India addressed the requirement for pro-poor service delivery in rural regions by introducing decentralization and affirmative action policies. In order to measure the social preferences of local decision makers, we conducted field experiments which simul

In this study an attempt has been made to assess the potential of land as a municipal financing tool in four Indian cities, to enable better public service delivery and attainment of the MDGs. The institutional arrangements for land use are fragmented in India.s cities between the urban...

We use data on inter-generational gains in educational attainment by some 500,000 individuals in 200 West Bengal villages to explore gender-differentiated impacts of land reform on human capital accumulation at the individual level. While there are significant gains (of about 0.3 years for...

The paper discusses views on China and India as country role models. In so doing the article recounts the economic and political reforms pursued by the two countries. The paper also outlines the outstanding reforms and the bottlenecks that could jeopardize economic performance and development...

Do local improvements in infrastructure provision improve city competitiveness? What public finance mechanisms stimulate local infrastructure supply? And how do local efforts compare with national decisions of placing inter-regional trunk infrastructure? In this paper, we examine how the...

This paper examines land tenure in informal urban settlements in India from a gender perspective through field research conducted in Ahmedabad in collaboration with the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA). The author describes the formal and informal

South Asia has the highest rate of child malnutrition in the world, despite rapid economic growth compared to other regions such as sub-Saharan Africa. Known as the ‘South Asian enigma’ this feature is partly attributed to the low status of women in South Asian societies. This paper examines...

Can we use neoclassical growth model to single out the important transmission channels through which external factors or ?primitives? affected the Indian economy and caused the remarkable growth of the period 1982?2002? In this paper, we answer the question by applying the new technique of...