Do historical institutions have a persistent impact on economic performance? We analyze the colonial institutions set up by the British to collect land revenue in India, and show that differences in historical property rights institutions lead to sustained differences in economic outcomes. Areas...

This paper uses household surveys from 13 developing countries to describe consumption choices, health and education investments, employment patterns and other features of the of the economic lives of the middle classes defined as those whose daily consumption per capita is between $2 and $4 or...

This paper begins by summarizing the micro-evidence on credit markets from a large number of studies from all over the world, with the goal of identifying a number of stylized facts. We argue that, in particular, the evidence strongly suggests that for poor people in developing countries,...