In emerging economies, pro-social policy outcomes may be prevented by bureaucratic inefficiency, capture by elected or non-elected office holders, or by other hurdles. For local citizens, uncertainty about the true cause of such failures often prevails. We study the pro-sociality of politicians'...

What motivates individuals to become politicians? This is an important question in decentralized democracies, where local politicians play a key role in public goods provision. However, and in emerging economies, bureaucratic hurdles and administrative failures introduce uncertainty about the...

IEMS Faculty Associate Prof. Sujata Visaria and colleagues explore how microfinance programmes can be fine-tuned to more effectively address the microcredit promise of financial inclusion and helping the poor.

A study middleman margins, trading mechanisms and the role of asymmetric information about prices between potato farmers and local trade intermediaries, in West Bengal, India is conducted. Farmers in randomly chosen villages were provided daily information on prices in neighboring wholesale...