This paper addresses several important issues related to crime. First, we construct a violent crime index taking into account seven different types of crimes. We use an aggregator function to define a crime index that attaches crime-specific weights which can be interpreted as severity of each...

The shadow economy (also known as the black or underground economy) covers a vast array of trade, goods and services that are not part of the official economy of a country. This original and comprehensive Handbook presents the latest research on the size and development of the shadow economy,...

This article examines the role played by the various socio-economic and community level factors in determining the antenatal and maternal health care utilization pattern using the data from the National Family Health Survey carried out in India in 1998/99. Our analysis document that autonomy...

Using data from the 14 major states of India, we investigate whether state governments' fiscal policy choices are tempered by political considerations. Our principal findings are twofold. First, we show that certain fiscal policies experience electoral cycles: state governments raise less...

This paper investigates whether stock‐price indexes of emerging markets can be characterized as random walk (unit root) or mean reversion processes. We implement a panelbased test that exploits cross‐sectional information from seventeen emerging equity markets during the period January 1985...