This study explores the effects of imbalances in the sex ratio, and their impact on intra-household bargaining, on both the quantity and the quality of children. We first present the theoretical model of intra-household bargaining in the presence of conflicting family goals within a couple, and...

We model the aid allocation decision where the donor government has announced that good governance is the criterion for receiving aid. Potential recipients must compete for the aid funds. The structure of the competition is important to the donor in terms of achieving good governance, and to the...

This paper provides causal evidence on how political parties consolidate power in an electoral democracy. We collect administrative data on expressway construction by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey, and use province-by-year variation in expressway construction to show that...

The Great Chinese Famine of 1959-1961 is puzzling, since despite the high death rates, there is no discernable diminution in height amongst the majority of cohorts who were exposed to the famine in crucial growth years. An explanation is that shorter children experienced greater mortality and...

The ambiguity in the relationship between self-employment and educational attainment is well documented in the literature. Using an extensive individual level dataset from Periodic Labor Force Survey, we estimate the probability of being self-employed in India based on educational attainments....

Dowry payments are common in many marriage markets. This paper uses data on over 74,000 marriages in rural India over the last century to explain why the institution of dowry emerges and how it evolves over time. We find that the proportion of Indian marriages including dowry payments doubled...