Groundwater depletion is becoming a serious policy concern in many developing countries but little is known about the costs of groundwater depletion. I use annual deviations of depth to groundwater from 1999 to 2003 from the 1985-1995 decadal means for Indian districts, to investigate how...

RThis paper proposes a novel decomposition of aggregate productivity to evaluate the role of resource reallocation for the cyclical dynamics of aggregate productivity. The decomposition, which is derived from the aggregation of heterogeneous firm-level production functions, accounts for changes...

Well-designed regulation can check politically driven ineciencies, but it can also ex- acerbate distortions if politicians capture the regulators. We examine the consequences of strengthening India's electricity transmission regulatory structure for groundwater ex- traction, where electricity is...

We examine the eect of rainfall shocks on crimes against women using data from 583 Indian districts for 2002-2007. We nd that a one standard deviation decline in annual rainfall from the local mean increases reported domestic violence by 4.4 percent and dowry deaths by 7.8 percent. Wet shocks...

Globalization can lead to either conservation or depletion of natural resources that are used in the production of traded goods. Rising prices may lead to better resource man- agement. Alternatively, stronger incentives to extract these resources may exacerbate their decline- especially in open...

We develop a theory of total factor productivity to understand differences in pro- ductivity and human capital across countries. In our model, firms face capital market imperfections and costs of operating in the formal sector. Formal firms have a larger set of production opportunities and the...

: The public-sector Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) program is a $3 billion federal-state partnership designed to provide employment-related assistance to persons with disabilities. There is, however, relatively little-known about the long-term efficacy of VR programs. This paper utilizes unique...

Provision of mental health services is in a state of ?ux as the Patient Protection and A¤ordable Care Act a¤ects provision and cost of medical care and state policymakers grapple with di¢ cult tradeo¤s between budget balance and provi- sion of public medical care. Mental health care...

This paper analyzes the effects of entry regulations and firing costs on cross-country differences in income and productivity. We construct a general equilibrium industry- dynamics model and quantitatively evaluate it using the cross-country data on entry costs and firing costs. Entry costs...