The incentives of politicians to provide broad public goods and reduce poverty vary across
countries. Even in democracies, politicians often have incentives to divert resources to …

India's growth and poverty performance over the last three decades has been a subject of
great curiosity. Unlike the East Asian countries, India's growth spurt is not associated with …

We combine household surveys and national accounts, as well as recently released tax data
to track the dynamics of Indian income inequality from 1922 to 2015. According to our …

The question of whether state-led expansion of credit and savings facilities can reduce
poverty has long been of interest to economists and policymakers. A large theoretical body …

The determinants of government responsiveness to its citizens are a key issue in political
economy. Here, we develop a model based on the solution of political agency problems …

This paper investigates whether the industrial relations climate in Indian states has affected
the pattern of manufacturing growth in the period 1958–1992. We show that states which …

This paper studies the productivity and distributional effects of large irrigation dams in India.
Our instrumental variable estimates exploit the fact that river gradient affects a district's …

In recent times there has been a renewed interest in relationships between redistribution,
growth, and welfare. Land reforms in developing countries are often aimed at improving the …

A basic premise of representative democracy is that all those subject to policy should have a
voice in its making. However, policies enacted by electorally accountable governments often …

We use 20 household surveys for India's 15 major states spanning 1960–1994 to study how
the sectoral composition of economic growth and initial conditions interact to influence how …