It is generally presumed that strengthening legal enforcement of lender rights increases credit access for all borrowers, by expanding the set of incentive compatible loan contracts. This is based on an implicit assumption of infinitely elastic supply of loans. With inelastic supply,...

This paper examines steady states of an overlapping generations economy with a given distribution of household locations over a one-dimensional interval. Parents decide whether or not to educate their children. Such decisions are aected by location: parental aspirations depend on the earnings of...

This paper assesses the relation between living standards and forest degradation in the Indian mid-Himalayas, and related policy issues. The analysis is based on detailed household, village and ecology surveys in a sample of 165 villages in Uttaranchal and Himachal Pradesh. Our prior fieldwork...

The authors characterize optimal enforcement in a setting in which individuals can select among various levels of some activity, all of which are monitored at the same rate but may be prosecuted and punished at varying rates. For less harmful acts, marginal expected penalties ought to fall short...

Can historical wealth distributions affect long-run output and inequality despite "rational" saving, convex technology and no externalities? We consider a model of equilibrium short-period financial contracts, where poor agents face credit constraints owing to moral hazard and limited liability....

This paper studies human capital investment in a spatial setting with interpersonal complementarities. A mixture of local and global social interactions affects the cost of acquiring education, and the return to human capital is determined endogenously in the market. We study how spatially...

This paper summarizes findings from a decade-long project on forest degradation in the mid-Himalayan region of India and Nepal. The analysis is based on LSMS data for Nepal and field work in Indian states of Uttaranchal and Himachal Pradesh comprising sample surveys of forests, households and...

Purpose – This paper aims to provide an overview of recent research on accountability of local and state governments in India. Design/methodology/approach – The Downsian theory of electoral competition is used as a departure point for classifying different sources of government...