versus economic development. This paper takes a new approach to provide an answer by using micro-data based on surveys of revolutionary preferences of...

Interactions between economic development and financial development are studied by looking at the roles of financial institutions in selecting R&D projects (including for both imitation and innovation). Financial development is regarded as the evolution of the financing regimes. The...

How much would output increase if underdeveloped economies were to increase their levels of schooling? We contribute to the development accounting literature by describing a nonparametric upper bound on the increase in output that can be generated by more schooling. The advantage of our approach...