Using National Sample Survey data for rural India we examine the incidence of capture in two workfare programs in rural India: the Rural Public Works and the Food for Work Programs for 1993-1994 and 2004-2005 respectively. We discover a high degree of program capture among the general...

Indian financial sector reforms initiated in 1991-92 have significantly affected user costs of assets and have resulted in significant substitution among them. Thus there is a need to develop a measure of savings that reflects household choice over assets more accurately than the simple sum. An...

In response to the Deaton and Dreze (2009) explanation of a downward shift in the calorie Engel curve in terms of lower requirements due to health improvements and lower activity levels in India, we develop an alternative explanation embedded in a standard demand theory framework, with food...

If public expenditure and public revenue are I (0), public debt is sustainable, but if these are I (1) and not cointegrated or have a cointegrating vector different from [1, -1], the public debt is said to be unsustainable. Extant work indicates that India’s public debt is unsustainable. The...

Given that the phenomenon of capture of public programs by sections the population is rampant in developing countries, households can indulge in a strategy to improve their odds of participating in public programs by bribing the suppliers of such programs. This is an important issue affecting...

We examine the effect of inflation variability and economic growth using annual historical data on both developing and developed countries. The data cover 182 developing countries and 31 developed countries for the period 1961-2009. Proxying inflation variability by the five-year coefficient of...

This paper has the objective of showing that identity based voting will lead to improvements in household welfare through increased access to welfare programs. Using newly available data from rural India, we establish that identity based voting will lead to enhanced participation in welfare...

In this paper, the relationship is assessed between possessing information on, gaining access to and the efficacy of delivery of India's national rural employment guarantee scheme (NREGA) in three states. The results suggest that the link between information, access and the delivery of the...