Whether basic entrepreneurship can be inculcated amongst the poorest in society and serve as a route out of poverty remains an open question. We provide evidence on this issue by looking at the effects of a large-scale asset transfer and training programme which is targeted at the poorest women...

Industrial delicensing which began in 1985 in India marked a discrete break from apast of centrally planned industrial development. Similar liberalization episodes are takingplace across the globe. We develop a simple Schumpeterian growth model to understand how…rms respond to the entry threat...

The emergence of new economic activities is the driving force of economic development. The development of such activities is often ‘lumpy’, manifesting itself in rapid growth of particular regions or sectors. Recognition of these facts requires a reorientation of the analytical frameworks...

[...]In part, this collection of papers derives from the impact of Subaltern Studies on approaches to the history of labour. While the contributions may not be located within ‘subalternism’, to differing degrees they reflect responses in the literature to that paradigm. At the very least,...

This paper discusses some aspects of the changing relationship between thestudy of economic history and development economics. Forty years ago thesubjects seemed to be quite closely linked in the sense that senior figuresstraddled both areas, the development history of the advanced countries...

This report was jointly commissioned by the Neighbourhood Renewal Unit (NRU) in the Office ofthe Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) and the Economic and Social Research Council. It containsboth full and summary reports of a literature review of neighbourhood change, undertaken withthe primary aim of...

We analyze a simple and tractable model of occupational choice in the presence of credit marketimperfections. We examine the effect of parameters governing technology and transaction costs, andhistory, in terms of the initial wealth distribution, in determining the long-term wealth...

Economists generally assume that the state has sufffcient institutional capacityto support markets and levy taxes, assumptions which cannot be taken forgranted in many states, neither historcally nor in today’s developing world.Our paper develops a framework where "policy choices" in market...