There are relatively few theoretical models or empirical analyses of clientelism which analyse the sources and consequences of clientelism. Data from household surveys in rural West Bengal are used to analyse the political clientelism. [BREAD working paper no. 369]....

Deforestation in developing and middle income countries is an urgent global problem, affecting climate change, soil erosion, major river basins, and livelihoods of poor households living near the forests. Public discussions of the problem are frequently dominated by widely held beliefs...

A longitudinal household survey from World Bank Living Standards Measurement Survey (LSMS) was used for the study. A relatively small (but representative) sample of households residing in the mountainous regions of Nepal (i.e., excluding the low-lying Terai regions) were surveyed in three...

This paper addresses the question of how farmers displaced by acquisition of agricultural land for the purpose of industrialization ought to be compensated. Prior to acquisition, the farmers are leasing in land from a private owner or local government with a legally man-dated sharecropping...

A study middleman margins, trading mechanisms and the role of asymmetric information about prices between potato farmers and local trade intermediaries, in West Bengal, India is conducted. Farmers in randomly chosen villages were provided daily information on prices in neighboring wholesale...

It is generally presumed that strengthening the legal enforcement of lender rights increases credit access for all borrowers, by expanding the set of incentive compatible loan contracts. This presumption is based on an implicit assumption of infinitely elastic supply of loans. With inelastic...

The effect of randomized reservations of Pradhan (chief executive) positions in West Bengal local governments (panchayats) for women and members of Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST) following the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments of 1993 are examined. Sample consists of 89 villages...

This paper examines steady states of an overlapping generations economy with a given distribution of household locations over a one-dimensional interval. Parents decide whether or not to educate their children. The model therefore combines local social interaction with global market interaction....

This paper estimates respective roles of private investments in irrigation and local government programs (land reforms, extension services, and infrastructure investments) in the growth of farm productivity in West Bengal, India between 1981-95. A farm panel from a stratified random sample of...

A commonly alleged pitfall of decentralization is that poverty, socio-economic inequality and lack of political competition allow local elites to capture local governments. This hypothesis is empirically examined using a longitudinal sample of 80 West Bengal villages concerning targeting of...