The Kisan Credit Card (KCC) scheme was introduced in India in 1998-1999 and has since become a flagship programme providing access to short-term credit in the agricultural sector. According to the Government of India, over a 100 million cards had been issued cumulatively by March 2011. Using...

On November 8, 2016, the Indian government abruptly demonetized 86\% of its currency in circulation in an attempt to reduce black money, corruption, and counterfeiting. Yet, 99\% of the currency was eventually returned to banks. We use both, regional and household data to examine the medium-term...

This note provides a brief overview of India's demonetization off currency notes in November 2016. Written shortly after the announcement, the note uses the quantity theory of money as a basic framework to analyze the effects on GDP under various scenarios. Further, using anecdotal evidence, it...

A large body of research on India’s rapid economic growth since 1991 also documents increasing regional disparities. In this paper, we use unsaturated night light data to challenge this dominant narrative of unequal growth. For 520 districts spanning a 15 year period (1996-2010), we find...