The purpose of this paper is to document and trace the causes of the poor and declining revenue performance of the income tax in India and to suggest measures for improvement based on a review of international experience. The paper starts by reviewing evidence that the performance of the income...

How important are neighborhood endowments of physical and human capital in explaining diverging fortunes over time for otherwise identical households? To answer this question we develop an estimable micro model of consumption growth allowing for constraints on factor mobility and externalities,...

This paper attempts to explain the observed diversity of agricultural con- tracts within close-knit geographical regions, often within the same village. The explanation rests on two main assumptions: heterogeneity in land quality, with landlords being better informed about the quality of their...

Is the institution of land tenancy inefficient? If so, why does it survive? This paper uses a complete contracting framework to develop a theory of land ownership in the context of a labour surplus, subsistence economy. Ownership affects efficiency in the presence of incentive-based...