Using administrative account level data, we study the largest financial inclusion program in India that led to 255 million new bank account openings. About 77% of these accounts maintain a positive balance. While the initial usage remains quite infrequent, it gradually converges to that of...

We document a political cycle in the investment decisions of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) by using the constitutionally mandated election schedule in India as a source of exogenous variation in politicians' incentive to cater to voters. Using a project-level investment database, we find that...

Using hand collected data on division manager (DM) pay contracts, we document that DM pay is related to the performance of both her division and the other divisions in the firm. There is substantial heterogeneity in DM pay-for-performance. DM pay for her division's performance is lower in...

How do changes to stock price informativeness affect the mix of long-term and short-term pay? We answer this question using two exogenous shocks to price informativeness: the reduction in analyst coverage due to closure of brokerage houses and mutual-fund flow driven price pressure. Using the...

In 2002, a legal reform introduced in India allowed secured creditors to seize and liquidate the defaulter's assets. We study firms' choice between capital and labor in response to these strengthened creditor rights by exploiting variation in their pre-policy proportion of collateralizable...

Using establishment-level employment and operating data, we examine the impact of the Indian government's employment guarantee program on labor and firm behavior. We exploit the staggered implementation of the program for identification and find that the program led to a 10% reduction in...