We estimate the role of private investments in irrigation in farm productivity growth in West Bengal, India between 1982 and 95. Using a state-wide farm panel, we find that falling groundwater costs generated significant growth in value added per acre for farms. These resulted from investments...

As is common in contentious public debates, different people mean different things by globalization.

To analyze the effect of asset inequality on cooperation within a group, we consider a two-player noncooperative model of conservation of a common-pool resource (CPR): a fishery. We give necessary and sufficient conditions such that conservation is a Nash equilibrium, and we show that increasing...

This volume breaks new ground in the economic theory of institutions. The contributors show how some of the tools of advanced economic theory can usefully contribute to an understanding of how institutions operate. They show how sound theoretical analysis can in fact enable economists to reach...

Traditional development economics has recently been revolutionized by the application of new economic tools and concepts. Development Microeconomics is the first in a series of books which will look at the entire spectrum of development economics issues, combining the strengths of conventional...

In this readily accessible book Bardhan examines the political and social constraints on Indian development. In the newly added epilogue Bardhan comments on the process of liberalization in the 1990's and examines the feasibility of the exercise in the light of ground realities. This ambitious...

This is a compendium of sixteen of Bardhan's well known works in the area of poverty and the political economy of India.

We investigate determinants of household firewood collection in rural Nepal, using 1995-96 and 2002-3 World Bank Living Standards Measurement Survey (LSMS) data. We incorporate village fixed effects, endogenous censoring, measurement error in living standards and heterogeneous effects of...

We investigate political determinants of land reform implementation in the Indian state of West Bengal. Using a village panel spanning 1974-1998, we do not find evidence supporting the hypothesis that land reforms were positively and monotonically related to control of local governments by a...

Summary This paper assesses degradation of forests managed by local communities (Van Panchayats (VPs)), relative to state protected and open access forests in the Indian state of Uttaranchal. It is based on ground-level ecological measures of forest quality (including canopy cover, biomass,...