Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the roles of social networks and intermediares in recruitment and as instruments to control the workforce in lower end urban labour markets in developing countries. The existing literature favours explanations where networks and middlemen are...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the roles of social networks and intermediares in recruitment and as instruments to control the workforce in lower end urban labour markets in developing countries. The existing literature favours explanations where networks and middlemen are...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate why poor people make decisions that at first sight appear irrational. The author stays within the realms of classical consumption theory, and investigates preference-based explanations. The author studies the case of rickshaw rental versus...

Was the Maoist influence during the insurgency in Nepal stronger in districts with high rates of poverty and inequality? In contrast to previous studies, we limit the analysis to the hill/mountain districts as very few terai (plains) districts were classified as Maoist. And we conduct separate...

We investigate whether historic land distribution determines stagnation or development of Indian villages. The empirical analysis is motivated by the Banerjee and Newman (1993) model of occupational choice and economic development. Family histories are collected for a random sample of 800...