We develop a framework to empirically examine how politicians with electoral pressures control bureaucrats with career concerns as well as the consequences for bureaucrats' career investments. Unique micro-level data on Indian bureaucrats support our key predictions. Politicians use frequent...

The paper examines the impact of the income distribution in a less-developed country (LDC) on its patterns of trade, through its influence on home market demand patterns. In a learning-by-doing model with nonhomothetic preferences, the authors show that import substitution under low inequality...

Using state-level variation in the timing of political reforms, we find that an increase in female representation in local government induces a large and significant rise in documented crimes against women in India. Our evidence suggests that this increase is good news, driven primarily by...

Governments in many developing countries skew public resources towards urban sectors, despite a majority of citizens residing in rural areas. This paper develops a novel political argument for this urban bias phenomenon in a framework where all voters, rural and urban, have equal voice, but...

This paper argues that the interaction between inequality and the demand patterns for goods is a potential source of persistent inequality. Income distribution, in the presence of non-homothetic preferences, affects the demand for goods and, due to differences in factor intensities across...

Politicians face high-powered electoral pressures while bureaucrats face longer-term, low powered incentives. Given constitutional constraints, what incentives do politicians employ to control bureaucrats and how do bureaucrats respond to such incentives? These issues are addressed using a...

Using state-level variation in the timing of political reforms, we find that an increase in female representation in local government induces a large and significant rise in documented crimes against women in India. Our evidence suggests that this increase is good news, driven primarily by...

Using state-level variation in the timing of political reforms, we find that an increase in female representation in local government induces a large and significant rise in documented crimes against women in India. Our evidence suggests that this increase is good news, driven primarily by...