The Impact of the Judiciary on Economic Activity

This paper examines the consequences of slow judiciaries on firms' contracting behaviour in India. After deriving testable implications from a game theoretical model, I examine how case pendency rates in India's state courts affect the contracting behaviour of 170,000 small non-agricultural informal firms from the 2000 National Sample Survey's 55th round. I find that a slow judiciary implies more breaches of contract, discourages firms from undertaking relationship-specific investments, impedes firms' access to formal financial institutions, and favours inefficient dynasties. Moving a firm from the highest to the lowest pendency state would result in a 10% improvement in firm performance.Law and economics, Institutions, Courts, Contracts, Industrial Organisation, Economic Growth, Industrial Performance

Do Criminals Politicians Reduce Corruption? Evidence from India

This paper relates unique data on criminal records of local politicians in India to corruption, crime and poverty. Using a regression discontinuity design, whereby individuals living in districts where a criminal politician barely won are compared to individuals living in districts where a criminal politician barely lost, this paper shows that criminal politicians reduce bribe-taking behavior of law and order officials by 34 percent. One possible explanation for this result is that when interests of politicians and those of interest groups converge, criminal politicians' control over bureaucrats acts as a substitute for bribes from these interest groups. This is not to say that criminal politicians should be elected to eradicate corruption, but rather that corruption is underestimated if only measured by bribe-taking without taking into account political control: as less bribes need to be paid, criminal offences, similar to those mostly committed by criminal politicians, increase by 25 percent. Moreover, the urban headcount ratio, the welfare of those not connected with politicians, increases by 22 percent.Mother's labour supply, preschool and primary school children, childcare policy, treatment effects, natural experiment

Does Judicial Quality Shape Economic Activity? Evidence from a Judicial Reform in India

This paper investigates the impact of judiciaries on firms' contracting behaviour and economic performance. In 2002, the Code of Civil Procedure Amendment Act was enacted in India to facilitate speedy disposal of civil suits. Some State High Courts hal already enacted some of the amendments contained in this reform a long time ago. This spatial variation in the reform's implementation is used to identify the effect of judicial quality on firm's behavior. Using small informal firm data, I find that the reform led to fewer breaches of contract, encouraged investment, facilitated access to finance, and expanded rental markets.Law and economics, Institutions, Courts, Contracts, Industrial Organisation, Economic Growth, Industrial Performance

The incorrect rotation curve of the Milky Way

In the fundamental quest of the rotation curve of the Milky Way, the tangent-point (TP) method has long been the simplest way to infer velocities for the inner, low latitude regions of the Galactic disk from observations of the gas component. We test the validity of the method on realistic gas distribution and kinematics of the Milky Way, using a numerical simulation of the Galaxy. We show that the resulting velocity profile strongly deviates from the true rotation curve of the simulation, as it overstimates it in the central regions, and underestimates it around the bar corotation. Also, its shape strongly depends on the orientation of the stellar bar. The discrepancies are caused by highly non-uniform azimuthal velocities, and the systematic selection by the TP method of high-velocity gas along the bar and spiral arms, or low-velocity gas in less dense regions. The velocity profile is in good agreement with the rotation curve only beyond corotation, far from massive asymmetric structures. Therefore the observed velocity profile of the Milky Way inferred by the TP method is expected to be very close to the true Galactic rotation curve for 4.5<R<8 kpc. Another consequence is that the Galactic velocity profile for R<4-4.5 kpc is very likely flawed by the non-uniform azimuthal velocities, and does not represent the true Galactic rotation curve, but instead local motions. The real shape of the innermost rotation curve is probably shallower than previously thought. Using a wrong rotation curve has a dramatic impact on the modelling of the mass distribution, in particular for the bulge component of which derived enclosed mass within the central kpc and scale radius are, respectively, twice and half of the actual values. We thus strongly argue against using terminal velocities or the velocity curve from the TP method for modelling the mass distribution of the Milky Way. (abridged)Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics, 8 pages, 10 figures, revised version after A&A language editin

Global well-posedness for the 3D rotating Navier-Stokes equations with highly oscillating initial data

In this paper, we prove the global well-posedness for the 3D rotating Navier-Stokes equations in the critical functional framework. Especially, this result allows to construct global solutions for a class of highly oscillating initial data.Comment: 20page

Can Warm Glow Alleviate Credit Market Failures? Evidence from Online Peer-to-Peer Lenders

This paper looks at an institutional innovation in which Western investors lend peer-to-peer to poor country enterprises. Using a unique dataset from an online lending platform called MyC4, we find that MyC4’s Western lenders grant lower interest rates to pro-poor, socially responsible (SR), and pro-female African projects, thus internalizing positive externalities. Using novel instrumental variables to account for interest rates’ endogeneity, we find that these lower interest rates substantially improve the repayment performance of borrowers, and do not reflect profit-maximizing behavior. This new way to organize finance improves credit market efficiency and the success rate of poorntry enterprises.Credit markets imperfections, externalities, warm glow

The Impact of the Judiciary on Entrepreneurship: Evaluation of Pakistan's Access to Justice Programme

A key element of government is to uphold law and order. This paper will evaluate the impact of slow judiciaries on entrepreneurship. In 2002 a judicial reform was implemented in 6 of Pakistan's 117 districts to facilitate rapid case disposal. Drawing on a panel dataset of 875 district judges' performance between 2001 and 2003, a difference-in-differences analysis shows that judges disposed of 25 percent more cases thanks to the reform. Three rounds of the Labour Force Surveys will be then used to show that the reform improved security of property rights, encouraged people to seek loans, fostered entrepreneurship and was associated with increased transition from unemployment and paid employment to entrepreneurship.Legal System, Entrepreneurship

Global large solutions to 3-D inhomogeneous Navier-Stokes system with one slow variable

In this paper, we are concerned with the global wellposedness of 3-D inhomogeneous incompressible Navier-Stokes equations \eqref{1.3} in the critical Besov spaces with the norm of which are invariant by the scaling of the equations and under a nonlinear smallness condition on the isentropic critical Besov norm to the fluctuation of the initial density and the critical anisotropic Besov norm of the horizontal components of the initial velocity which have to be exponentially small compared with the critical anisotropic Besov norm to the third component of the initial velocity. The novelty of this results is that the isentropic space structure to the homogeneity of the initial density function is consistent with the propagation of anisotropic regularity for the velocity field. In the second part, we apply the same idea to prove the global wellposedness of \eqref{1.3} with some large data which are slowly varying in one direction