This paper investigates the impact of language on economic performance. I use the 1956 reorganization of Indian states on linguistic lines as a natural experiment to estimate the impact of speaking the majority language on educational and occupational outcomes. I find that districts that spoke...

Does culture, and in particular religion, exert an independent causal effect on long-term economic growth, or do culture and religion merely reflect the latter? We explore this issue by studying the case of Protestantism in China during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries....

This study has uniquely established that financing women though Self Help Groups has a significant role in empowering women, which is a smart economics indeed in achieving the objective of economic development of the weaker sections. The findings of this study establish using the statistical...

Microfinance across the globe is being practiced as a tool to mitigate poverty and chiefly as an empowerment tool to uplift the downtrodden. The paper has uniquely established that Self Help Groups in India have been significantly successful in achieving the objective of economic development of...

This paper examines the political economy of emerging infectious disease (EID) surveillance programs. It provides lessons learned for U.S. military medical research laboratories collaborating with developing countries and is comprised of four case studies: Kenya (U.S. Army Medical Research...

The paper provides a survey of theoretical and empirical literature on non-linear impact of democracy on economic growth. First, it looks at two main approaches to the non-linearity: the U-shape and the inverse U-shape. Then it proceeds by looking at the specifics of hybrid regimes and tries to...

The paper explores the link between authoritative media, which is called the public court in the paper, and economic prosperity. Three types of evidence are used. First, arguments of the superiority of the public court over traditional media are provided. Second, a formal model shows a causal...

This paper presents an index of institutionalized social technologies covering its two main dimensions namely Risk reducing technologies and Anti Rent seeking technologies and in turn covers several social, institutional, political and economic aspects. Specifically it attempted to classify and...

This paper presents an index of institutionalized social technologies for Pakistan, covering its two main dimensions namely Risk reducing technologies and Anti Rent seeking technologies and in turn covers several social, institutional, political and economic aspects. It is also analyzed...

The role of institutions in promoting economic growth and development has generated considerable interest among researchers and practitioners in recent years. This paper explores the role of state institutions in promoting growth using a GMM econometric model. Specifically it attempted to test...