We study the diffusion of a capital intensive technology among a fishing community in south India and analyze the dynamics of income inequality during this process. We find that lack of asset wealth is an important predictor of delayed technology adoption. During the diffusion process,...

If there were no impediments to the flow of capital across space, then the returns to capital should be equalized. We provide evidence to the contrary. There are large differences in the return to comparable investments across different towns in the state of Tamil Nadu in South India. We explore...

This paper analyzes the relation among agricultural output, inflation and the distribution of consumption in rural India, using the Singh-Maddala family to model the entire distribution parametrically. Employing a benchmark case in which growth is distributionally neutral and idiosyncratic...

This paper empirically analyzes sources of extreme economic distress in rural India. We use district-level data on farmers' suicides in two major states during the years 1998 to 2004 to estimate the effects of transitory economic shocks and structural change in agriculture on the incidence of...

This paper examines the effects of India's Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, currently the world's largest public employment program, on household consumption and poverty rates in rural India. Combining regionally coded data from consumption surveys with information on the...

We investigate how well social collateral does as an alternative to traditional physical collateral. We do so by studying cosigned loans - a borrowerś loan is backed by the personal guarantee of a cosigner. We use a regression discontinuity approach with data from South Indian bidding Roscas....