This paper investigates the potential of information technology to improve public service delivery and empower citizens. The investigation uses two randomized natural experiments in the renewal of national identification cards by the Bolivian Police. The first experiment arises from the random...

Economic theory predicts that a rise in police presence will reduce criminal activity. However several studies in the literature have found mixed results. This study adds to the literature by exploring the relationship between the size of the police force and crime experienced by firms. Using...

Although women?s police centers have been gaining popularity as a measure to address domestic violence, to date no quantitative evaluations of their impacts on the incidence of domestic violence or any other manifestations of gender equality have been done. This paper estimates the effects of...

Internal labor migration rates in India have been largely static and low in recent times compared with those in other countries. This is a cause for concern because internal migration for economic reasons can promote the agglomeration of economic activity in more productive locations and...

Definitions of catch-up growth in anthropometric outcomes among young children vary across studies. This paper distinguishes between catch-up in the mean of a group toward that of a healthy reference population versus catch-up within the group, associated with a narrowing of the outcome...

This paper estimates the impact of the Golden Quadrilateral and North-South-East-West Highways in India on welfare, social inclusion, and environmental quality. The analysis uses district-level data for 1994-2011 and the difference-in-difference method. The results suggest that the highways...

This paper presents axiomatic arguments to make the case for distribution-sensitive multidimensional poverty measures. The commonly-used counting measures violate the strong transfer axiom which requires regressive transfers to be unambiguously poverty-increasing and they are also invariant to...

This paper incorporates gender bias against girls in the family, school and labor market in a model of intergenerational persistence in schooling where parents self-finance children's education because of credit market imperfections. Parents may underestimate a girl's ability, expect lower...

This study reports the findings of a large-scale, multiple-arm, cluster-randomized control study carried out in rural Punjab, India, to assess the impact of a flagship sanitation program of the Government of India. The program, the Clean India Mission for Villages, was implemented between...

This study examines the asset gains to households in Kerala, India, from two types of labor migration: moving overseas versus moving within India for employment. It draws on panel data from waves of a representative household survey conducted in 1998 and 2003. Migrant households as a whole...