he caste system – a system of elaborately stratified social hierarchy – distinguishes India from most other societies. Among the most distinctive factors of the caste system is the close link between castes and occupations, especially in rural India, with Dalits or Scheduled Castes...

The cross-country empirical literature on the finance-growth relationship has debated three propositions: (i) financial deepening has a strong impact on the growth process; (ii) measures of financial “activity†rather than the “size†of the sector plays a more significant...

This paper analyses the impact of domestic and external shocks on the Indian economy. A macro-modelling framework is developed that evaluates the impact of two domestic shocks (rainfall shortfall and fiscal profligacy) and three external shocks (oil price hike, world trade shock and capital flow...

Through the use of secondary data, field visits and focus group discussions, this study explores the dynamics of the evolution of the economic life in Greater Faridpur over the last 100d years (1910-2010). Such investigation suggests that there have been large increases in population and...

As part the Local Level Institutions study of local life in villages in rural Indonesia information was gathered on sampled household’s participation in social activities. We classified the reported activities into four distinct types of social activity: sociability, networks, social...

Learning profiles that track changes in student skills per year of schooling often find shockingly low learning gains. Using data from three recent studies in South Asia and Africa, it is shown that a majority of students spend years of instruction with no progress on basics. Shallow learning...