This paper uses household data from India to examine the economic and social status of village politicians, and how individual and village characteristics affect politician behavior while in office. Education increases the chances of selection to public office and reduces the odds that a...

Given heterogeneity in incomes and health risks, with asymmetric information in the latter, preferences over the public-private mix in health insurance and care are derived. Results concerning crowding-out in the presence of adverse selection are established. For low-risk individuals,...

Some people make great claims about the advantages to be gained from greater reliance on the private sector for the provision of social protection. Many of the claims for great macroeconomic advantages do not stand up to scrutiny. However, there is some reason to hope that private provision...

Many social democrats believe that the failure of past government interventions in social and economic life can be explained by the absence of social capital, and that government must intervene to create that social capital. This argument is comprehensively undermined in this Hobart Paper. The...

How is it that so many major, government-sponsored projects can lose so much money? The answer to this question does not lie with malign intentions on behalf of their promoters within government. In a highly readable but detailed account of the history of six major government project failures,...

The Concept of Foreign Direct Investment is now a part of India's economic future but the term remains vague to many, despite the profound effects on the economy. Despite the extensive studies on FDI, there has been little illumination forthcoming and it remains a contentious topic. The paper...

The quality of land markets and tenurial rights in land are significantly dependent on the quality of land administration. In most countries, governments provide services that can be defined as land administration including land record management, land valuation and tenure protection. In India...

What are the costs of a bureaucratically administrated police force? This paper applies the concept of economic calculation to the provision of policing and security services. It argues that a number of major issues in policing today – constitutional protections regarding searches and...

The design of fully funded pension plans is affected by governance and incentive problems, as underlined by the experience of several countries. The analytic perspective of contract theory allows to detect the nature of such problems: pension-fund managers have strong incentives to manipulate...

Spaanish Abstract: En el presente artículo se realiza una revisión de la institucionalidad disponible para llevar a cabo exitosamente una empresa tan ambiciosa como el Plan “Casa para Todos”. Se describen también algunas de las herramientas que se encontraban disponibles al inicio del...