We examine whether internet search intensity, as captured by Google’s Search Volume Index (SVI), predicts house price changes in an emerging market like India. Emerging markets have low internet penetration and high information asymmetry with a dominant unorganized real estate market. Like in...

Ideally land and buildings ought to be preferred collateral for lenders in India, as in many other countries, due to the ease of valuation and disposal of land in the event of default. Data shows that land is a collateral in a large proportion of loans in India, yet the several structural,...

A large share of residential properties on sale in developing countries is under construction. This is partly due to lengthy periods of construction. But purchasing under construction properties can be costly and risky because of construction delays and the possibility of stalled construction....

The city of Bangalore is encircled by a green belt area, instituted as an urban growth boundary to contain sprawl, ensuring equitable growth and preserving lung spaces. Urban growth boundaries world over are typically known to drive land prices higher in the inner city area. Bangalore has...

Land reforms require urgent attention in emerging market economies, and there is a vast body of literature that deals with the economic impact land reforms, especially land titling (Acemoglu et al., 2001). India, like other developing economies, has a presumptive titling system which is...

The manager of an Indian business group (BG) fund can have access to private information on its own BG firms and their industries. However, since the fund belongs to a BG, the fund manager may also have incentives to undertake investments that benefit the BG firm managers and not its fund...

The U.S. Chapter 11 bankruptcy has traditionally been viewed as equity friendly, with frequent absolute priority deviations (APDs) in favor of equity. By contrast, based on a more recent sample we find that both APDs and time spent in bankruptcy have declined dramatically. We hypothesize and...