In summary, the effects of decentralization on corruption and government accountability are complex and cannot be summarized by simple, unconditional statements. This applies equally to theoretical analyses, cross-country regression results and more detailed empirical studies of specific...

This paper estimates respective roles of private investments in irrigation and local government programs (land reforms, extension services, and infrastructure investments) in the growth of farm productivity in West Bengal, India between 1981-95. Using a farm panel from a stratified random sample...

It is generally presumed that strengthening legal enforcement of lender rights increases credit access for all borrowers, by expanding the set of incentive compatible loan contracts. This is based on an implicit assumption of infinitely elastic supply of loans. With inelastic supply,...

This paper examines steady states of an overlapping generations economy with a given distribution of household locations over a one-dimensional interval. Parents decide whether or not to educate their children. Such decisions are aected by location: parental aspirations depend on the earnings of...

This paper assesses the relation between living standards and forest degradation in the Indian mid-Himalayas, and related policy issues. The analysis is based on detailed household, village and ecology surveys in a sample of 165 villages in Uttaranchal and Himachal Pradesh. Our prior fieldwork...

A traditional view of markets is that they equalize wealth across individuals. A more recent literature suggests that markets are inherently disequalizing. A third viewpoint argues that initial history is crucial in determining whether inequalities persist or not. By constructing a theory of...

Most analyses of the impact of community management of common property resources are based on cross-sectional comparisons in case studies or small samples, perception-based measurement of resource conditions, and absence of controls for unobserved community characteristics and non-random...

This paper provides evidence concerning political participation (turnout, awareness, attendance at meetings, campaign involvement, voting) and its relation to local governance (targeting of public services) in a developing country, based on a rural household survey in West Bengal, India. With...