Analyzing a variety of cross-national and sub-national data, we argue that high adult mortality reduces economic growth by shortening time horizons. Higher adult mortality is associated with increased levels of risky behavior, higher fertility, and lower investment in physical and human capital....

Is the high degree of gender inequality in developing countries--in education, personal autonomy, and more--explained by underdevelopment itself? Or do the societies that are poor today hold certain cultural views that lead to gender inequality? This article discusses several mechanisms through...

Women's empowerment and economic development are closely related: in one direction, development alone can play a major role in driving down inequality between men and women; in the other direction, empowering women may benefit development. Does this imply that pushing just one of these two...

Developing countries made considerable gains during the first decade of the 21st century. Their economies grew at unprecedented rates, resulting in large reductions in extreme poverty and a significant expansion of the middle class. But more recently that progress has slowed with an economic...

The COVID-19 pandemic led to stark reductions in economic activity in India. We employ CMIE's Consumer Pyramids Household Survey to examine the timing, distribution, and mechanism of the impacts from this shock on income and consumption through December 2020. First, we estimate large and...

The sharing economy for a wide range of goods and services is expanding across the world. To direct the benefits from sharing capital services towards small-scale producers, governments in the developing world are increasingly intervening in fast-growing mechanization rental markets. However,...

Every firm in a developed economy relies on the mere existence of countless other firms to keep prices competitive up and down all supply chains. Without this network externality, no firm forms; and without many firms, no network forms; locking in a low-income trap. Business group governance...

We study the consequences of dynamic complementarities in the production of child human capital for the relationship between risk and schooling investment in a low income setting. In contrast to previous literature, we explore the ex ante response of schooling to risk. We develop a model that...

We construct a model of creative destruction with endogenous firm dynamics. We integrate the theory into a general equilibrium multi-country model of technological convergence where countries interact via international spillovers. We derive implications for both firm dynamics and aggregate...

We explore the impact of British colonial institutions on the economic development of India. In some regions, the British colonial government assigned property rights in land and taxes to landlords whereas in others it assigned them directly to cultivators or non-landlords. Although Banerjee and...