We ask whether equity promotion through electoral quotas for disadvantaged groups must come at the cost of leader’s overall performance or “efficiency.” The literature on electoral quotas, though invested in the equity question, is mostly silent on this issue. Using randomized electoral...

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...

This paper analyses the role of tertiary education on rural development. Using census data on villages in India for 2011, we find that skilled workers have had an important impact on rural prosperity. A 1 percentage point rise in the share of the village population with tertiary education raises...

We investigate whether the historical shock of the Indian Partition, one of the largest forced displacements in the twentieth century, affected social capital in the long-run. India was partitioned in 1947 into India and Pakistan (East and West Pakistan). At this time, many Hindus and Sikhs...

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...

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) in India is one of the largest public employment programmes in the developing world. It was introduced by the central government led by Indian National Congress (INC). While its implementation is, in principle, based on demand for work from...

This paper provides a robust normative evaluation of the spectacular growth episode that India has experienced in the last 15 years. Specifically, the paper compares the evolution, between 1998, 1996 and 2001 of the distribution of several important individual attributes on the basis of...

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...