Using National Sample Survey data for rural India we examine the incidence of capture in two workfare programs in rural India: the Rural Public Works and the Food for Work Programs for 1993-94 and 2004-05 respectively. We discover a high degree of program capture among the general population....

What are the root causes of Africa's current state of under-development? Is it the long history of slave trade, or the legacy of extractive colonial institutions, or the fallout of malaria? We investigate the relative contributions of these factors using an instrumental variable approach. The...

Using pooled household level data for the Indian states of Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh we find that the size of landholdings is a negative predictor of participation in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Program (NREGP). In state level analysis this pattern survives in Rajasthan but...