In this paper we theoretically and empirically examine how the interaction between the formal court system and the informal loan network affects a household's decision to start a business. We find that when the formal court system is weak, expansion of informal credit network leads to the...

Although most countries in the world are rapidly urbanizing, the majority of the global population – particularly the poor – continue to live in rural areas. This Handbook rejects the popular notion that urbanization should be universally encouraged and presents clear evidence of...

Sugata Marjit and Saibal Kar, The Outsiders: Economic Reform and Informal Labour in a Developing Economy, (Hardcover) ₹ 695, Oxford University Press.

Attiat Ott and Richard Cebula have recognised the need to present, in an accessible and straightforward way, the voluminous literature in the public economics arena. Advances in econometric techniques and the spillover of knowledge from other disciplines made it difficult, not only for students...

This paper documents the wage and consumption gap between private and public sector employees in India. We empirically investigate the wage gap as well as difference in consumption expenditure using household survey from the 2004-05 National Sample Survey of India. Our results show that despite...

This paper aims to test empirically the predictions of a theory that deals with the effect of different democratic regimes on public good provision. The theory predicts higher provision of public good in proportional electoral systems and parliamentary political regimes in comparison to...

All dictatorships provide public goods, but levels of provision generally differ from those found in otherwise similar democracies. Some theoretical treatments of this phenomenon emphasize differences in the degree of monopoly power enjoyed by dictators versus leaders of governments, while...

This paper tries to document the presence of unreported income among public sector employees in India. We investigate empirically the wage gap as well as consumption expenditure parity between public and private sector workers. It tests the hypothesis that despite a lower level of public sector...

Estimating the effect of ‘ethnic capital’ on human capital investment decisions is complicated by the endogeneity of location choice of immigrants and the reflection problem. We exploit a rare immigrant settlement policy in Germany to identify the causal impact of parental peer-heterogeneity...