We examine how overall delivery of public goods (i.e., efficiency) is affected by affirmative action in elections, i.e., restricting candidate entry in elections to one population group. We argue that when group identities are salient, such restrictions on candidate entry need not necessarily...

There is an overall rise in rural unemployment, in terms of both total and partial failure to find work during the reference week, between the 55th (1999-2000) and 61st (2004-05) round employment surveys of the National Sample Survey. This is something of a puzzle given the reported rise in...

This paper estimates the causal impact of tertiary education on luminosity across Indian districts. We address the potential endogeneity of tertiary education using the location of Catholic missionaries in 1911 as an instrument for current tertiary education. We find Catholic missionaries have a...

This paper investigates the effects of an income guarantee on borrowing to smooth consumption and finance cultivation in a risky setting with marked seasonality. A three-season, infinite-horizon theoretical model is developed and analyzed. The insights yielded by the model are then used to...

This paper examines how local politics affects public fund allocations. It uses the context of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) in India which was introduced by the Indian National Congress (INC). Using longitudinal data on funds sanctioned and election results from three...

The performance of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) in Rajasthan has been a matter of debate, both for its stupendous performance in the initial years of the scheme, but also for the relative sharp decline after 2010. Using a large primary survey collected from a...

This paper focuses on four selected questions. (1) How does local political competition and the characteristics of the elected officials matter for the implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS)? (2) Is there local capture of the benefits from the scheme? (3) What...

This paper explains the differential impacts of trade on countries in terms of institutional differences which result in factor market distortions. We modify the Ricardian, Specific Factor and Hecksher Ohlin models of trade to capture these. Trade has both terms of trade effects and output...