This paper estimates the causal impact of electing criminally accused politicians and their nature of criminality on crime in India. We exploit the quasi-random variation in the outcome of close elections between candidates with and without criminal accusations to instrument the share of...

This paper relates unique data on criminal records of local politicians in India to corruption, crime and poverty. Using a regression discontinuity design, whereby individuals living in districts where a criminal politician barely won are compared to individuals living in districts where a...

This paper examines cultural differences in attitudes towards corruption by analysing individual-decision making in a corrupt experimental environment. Attitudes towards corruption play a critical role in the persistence of corruption. Our experiments differentiate between the incentives to...

This paper estimates the causal impact of electing criminally accused politicians and their nature of criminality on crime in India. We exploit the quasi-random variation in the outcome of close elections between candidates with and without criminal accusations to instrument the share of...

The government’s ability to deliver inclusive growth crucially depends on the quality of governance. This paper reviews the linkages between governance and inclusive growth, and key policies to improve governance. The policies include (1) structural reform, automation, improving rules and...

This paper reviews the development indicators in the North-Eastern States of India and tries to shed light on the causation which has led to the association between high incidence of terrorist activity and the low level of affluence in this region. It concludes that poor infrastructure might be...

Corruption has become an increasingly salient issue in India today, spawning both enormous interest from the media as well as a large amount of academic research. Yet there is a large gap between what has captured the media's attention, the policy options under discussion, and the actual...

The paper examines the division of tasks required between politicians and bureaucrats to run an effective rural employment guarantee scheme (EGS) in India, in the context of Indian history and habits. There are still weaknesses in the incentive structure of the new nationwide EGS. First, there...

This article grapples with the causes of India's microfinance crisis. By contrasting Bangladesh's highly successful Grameen model with the allegedly “universalizable” version of India's SKS Microfinance (which precipitated the crisis), trust or social capital is isolated — not just...

In much of the literature on economic development, sustained economic growth is expected to be accompanied by several interrelated processes of structure change, which involve a shift in economic activities from "traditional"/agricultural/informal to "modern"/industrial/formal sectors. Such...