Commodity taxes have three distinct roles: (1) revenue collection, (2) interpersonal redistribution, and (3) resource allocation. The paper presents an integrated treatment of these three concerns in a second-best general equilibrium framework, which leads to the 'generalised Ramsey rule' for...

This paper presents a case study of credit transactions in Palanpur, a north Indian village. Drawing on detailed informtion from all borrowers and lenders in the village, we examine a number of issues related to the functioning of rural credit markets. These include the segmentation of the...

During the last few years, there has been a devastating wave of forced evictions of tribal communities from forest land around the country, which needs to be stopped as soon as possible. Unfortunately, recent reports suggest that forced evictions continue in many places, with unrelenting...

Book Review of Sudhir Anand, Fabienne Peter and Amartya Sen (eds.), Public Health, Ethics, and Equity

Spurred by a recent Supreme Court order, many Indian states have introduced cooked mid-day meals in primary schools. This article reports the findings of a recent survey which suggests that this initiative could have a major impact on child nutrition, school attendance and social equity....

This paper presents an analysis of the determinants of school participation in rural north India, based on a recent household survey that includes detailed information on school characteristics. School participation, especially among girls, responds to a wide range of variables, including...