The present study assesses the benefits of microfinance through self-help groups, based on a specially designed survey in selected villages in Pune district. While the benefits in terms of higher income, consumption, and savings matter for the poor, the focus here is broader, as an attempt is...

Using pooled household level data for the Indian states of Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh we find that the size of landholdings is a negative predictor of participation in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Program (NREGP). In state level analysis this pattern survives in Rajasthan but...

This paper investigates the behaviour of Indian aggregate imports during the period 1971-1995. In our empirical analysis of the aggregate import demand function for India, cointegration and error correction modelling approaches have been used. In the aggregate import demand function for India,...

This paper is a revised version of a paper that was originally presented to the Asian Economic Panel meeting held in Tokyo, May 11-12, 2003 and the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) Finance forum, Hua Hin, Thailand, July 8-9, 2003. We have updated that original paper to include the...

Economists have long recognized that a household's sense of well-being depends not just on its average income or expenditures, but also on the risks it faces. Hence vulnerability is a more satisfactory measure of welfare than poverty. In this paper we measure the extent of vulnerability as...

A concern about large, export-oriented projects relates to the flows of foreign exchange into the domestic economy that they produce. These flows occur both during the investment phase of the project and subsequently during its operational phase, through export earnings. Foreign exchange inflows...

Indonesia is the world’s largest importer of its staple food, rice. Since the economic crisis of 1998, rice import policy has become increasingly protectionist and since early 2004, imports have been banned. This paper uses a general equilibrium model of the Indonesian economy to analyze the...

Escalation of political conflict in many developing countries and their impact on economic development has been a topical issue in recent development literature. The overwhelming emphasis on 'ethnic conflicts' in this literature has, however, precluded looking at political conflict in the wider...

This paper presents long-term estimates of gross fixed capital formation for 1951-2007 that are disaggregated by categories of productive assets. These data, combined with approximations of probable average asset lives and a feasible asset retirement method are used in a Perpetual Inventory...