economic dynamics in the malthusian era evidence from the 1609 spanish expulsion of the moriscos we investigate economic dynamics in the malthusian era using the 1609 expulsion of moriscos from spain sharp population declines in former morisco districts were accompanied by decreased output and increased per capita output while these short run results are consistent with standard malthusian predictions malthusian convergence was delayed up to 1786 in former morisco districts archival sources and historical accounts suggest extractive institutions and cultural differences may have contributed to delayed convergence in population and output per capita this historic episode provides an unusually rich setting to examine malthusian dynamics highlighting the potential for sustained differences in per capita output in the malthusian era

agricultural commercialization and nutrition revisited empirical evidence from three african countries the transition from subsistence to commercial agriculture is key for economic growth but what are the consequences for nutritional outcomes the evidence to date has been scant and inconclusive this study contributes to the debate by revisiting two prevailing wisdoms a market participation by african smallholders remains low and b the impact of commercialization on nutritional outcomes is generally positive using nationally representative data from three african countries the analysis reveals high levels of commercialization by even the poorest and smallest landholders with rates of market participation as high as 90 female farmers participate less but tend to sell larger shares of their production conditional on participation second we find little evidence of a positive relationship between commercialization and nutritional status as countries and international agencies prioritize the importance of nutrition sensitive agriculture better understanding of the transmission channels between crop choices and nutritional outcomes should remain a research priority

nutrition and labor producvivity in agriculture estimates for rural south india using panel data for rural south india a fixed effects individual wage equation and farm production function are estimated that have calorie intake and nutritional status weight for height of workers as their arguments neither market wages nor farm output are observed to be responsive to changes in the daily energy intake of workers however both are highly elastic with respect to weight for height these results suggest that while the human body can adapt to inadequate nutrition in the short run it cannot adapt as readily to chronic malnutrition that eventually results in loss of weight for height copyright 1988 by mit press

failure to launch the role of land inequality in transition delays recent work in the growth literature has provided various explanations for transition delays and the great divergence this paper provides empirical support for one theory of transition delays initial land inequality our analysis is designed to elucidate the channels via which land inequality can affect long run economic performance using a new historical data set for land inequality frankema 2009 we employ duration analysis to investigate whether higher levels of land inequality lead to longer delays in the extension of primary schooling we then investigate whether such delays affect long run economic performance via their effect on contemporaneous schooling our findings suggest that land inequality is a key determinant of delays in schooling and that such delays have a significant negative impact on long run output

monetary incentives on inter caste marriages in india theory and evidence abstract we study the effect of a policy in india that offers monetary incentives to inter caste marriages in which one of the spouses is of historically disadvantaged castes i e scheduled castes and the other is not we show that in theory the monetary incentives increase the incidence of exogamy but may reduce the welfare of certain caste or gender building on our theoretical analysis we estimate the effect of the monetary incentives on the incidence of exogamy the welfare and inter spousal transfers using national family and health survey data we find that a 10 000 rupee increase in the incentive raises the exogamy between scheduled caste men and non scheduled caste women by 4 percent in rural india however we also find that the same increase reduces the welfare of women in rural areas

spanish unions institutional legacy and responsiveness to economic and industrial change using empirical data drawn from multiple sources including interview material the author examines spanish trade unions responses to the reorganization of spain s economy and changes in the struc

ethnic diversity social sanctions and public goods in kenya abstract this paper examines ethnic diversity and local public goods in rural western kenya the identification strategy relies on the stable historically determined patterns of ethnic land settlement ethnic diversity is associated with lower primary school funding and worse school facilities and there is suggestive evidence that it leads to poor water well maintenance the theoretical model illustrates how inability to impose social sanctions in diverse communities leads to collective action failures and we find that school committees in diverse areas do impose fewer sanctions on defaulting parents we relate these results to the literature on social capital and economic development and discuss implications for decentralization in less developed countries

infrastructure and inequality abstract we develop a model in which public capital is both an engine of growth and a determinant of the distributions of wealth income and welfare government investment increases wealth inequality over time regardless of its financing the time path of income inequality is however highly sensitive to financing policies and is often characterized by sharp intertemporal tradeoffs with income inequality declining in the short run but increasing in the long run public investment generates a positive correlation between growth and income inequality along the transition path but their short run and long run relationship depends critically on i how externalities impinge on allocation decisions ii financing policies and iii the time period of consideration finally these policies also generate sharp trade offs between average welfare and its distribution with government investment improving average welfare but also increasing its dispersion our results are obtained numerically but extensive sensitivity analysis confirms their robustness across key parameter values

fdi policies in china and india evidence from firm surveys this paper builds on the idea that economic reforms in china were designed to attract foreign direct investment fdi while the opposite happened in india we empirically examine how these different reform approaches affect foreign invested enterprises fie and domestic firms perceptions about the host country s business environment using world bank survey data we find that fies in india perceive more obstacles to business operations and development relative to domestic firms especially on issues related to government regulations and legal institutions on the contrary fies in china find government officials more helpful in promoting business development and perceive legal and financial constraints similar to their domestic counterparts these differences in perceptions between firm ownership types are consistent with the underlying diverging approaches of fdi policies adopted by the two largest developing nations

traditional governance citizen engagement and local public goods evidence from mexico summary we study the governance of public good provision in poor communities in oaxaca mexico we estimate the effect of usos y costumbres a form of participatory democracy prevalent in indigenous communities on the provision of local public goods because governance is endogenous we address selection effects by matching on municipal characteristics and long term settlement patterns using a first differences design we show that these municipalities increase access to electricity sewerage and education faster than communities ruled by political parties we also show they are places of vibrant political participation not authoritarian enclaves protecting the political monopoly of local bosses 2013 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

history institutions and economic performance the legacy of colonial land tenure systems in india we analyze the colonial land revenue institutions set up by the british in india and show that differences in historical property rights institutions lead to sustained differences in economic outcomes areas in which proprietary rights in land were historically given to landlords have significantly lower agricultural investments and productivity in the post independence period than areas in which these rights were given to the cultivators these areas also have significantly lower investments in health and education these differences are not driven by omitted variables or endogeneity problems they probably arise because differences in historical institutions lead to very different policy choices

the long term effects of africa s slave trades can part of africa s current underdevelopment be explained by its slave trades to explore this question i use data from shipping records and historical documents reporting slave ethnicities to construct estimates of the number of slaves exported from each country during africa s slave trades i find a robust negative relationship between the number of slaves exported from a country and current economic performance to better understand if the relationship is causal i examine the historical evidence on selection into the slave trades and use instrumental variables together the evidence suggests that the slave trades have had an adverse effect on economic development

u turns and full circles two decades of agricultural reform in malawi 1981 2000 abstract this paper traces the evolution of malawi s agricultural policy over the past two decades during this period the world bank has played a key role in shaping policy reform through its adjustment loans three distinct reform phases can be identified 1981 87 when policy was dominated by the dogmatism of the world bank s pricist and state minimalist policies 1988 94 when a more flexible position was taken by both the bank and the malawi government both of whom acknowledged the structuralist critique of earlier policies and 1994 to the present when the reform process in agriculture became more politicized and a schism developed between the bank and the government this latter period is used to illustrate some of the unresolved policy issues pertaining to similar low income agrarian economies

don t touch my road evidence from india on affirmative action and everyday discrimination summary this article investigates whether affirmative action in the form of electoral quotas affects group based discrimination the redistributive effect of quotas is subject to debate and their ultimate target is discrimination to identify the effect of electoral quotas i take advantage of their rotation across space and over time in india to proxy discrimination i use a measure of caste based exclusion from a public infrastructure namely streets in 2006 44 5 household members of the marginalized castes labeled scheduled castes sc still suffered from caste based exclusions i document that ongoing sc quotas reduce the likelihood of caste based exclusion for members of the scs by about one fifth the results also imply that the effect is not persistent it disappears with the end of the sc quota from a policy maker s perspective these results are mixed since electoral quotas do affect everyday discrimination even if the effect does not last these results are consistent with a temporary change in the behavior of members of the dominant castes after a one shot electoral quota these results are inconsistent with either a change in the stereotypes held by members of the dominant castes or a change in the aspirations of members of the lower castes

us and them the origin of identity and its economic implications we investigate the origins of identity and the innate proclivity to draw a distinction between insiders and outsiders we propose an evolutionary explanation we argue that identity arises because it facilitates survival in an evolutionary setting we endogenize preferences and demonstrate that the evolutionarily stable preferences fashioned by natural selection would draw a distinction between insiders and outsiders we then work out the implications of such preferences in two contemporary scenarios one entailing rent seeking behavior and the other involving public good provision our results are in conformity with empirical evidence

the system of administrative and political corruption canal irrigation in south india the paper describes how some irrigation engineers raise vast amounts of illicit revenue from the distribution of water and contracts and redistribute part to superior officers and politicians it argues that the corruption system which is centred on control of personnel transfers is an important supply side reason for poor performance of canal irrigated agriculture insofar as the same system operates in other government departments it may be more important for understanding indian politics and the political influences on economic development than has previously been realised

agricultural commercialisation and food security in rural economies malawian experience this paper contributes to the debate on the nutrition related outcomes of cash crop adoption by using a model with essential heterogeneity and a semi parametric estimation technique the model expl

distributive politics and regional development assessing the territorial distribution of turkey s public investment turkey is often perceived as a country with low bureaucratic capacity and prone to political manipulation and pork barrel this article tests whether this is the case by analysing the extent to which politics rather than equity and efficiency criteria have determined the geographical allocation of public investment across the 81 provinces of turkey between 2005 and 2012 the results show that although the turkish government has indeed channelled public expenditures to reward its core constituencies socioeconomic factors remained the most relevant predictors of investment moreover in contrast to official regional development policy principles we uncover the concentration of public investment in areas with comparatively higher levels of development we interpret this as the state bureaucracy s intentional strategy of focussing on efficiency by concentrating resources on the better off among the most in need

the development effects of the extractive colonial economy the dutch cultivation system in java colonial powers typically organized economic activity in the colonies to maximize their economic returns while the literature has emphasized long run negative economic impacts via institutional quality the changes in economic organization implemented to spur production historically could also directly influence economic organization in the long run exerting countervailing effects we examine these in the context of the dutch cultivation system the integrated industrial and agricultural system for producing sugar that formed the core of the dutch colonial enterprise in 19th century java we show that areas close to where the dutch established sugar factories in the mid 19th century are today more industrialized have better infrastructure are more educated and are richer than nearby counterfactual locations that would have been similarly suitable for colonial sugar factories we also show using a spatial regression discontinuity design on the catchment areas around each factory that villages forced to grow sugar cane have more village owned land and also have more schools and substantially higher education levels both historically and today the results suggest that the economic structures implemented by colonizers to facilitate production can continue to promote economic activity in the long run and we discuss the contexts where such effects are most likely to be important

tribal mobilization fragmented groups and public goods provision in jordan diversity has been blamed for poor public goods provision in a number of different contexts it is associated with reduced spending on services meager rates of tax collection and poor policies i argue in this article however that in semidemocratic or authoritarian countries where political parties are weak diversity can be an important source of electoral competition leading to better services in diverse communities where multiple identity groups are politically mobilized candidates are forced to seek the support of voters outside of their group who are more likely to vote based on qualifications than on group affiliation resulting in better public officials who provide superior services moreover i find internal group fragmentation to be important in understanding the impact of heterogeneity on public goods provision candidates in areas where only one identity group is politically mobilized but where that group is politically fragmented will also seek votes from other groups within the comm

the effects of rural electrification on employment new evidence from south africa this paper estimates the impact of electrification on employment growth by analyzing south africa s mass roll out of electricity to rural households using several new data sources and two different identification strategies an instrumental variables strategy and a fixed effects approach i find that electrification significantly raises female employment within five years this new infrastructure appears to increase hours of work for men and women while reducing female wages and increasing male earnings several pieces of evidence suggest that household electrification raises employment by releasing women from home production and enabling microenterprises migration behavior may also be affected jel h54 l94

determinants of collective action on the local commons a model with evidence from mexico i develop a model of cooperation in small irrigation systems i give conditions under which an equalizing redistribution of wealth increases the level of equilibrium cooperation but also show that some redistributions that increase inequality can also increase cooperation the distributive rule a combination of arrangements for maintenance cost sharing and water allocation also affects the cooperation level i estimate statistical models of cooperation for three maintenance indicators using field data from a study of mexican irrigation societies social heterogeneity and landholding inequality are significantly associated with lower maintenance distributive rules that allocate water proportionally to landholding size likewise reduce maintenance

empowerment and efficiency tenancy reform in west bengal the paper analyzes the effect of agricultural tenancy laws offering security of tenure to tenants and regulating the share of output that is paid as rent on farm productivity theoretically the net impact of tenancy reform is shown to be a combination of two effects a bargaining power effect and a security of tenure effect analysis of evidence on how contracts and productivity changed after a tenancy reform program was implemented in the indian state of west bengal in the late 1970s suggests that tenancy reform had a positive effect on agricultural productivity there

financial development financial structure and income inequality in china using panel data of 23 provinces during the period 1996 2012 this paper investigates the impacts of financial development and structure on income inequality in different administrative districts urban rural and overall in china the results produced by the dynamic generalised method of moments estimator provide some evidence for a linear and inverse u shape relationship between financial development and income inequality and increasing the relative importance of financial markets to banks helps to reduce income inequality furthermore the results of panel threshold regressions show that the benefits of financial development only occur if the stock market activity has reached a threshold level and disappear if the stock market capitalisation has reached a certain scale meanwhile the impact of the financial structure weakens as the financial development expands and the proportion of financial markets increases we also find that the impacts of financial development and structure on rural income inequality are stronger than those on urban income inequality

leftist parties neoliberal policies and reelection strategies the case of the pln in costa rica how do leftist parties in government abandon their traditional economic development programs adopt neoliberal policies and still win reelection this article examines the case of the leftist national liberation party pln in costa rica to explain this unexpected outcome the author argues that the explanation lies on two separate but related levels those of institutional rules and policy implementation strategies institutional rules constrain the behavior of political actors in multiple ways and structure political interaction however governments also employ specific policy implementation strategies e g obfuscation compensation division and incrementalism to adopt unpopular policies while reducing electoral costs as a result opposition to the reforms is more difficult to organize and potential negative consequences are difficult to identify for voters the institutional rules and the strategies that governments employ can account for the seeming paradox of a leftist party repeatedly abando

relating seasonal hunger and prevention and coping strategies a panel analysis of malawian farm households relative to chronic hunger seasonal hunger in rural and urban areas of africa is poorly understood this paper examines the extent and potential correlates of seasonal hunger in malawi using panel data from 2011 2013 we find that both urban and rural households report seasonal hunger in the pre harvest months certain strategies to smooth consumption including crop storage and livestock ownership are associated with fewer months of hunger in addition we find that malawian households that experience seasonal hunger harvest their crops earlier than average a short term coping mechanism that can reduce the crop s yield and nutritional value possibly perpetuating hunger

linking policies and economic voting explaining reelection in the case of the spanish socialist party economic voting literature has shown that voters hold governments responsible for the state of the economy election studies have also found that voters punish governing parties that divert from their campaign promises and move their policy positions these bodies of literature cannot convincingly explain the repeated reelection of the socialist party which passed supply side economic measures at odds with campaign promises and its traditional ideology furthermore the party succeeded in gaining reelection regardless of the state of the economy and despite consistently high unemployment in this article it is argued that to better understand the repeated electoral success of the socialist party three additional factors have to be taken into account the party system compensatory policies and internal party politics these factors allowed the spanish socialist party to build an electoral support coalition based on lower classes rural voters and voters dependent on state subsidized income

cash crop liberalization and poverty alleviation in africa evidence from malawi this article uses the case of burley tobacco liberalization in malawi to investigate the efficacy of cash crop liberalization as an instrument for poverty alleviation in sub saharan africa the principal justification for cash crop liberalization is that markets allow farm households to increase their incomes by producing that which provides the highest return to their productive resources and use the cash to buy consumption goods using a latent welfare model we find that households that selected to grow cash crops had higher incomes than those that did not grow cash crops however we also find that due to the lumpiness and seasonality of cash crop incomes higher household incomes while increasing food purchases did not significantly affect per capita food intake irrespective of participation in cash crops for much of the cropping season rural households seem to rely more on nonfarm income for expenditure and consumption smoothing

the impact of immigration on the size of government empirical evidence from danish municipalities several studies have reported a negative relationship between ethnic heterogeneity and the size of the public sector one problem with this literature is that ethnic composition is hardly exogenous

economic growth and inequality the role of public investment the relationship between growth and inequality is complex after discussing some general background issues motivated by extensive empirical evidence this paper focuses on public investment as a key determinant of the relationship two alternative frameworks each offering sharply contrasting perspectives are presented the first employs the representative consumer theory of distribution where agent heterogeneity originates with wealth endowments it yields an equilibrium in which aggregate dynamics drives distributional dynamics in the second agent heterogeneity arises from idiosyncratic productivity shocks and generates an equilibrium in which distributional dynamics drive growth the impact of government investment on growth and inequality are shown to contrast sharply in the two approaches thus illustrating the complexity of the growth inequality relationship

land reforms poverty reduction and economic growth evidence from india recognition of the importance of institutions that provide security of property rights and relatively equal access to economic resources to a broad cross section of society has renewed interest in the potential of asset redistribution including land reforms empirical analysis of the impact of such policies is however scant and often contradictory this paper uses panel household data from india together with state level variation in the implementation of land reform to address some of the deficiencies of earlier studies the results suggest that land reform had a significant and positive impact on income growth and accumulation of human and physical capital the paper draws policy implications especially from the fact that the observed impact of land reform seems to have declined over time

election cycles and electricity provision evidence from a quasi experiment with indian special elections abstract we present evidence from india showing that state governments induce electoral cycles in electricity service provision our data and research strategy allow us to build on models of political business cycles and targeted distribution in two important ways first we demonstrate that by manipulating the flow of critical inputs into economic activity like electricity elected leaders can influence economic outcomes even in contexts where they have constrained fiscal capacity second we identify the effect of elections on electricity provision by focusing on special elections held for exogenous reasons our results show that state governments induce substantive increases in electricity service to constituencies that hold special elections manipulation of the power supply is stronger in contested constituencies and during special elections held in states where the government commands only a small majority overall we find no evidence of positive welfare effects from the electoral manipulation of electricity supply

community based development and poverty alleviation an evaluation of china s poor village investment program we conduct the first systematic evaluation of the world s largest community based development program china s flagship poverty alleviation program began in 2001 which finances public investments in designated poor villages based on participatory village planning we use matching methods and a panel household and village data set with national coverage to compare changes from 2001 to 2004 in designated poor villages that began plan investments and in designated poor villages that had yet to begin plan investments we find that the program significantly increased both government and village financed investments while the program did not increase the income or consumption of poorer households it did increase the income and consumption of richer households by 6 1 to 9 2 we also find suggestive evidence that governance matters in the distribution of program benefits relative gains were greater for richer households in villages with more educated leaders and higher quality village committees delivered greater benefits to both richer and poorer households

colonialism and modern income islands as natural experiments abstract using a new database of islands throughout the atlantic pacific and indian oceans we find a robust positive relationship between the number of years spent as a european colony and current gdp per capita we argue that the nature of discovery and colonization of islands provides random variation in the length and type of colonial experience we instrument for length of colonization using variation in prevailing wind patterns we argue that wind speed and direction had a significant effect on historical colonial rule but do not have a direct effect on gdp today the data also suggest that years as a colony after 1700 are more beneficial than earlier years we also find a discernable pecking order among the colonial powers with years under u s british french and dutch rule having more beneficial effects than spanish or portuguese rule our finding of a strong connection between modern income and years of colonization is conditional on being colonized at all since each of the islands in our da

history lessons institutions factor endowments and paths of development in the new world the explanations offered for the contrasting records of long run growth and development among the societies of north and south america most often focus on institutions the traditional explanations for the sources of these differences in institutions typically highlight the significance of national heritage or religion we in contrast argue that a hemispheric perspective across the wide range of colonies established in the new world by the europeans suggests that although there were many influences factor endowments or initial conditions had profound and enduring effects on the long run paths of institutional and economic development followed by the respective economies

farm level pathways to improved nutritional status global national and local policies and programs for agricultural development arerecurrently justified based on their alleged role in improving food and nutrition security however strikingly little evidence is available to prove that a direct household level linkbetween agricultural production and improved nutrition exists the objective of thisspecial issue is to systematically and empirically test using data from africa and southasia whether a relationship between household agricultural production and nutrition canbe found overall the studies in this special issue support the hypothesis that householdagricultural production has direct and important linkages with dietary patterns andnutrition

the politico economics of electricity planning in developing countries a case study of ghana abstract off grid technologies are increasingly being proposed as a way of ensuring cost efficient universal access to electricity in many developing countries however many un electrified communities would prefer access to electricity via the national grid rather than off grid technologies electricity planning based on cost efficiency alone could therefore be undermined by political pressure from discontented communities that are assigned off grid technologies using a case study of un electrified communities in ghana we develop an electricity planning algorithm based on hierarchical lexicographic programming and consider specifications where the priorities are adjusted to give weight to 1 cost efficiency and 2 political economy considerations so that communities with larger populations and therefore votes are given priority in terms of grid electrification the results emphasise the need to incorporate the political economy considerations in the national planning of universal electrification showing significant regional differences in terms of where grid extensions ought to be placed incorporating a political economy perspective in national planning also suggests that the most important policy trade offs shift from considering the grid versus off grid balance to focussing more on the effectiveness of grid investment in providing universal access

agricultural production dietary diversity and climate variability nonseparable household models outline the links between agricultural production and household consumption yet empirical extensions to investigate the effect of production on dietary diversity and diet composition are limited although a significant literature has investigated the calorie income elasticity abstracting from production this paper provides an empirical application of the nonseparable household model linking the effect of exogenous variation in planting season production decisions via climate variability on household dietary diversity using exogenous variation in degree days rainfall and agricultural capital stocks as instruments the effect of production on household dietary diversity at harvest is estimated the empirical specifications estimate production effects on dietary diversity using both agricultural revenue and crop production diversity significant effects of agricultural revenue and crop production diversity on dietary diversity are estimated the dietary diversity production elasticities imply that a 10 percent increase in agricultural revenue or crop diversity results in a 1 8 percent or 2 4 percent increase in dietary diversity respectively these results illustrate that agricultural income growth or increased crop diversity may not be sufficient to ensure improved dietary diversity increases in agricultural revenue do change diet composition estimates of the effect of agricultural income on share of calories by food groups indicate relatively large changes in diet composition on average a 10 percent increase in agricultural revenue makes households 7 2 percent more likely to consume vegetables and 3 5 percent more likely to consume fish and increases the share of tubers consumed by 5 2 percent

voter turnout and the principle of one person one vote empirical evidence from the constituency freeze in india this article uses panel data from national and state elections in india during the period 1977 2007 to examine the effect of inequality in constituency population size on voter turnout during this period constituency boundaries in india remained fixed as a result differences in population size between constituencies increased thus changing the value of a single vote using this large variation in population size and informative data this article carefully distinguishes the effect of population size from other factors we find that an increase of one million electorates decreases voter turnout by 12 27 in addition we find that the share of votes gained by national political parties is greater in small population constituencies this suggests that political parties direct their efforts in electoral campaigns preferentially to less populous constituencies as a result voters in small constituencies are more likely to participate in elections

political market characteristics and the provision of educational infrastructure in north india in this paper we are concerned with the provision of schools in rural north india particularly with whether such provision is determined by the demographic and economic characteristics of the region or whether local democracy also plays a role we find that the probability that a governing party loses an election has a positive effect on the provision of schooling infrastructure while the margin of victory of the governing party has a negative effect political reservation for members of the scheduled castes scs has a positive effect on schooling infrastructure in villages with a large sc population but a negative effect overall

mandated political representation and redistribution mandated political representation for minorities involves earmarking certain electoral districts where only minority group candidates are permitted to contest such quotas have been implemented in india for certain social groups and for women although gender quotas in the legislature are popular in several other countries this paper builds a political economy model to analyze the effect of such affirmative action on redistribution in equilibrium our model predicts that in situations where the minority group is economically disadvantaged and where voters favor candidates from their own group such a quota actually reduces transfers to poorer groups moreover redistribution in reserved districts leads to a rise in within minority group inequality

occupational choice and the process of development this paper models economic development as a process of institutional transformation by focusing on the interplay between agents occupational decisions and the distribution of wealth because of capital market imperfections poor agents choose working for a wage over self employment and wealthy agents become entrepreneurs who monitor workers only with sufficient inequality however will there be employment contracts otherwise there is either subsistence or self employment thus in static equilibrium the occupational structure depends on distribution since the latter is itself endogenous we demonstrate the robustness of this result by extending the model dynamically and studying examples in which initial wealth distributions have long run effects in one case the economy develops either widespread cottage industry self employment or factory production employment contracts depending on the initial distribution in the other example it develops into prosperity or stagnation

the origins of ethnolinguistic diversity this study explores the determinants of ethnolinguistic diversity within as well as across countries shedding light on its geographic origins the empirical analysis conducted across countries virtual countries and pairs of contiguous regions establishes that geographic variability captured by variation in regional land quality and elevation is a fundamental determinant of contemporary linguistic diversity the findings are consistent with the proposed hypothesis that differences in land endowments gave rise to location specific human capital leading to the formation of localized ethnicities jel j15 j24 z13

relying on the private sector the income distribution and public investments in the poor abstract what drives governments with similar revenues to provide very different amounts of goods with private sector substitutes education is a prime example i use exogenous shocks to brazilian municipalities revenue during 1995 2008 generated by non linearities in federal transfer laws to demonstrate two things first municipalities with higher income inequality or higher median income allocate less of a revenue shock to education and are less likely to expand public school enrollment they are more likely to invest in public infrastructure that is broadly enjoyed like parks and roads or to save the shock second i find no evidence that the quality of public education suffers as a result if anything unequal and high income areas are more likely to improve public school inputs and test scores following a revenue shock given their heavy use of private education i further provide evidence that an increase in public sector revenue lowers private school enrollment

does political reservation for minorities affect child labor evidence from india summary this paper examines the impact of state level political reservation for two minority groups scheduled castes and scheduled tribes on the incidence of child labor in india we estimate the effect of political reservation on the incidence of child labor by exploiting the state variation in the share of seats reserved for the two minority groups in state legislative assemblies mandated by the constitution of india using data from state and household level surveys on fifteen major indian states we find that at the household level schedule tribe reservation decreases the incidence of child labor while scheduled caste reservation increases the total number of children working we examine these impacts on the general as well as the disadvantaged group population independently and across the gender of children we also explore potential explanations for the differential impact of sc and st political reservation including geographic isolation caste fragmentation support for the congress party and decentralization of power our results survive a variety of robustness checks

enfranchising your own experimental evidence on bureaucrat diversity and election bias in india this paper investigates the effects of polling station administrator diversity on elections in india using a natural experiment the random assignment of government officials to teams managing stations on election day together with surveys conducted with voters and election officers i demonstrate that changes in the religious and caste composition of officer teams impact voting at the polling station level causing shifts in coalition vote shares large enough to influence election outcomes effects are strongest when officers have greater discretion over the voting process i also provide evidence suggesting own group favoritism by election personnel as one relevant mechanism

the economic lives of the poor in what turned out to be a rhetorical master move the 1990 world development report from the world bank defined the extremely poor people of the world as those who are currently living on no more than 1 per day per person measured at the 1985 purchasing power parity ppp exchange rate in 1993 the poverty line was updated to 1 08 per person per day at the 1993 ppp exchange rate which is the line we use in this paper poverty lines have always existed indeed 1 per day was chosen in part because of its proximity to the poverty lines used by many poor countries 1 however the 1 a day poverty line has come to dominate the conversations about poverty to a remarkable extent

the political economy of the maoist conflict in india an empirical analysis we study the maoist naxalite conflict in india by constructing a comprehensive district level database combining conflict data from four different terrorism databases to socioeconomic and geography data from myriad sources using data on 360 districts for three time periods we find that land inequality and lower incomes are important factors behind the conflict exploiting the micro structure of the data we show that growth of incomes of scheduled tribes significantly decreases the intensity of the conflict finally we show that historical property rights institutions from colonial times that go back centuries affect present day conflict outcomes

drought of opportunities contemporaneous and long term impacts of rainfall shocks on human capital higher wages are generally thought to increase human capital production particularly in the developing world we introduce a simple model of human capital production in which investments and time allocation differ by age using data on test scores and schooling from rural india we show that higher wages increase human capital investment in early life in utero to age 2 but decrease human capital from age 5 to 16 children switch out of school into productive work when rainfall is higher the opportunity cost of schooling even for fairly young children is an important factor in determining overall human capital investment

reshaping institutions evidence on aid impacts using a pre analysis plan this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled reshaping institutions evidence on aid impacts using a pre analysis plan conducted between 2005 and 2009 in sierra leone the study observed the impact of pre analysis plan pap on local institutions by imposing participation requirements for marginalized groups including women and test for learning by doing effects in sierra leone on the individual and village level requiring women and young adults to take on leadership positions participate in project meetings and sign off on project finances does not have any persistent effect on their participation in local decision making or attitudes regarding leadership ability the project successfully established village organizations and tools to manage the project the distributions of the project s benefits were equitable and leakage was minimal there was a significant positive impact on the stock and quality of local public infrastructure however there are no detectible changes in the ability to raise funds for local public goods decision making process or social norms and attitudes funding for the study derived from the gobifo project the institutional reform and capacity building project ircbp the world bank development impact evaluation dime the horace w goldsmith foundation the international growth center 3ie and the national bureau of economic research nber african successes project

economic reform voting and local political intervention evidence from india abstract this paper uses the indian tariff reforms of the early nineties to estimate how voters hurt by economic reforms respond regions more hurt by the tariff reform increased their support for both the party that initiated their suffering and parties with similar preferences in favor of poverty centric policies this response is surprisingly sophisticated where voters did not simply punish incumbents for negative income shocks and correctly discounted initial anti reform stances by opposition parties that later turned out to be false furthermore the strength of this voting response varied with both geography and local political incentives suggesting that the economic effects of reforms might vary substantially in large and decentralized democracies

the countervailing effects of competition on public goods provision when bargaining inefficiencies lead to bad outcomes political competition is widely recognized as a mediator of public goods provision through its salutary effect on incumbents electoral incentives we argue that political competition additionally mediates public goods provision by reducing the efficiency of legislative bargaining these countervailing forces may produce a net negative effect in places with weak parties and low transparency typical of many young democracies we provide evidence of a robust negative relationship between political competition and local public goods using panel data from mali tests of mechanisms corroborate our interpretation of this relationship as evidence of legislative bargaining inefficiencies to explore the generalizability of these findings we analyze cross country panel data and show that political competition leads to better worse public goods provision under high low levels of party system institutionalization the paper sheds light on why political competition is only selectively beneficial and underscores the importance of considering both the electoral and legislative arenas

constructing accountability party position taking and economic voting a positive relationship between economic performance and support for incumbents is routinely taken as evidence that elections work for accountability recent investigations into this relationship h

investor protection and corporate governance recent research has documented large differences among countries in ownership concentration in publicly traded firms in the breadth and depth of capital markets in dividend policies and in the access of firms to external finance a common element to the explanations of these differences is how well investors both shareholders and creditors are protected by law from expropriation by the managers and controlling shareholders of firms we describe the differences in laws and the effectiveness of their enforcement across countries discuss the possible origins of these differences summarize their consequences and assess potential strategies of corporate governance reform we argue that the legal approach is a more fruitful way to understand corporate governance and its reform than the conventional distinction between bank centered and market centered financial systems

collectivization and china s agricultural crisis in 1959 1961 the agricultural crisis in china in 1959 61 after the initial success of the collectivization movement resulted in 30 million extra deaths in this paper a game theory hypothesis proposes the main cause of this catastrophe i argue that because of the difficulty in supervising agricultural work the success of an agricultural collective depends on a self enforcing contract in which each one promises to discipline oneself a self enforcing contract however can be sustained only in a repeated game in the fall of 1958 the right to withdraw from a collective was deprived the nature of the collectivization was thus changed from a repeated game to a one time game as a result the self enforcing contract could not be sustained and agricultural productivity collapsed the empirical evidence is consistent with this hypothesis

clientelism in indian villages abstract we study the operation of local governments panchayats in rural maharashtra india using a survey that we designed for this end elections are freely contested fairly tallied highly p

land distribution and international agricultural productivity the unequal distribution of agricultural land is often cited as a source of inefficiency in agriculture previous cross country studies of agricultural productivity differences though have not considered land inequality this article addresses this issue by using cross country data on inequality in operational holdings of agricultural land from deininger and squire 1998 in an estimation of an agricultural production function the gini coefficient for land holdings is found to have a significant negative relationship with productivity this is consistent with the existence of heterogeneity in productivity by farm size within countries a one standard deviation drop in the gini coefficient implies an increase in productivity of 8 5

economic history and modern india redefining the link this paper argues that to restore the link between economic history and modern india a different narrative of indian economic history is needed an exclusive focus on colonialism as the driver of india s economic history misses those continuities that arise from economic structure or local conditions in fact market oriented british imperial policies did initiate a process of economic growth based on the production of goods intensive in labor and natural resources however productive capacity per worker was constrained by low rates of private and public investment in infrastructure excessively low rates of schooling social inequalities based on caste and gender and a delayed demographic transition to lower birthrates and the resultant heavy demographic burden placed on physical capital and natural resources

behavioural and material determinants of production relations in agriculture in this essay we develop a framework for analysing the major institutions governing the production and exchange of output and the primary factors of production in rural areas the analysis incorporates general considerations of risk and information constraints jointly with the principal material attributes of agriculture and of agricultural production factors the framework is used to analyse barriers to the existence of the major intertemporal and factor markets it is applied specifically to land scarce environments for which it provides an internally consistent explanation for many of the well documented institutional features of such settings in addition the analysis provides new implications for among other phenomena the inter relationships among ownership holdings operational scale family size and factor productivity for the scarcity of animal rental markets and use of animals as collateral for the renting out of land by small landowners and for the existence of plantations for certain crops

contracts hold up and exports textiles and opium in colonial india trade and export it is argued spur economic growth this paper studies the microeco nomics of exporting we build a heuristic model of transactions between exporters and producers and relate it to east india company operations in colonial bengal our model and the historical record stress two difficulties the exporter and its agents might not uphold payment agreements and producers might not honor sales contracts the model shows when procurement succeeds or fails highlighting the tension between these two hold up problems we analyze several cases including the east india company s cotton textile venture the famous opium monopoly and present day contract farming

quantifying spatial misallocation in centrally provided public goods we use an optimization algorithm to solve a two period planner s problem of spatially allocating public goods we apply the algorithm to data on the location of post offices in south india between 1981 1991 and show that more appropriate choices could have reduced travel costs by at least 20

caste female labor supply and the gender wage gap in india boserup revisited abstractthe gender wage gap is notable not just for its persistence and ubiquity but also for its variation across regions and countries a natural question is how greater workforce participation by women matters to female wages and the gender wage gap within india a seeming paradox is that gender differentials in agricultural wages are the largest in southern regions of india that are otherwise favorable to women ester boserup hypothesized that this is due to greater labor force participation by women in these regions this is not obvious as greater female labor supply could depress male wages as well other factors also need to be accounted for especially since women have fewer opportunities for nonfarm employment this article undertakes a formal test of the boserup proposition we find that differences in female labor supply are able to explain 55 of the gender wage gap between northern and southern states of india the article also finds that women gain from greater nonfarm employment even if

income distribution and macroeconomics this paper analyzes the role of wealth distribution in macroeconomics through investment in human capital it is shown that in the presence of credit markets imperfections and indivisibilities in investment in human capital the initial distribution of wealth affects aggregate output and investment both in the short and in the long run as there are multiple steady states this paper therefore provides an additional explanation for the persistent differences in per capita output across countries furthermore the paper shows that cross country differences in macroeconomic adjustment to aggregate shocks can be attributed among other factors to differences in wealth and income distribution across countries

the political economy of public goods some evidence from india we are interested in how public goods get allocated by a centralized state we use data on public goods and social structure from parliamentary constituencies in rural india to understand the allocation of these goods over the 1970s and 1980s national policies and political agendas during this period emphasized universal access to basic amenities and financed a rapid expansion in rural infrastructure we find evidence of considerable equalization in many of these facilities reflecting perhaps the importance of these commitments among the historically disadvantaged social groups those that mobilized themselves politically gained relative to the others measures of social heterogeneity that have been emphasized in the recent empirical literature on public goods are relevant but not overwhelming in their importance

does access to formal agricultural credit depend on caste summary this paper analyzes whether caste impedes access to formal agricultural credit in india credit is provided mainly through cooperative and commercial banks using national data we find that cooperative banks discriminate against lower caste borrowers and find weak evidence that commercial banks instead bias lending in their favor in accordance with affirmative action policies we compare the organizational structures of the two types of bank and explain discrimination by cooperative banks in terms of interest group capture at the district level by showing that discrimination takes place in those districts where higher castes dominate

from labor to finance understanding the failure of socialist economic policies in spain this article seeks to explain the spanish socialist party s psoe s failure to reverse spain s dismal employment record during the course of its long government tenure from 1982 until 1996 most efforts to explain spain s position at the extreme of the unemployment spectrum in europe follow the prevalent tendency in the comparative political economy literature by giving causal primacy to labor market institutions this article challenges this labor market centered view by arguing that the failure of the socialist government s economic policy strategy is to be found in the interaction of two other factors the biased course of financial liberalization and the perverse effects of the psoe s macroeconomic policy strategy on inflation and on the process of social concertation national wage bargaining the article also seeks to explain the psoe s choices in these policy areas

can mandated political representation increase policy influence for disadvantaged minorities theory and evidence from india accountable governments often fail to reflect the interests of disadvantaged minorities this paper exploits the institutional features of political reservation as practiced in indian states to examine the role of mandated political representation in providing disadvantaged groups influence over policy making ifind that political reservation has increased transfers to groups which benefit from the mandate this finding also suggests that complete policy commitment may be absent in democracies as is found in this case jel d72 d78 hl 1 h50

remember when it rained schooling responses to shocks in india abstract despite long standing international agreements like the millennium development goals 264 million children in developing countries are not enrolled in school and children in rural areas remain twice as likely to be out of school as children in urban areas one potential explanation for this pattern is that children s education in rural areas is vulnerable to weather shocks but there is no consensus about whether rainfall shocks help or harm school enrollment in the existing literature this paper explores whether changes in the relationship between rainfall shocks and schooling outcomes over time can explain the different results in the literature by using household survey data from india across three decades my study finds that adverse rainfall shocks have an increasingly stronger positive impact on school enrollment over time whereas enrollment is increasingly falling after positive rainfall shocks this effect is stronger for girls than for boys more pronounced for older children and is consistent with an increase in the importance of opportunity costs of a child s time in more recent years children may have to drop out of school when employment opportunities are more readily available after a positive rainfall shock but are able to go to school when jobs are scarce these results offer a potential explanation for the different results in the literature where studies on countries with higher economic development tend to find results consistent with an opportunity cost story whereas this is not the case for studies on countries with a lower level of development the results suggest that policymakers need to pay close attention to the obstacles faced by girls and older children to make access to education universal and should develop policy tools that incentivize households to send their children to school even when employment opportunities are readily available

rural reforms and agricultural growth in china this paper employs province level panel data to assess the contributions of decollectivization price adjustments and other reforms to china s agricultural growth in the reform period decollectivization is found to improve total factor productivity and to account for about half of the output growth during 1978 84 the adjustment in state procurement prices also contributed positively to output growth its impact came mainly from the responses in input use the effect of other market related reforms on productivity and output growth was very small reasons for slowdown in agricultural growth after 1984 are also analyzed copyright 1992 by american economic association

landownership concentration and the expansion of education we study the relationship between large landownership concentration and the expansion of mass education in nineteenth century prussia cross sectional estimates show a negative association between landownership concentration and enrollment rates fixed effects panel estimates indicate that regions with an initially stronger landownership concentration exhibit increasing enrollment rates this relationship is not driven by differences in the supply of schooling we argue that the implementation of agricultural reforms including the stepwise abolition of serfdom is an important driver of the change in enrollment the results are consistent with the interpretation that emancipation from labor coercion increased the private demand for education

markets in china and europe on the eve of the industrial revolution prevailing views suggest the industrial revolution began in europe because markets had gradually become more efficient and by the 18th century the scope of economic activity was far larger than in other parts of the world this paper compares the actual performance of markets in europe and china two regions of the world that were relatively advanced in the pre industrial period but would start to industrialize about 150 years apart the analysis covers economies that account for about two fifths of the world s population in the mid 18th century and it considers some three centuries of data our findings suggest that relative levels of market function in china and europe were similar prior to the industrial revolution higher efficiency in europe is seen only in the nineteenth century when industrialization was already underway moreover these improvements occurred in a dramatic and sudden fashion further casting doubt on an evolutionary view of market development rather than being a key condition for subsequent growth gains in efficiency appeared simultaneously with the turning point of modern growth we discuss the implications of these findings for a number of explanations for long run growth and the industrial revolution

inequality does cause underdevelopment insights from a new instrument consistent with the provocative hypothesis of engerman and sokoloff 1997 2000 this paper confirms with cross country data that agricultural endowments predict inequality and inequality predicts development the use of agricultural endowments specifically the abundance of land suitable for growing wheat relative to that suitable for growing sugarcane as an instrument for inequality is this paper s approach to problems of measurement and endogeneity of inequality the paper finds inequality also affects other development outcomes institutions and schooling which the literature has emphasized as mechanisms by which higher inequality lowers per capita income it tests the inequality hypothesis for development institutional quality and schooling against other recent hypotheses in the literature while finding some evidence consistent with other development fundamentals the paper finds high inequality to independently be a large and statistically significant barrier to prosperity good quality institutions and high schooling

does better nutrition raise farm productivity household level data from sierra leone are used to test whether higher caloric intake enhances family farm labor productivity this is the notion behind the efficiency wages hypothesis which has found only weak empirical support a farm production function is estimated accounting for the simultaneity in input and calorie choice instruments include prices household demographic characteristics and farm assets the latter two sets of instruments are later dropped to explore the robustness of the results to different specifications of exogeneity the exercise shows a highly significant effect of caloric intake on labor productivity providing solid support for the nutrition productivity hypothesis the marginal effect on productivity falls drastically as calorie consumption rises but remains positive at moderately high levels of intake one result is a fall in the effective price of food a decline that is larger for households that consumer fewer calories

traveling agents political change and bureaucratic turnover in india abstract we develop a framework to empirically examine how politicians with electoral pressures control bureaucrats with career concerns and the consequent implications for bureaucrats career investments unique microlevel data on indian bureaucrats support our key predictions politicians use frequent reassignments transfers across posts of varying importance to control bureaucrats high skilled bureaucrats face less frequent political transfers and lower variability in the importance of their posts we find evidence of two alternative paths to career success officers of higher initial ability are more likely to invest in skill but caste affinity to the politician s party base also helps secure important positions

distributive politics and economic growth a crude distinction between economics and politics would be that economics is concerned with expanding the pie while politics is about distributing it in this paper we analyze the relationship between the two we focus on how an economy s initial configuration of resources shapes the political struggle for income and wealth distribution and how that in turn affects long run growth our main conclusion is that inequality is conducive to the adoption of growth retarding policies we derive this result from a simple political economy model of growth and present cross country evidence consistent with it the key feature of our model is that individuals differ in their relative factor endowments we distinguish between two types of factors an accumulated factor called capital and a nonaccumulated factor called labor growth is driven by the expansion of the capital stock which is in turn determined by individual saving decisions long run growth is endogenous as the aggregate production function is taken to be linearly homogeneous in capital and productive government services taken together the provision of government services is financed by a tax on capital because government services are productive a small tax on

electoral uncertainty income inequality and the middle class we investigate how electoral competition affects the income distribution in society we utilise a standard probabilistic voting setup where parties compete at two stages our model delivers that greater electoral competition in a district results in equalisation of incomes therein we check for these relationships using data from indian national elections which are combined with consumption expenditure data rounds from the national sample survey organization 1987 8 and 2004 5 to yield a district level panel our ols 2 sls and iiv analyses consistently inform that close elections lead to lower inequality and polarisation indicating a larger middle class

politics and public goods in developing countries evidence from the assassination of rajiv gandhi abstract this paper employs an instrumental variables strategy to identify the effect of party ideology on policy outcomes exogenous variation in party representation is generated by the assassination of the leader of the congress party which occurred midway through india s national elections in 1991 and dramatically increased the probability of congress victory for a subset of constituencies representation by the congress party leads to a substantial increase in the provision of public goods favored by the poor consistent with the party s expressed populist agenda among the salient changes are increases in the availability of drinking water and primary education and declines in agricultural and industrial electrification and telephone coverage i compare these effects to those obtained using a regression discontinuity design and find that the latter yields little effect of congress representation on public goods allocations

market access by smallholder farmers in malawi implications for technology adoption agricultural productivity and crop income abstract in malawi maize is the major crop and food staple given limited off farm employment opportunities much needed increases in household income for improving food security must come from gains in agricultural productivity through better technology and more profitable crops in the past hybrid maize and more recently tobacco were promoted by policy for increasing smallholder income an analysis of determinants of adoption of these two crops and related income effects is presented apart from factor endowment and exposure to agroecological risks differences in the household s access to financial and commodity markets significantly influence its cropping shares and farm income