NREGS (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) is the Indian government's flagship anti-poverty program and is one of the largest public works programmes in the world which aims to increase employment opportunities for the poor and in particular, improve women's access to the...

We show the effects of entry by a non-innovating firm on the innovating firms' incentive for undertaking cooperative R&D, highlighting the impliations of knowledge spillover. Entry by a non-innovating firm may either increase or decrease the incentive for cooperative R&D comparted to no entry,...

We examine if elections of public prosecutors (as is common in the U.S.) influence the way they handle cases. In particular, does it affect which cases are taken to trial? A theoretical model is constructed where voters use outcomes of the criminal justice system as a signal of prosecutor's...

We examine how socio-economic and police enforcement variables affect property and violent crimes at different points of the crime distribution in England and Wales over the period 1992-2007. By using data from 43 police force areas, we examine how the effect of real earnings, unemployment,...

We analyze the possible impact of re-organizing multiple prosecutors' offices on 'prosecutorial output': merging multiple districts saves on a state's expenditures but the impact on the criminal justice is ambiguous and depends on whether scale efficiencies make up for the diminished resources...

We examine various determinants of property and violent crimes by using police force area level (PFA) data on England and Wales over the period 1992-2008. Our list of potential determinants includes two law enforcement variables, crime-specific detection rate and prison population, and various...

This paper examines the role played by community characteristics in influencing local environmental quality, focusing specifically on ethnic diversity. In contrast to the previous literature, this study argues that it is the fractionalization and/or polarization of ethnic groups that is the...

A new explanation for the failure of plea bargaining is provided. It is shown that a retention agent (i.e. median voter) can use convictions at trial as a signal of the quality of a prosecutor. This encourages a public prosecutor to take cases to trial even when both social welfare and her...

In response to equity concerns surrounding the spatial distribution of CO2 emissions and the assumptions of CO2 convergence within some climate models, this paper examines the convergence of CO2 emissions within the OECD over the period 1870-204. More specifically, using the Local Whittle...

We analyze how product quality, prices and demand interact in a dynamic model of asymmetric information. We show that in markets for experience goods, even in the absence of certification, trade may occur, arising from a relation between market thickness and the incentive of sellers to produce...