Travelling agents : political change and bureaucratic turnover in India

We develop a framework to empirically examine how politicians with electoral pressures control bureaucrats with career concerns as well as the consequences for bureaucrats’ career investments. Unique micro-level data on Indian bureaucrats support our key predictions. Politicians use frequent reassignments (transfers) across posts of varying importance to control bureaucrats. High-skilled bureaucrats face less frequent political transfers and lower variability in the importance of their posts. We find evidence of two alternative paths to career success: officers of higher initial ability are more likely to invest in skill, but caste affinity to the politician’s party base also helps secure important positions

Mine, your or ours? : the efficiency of household investment decisions : an experimental approach

The family is a universal and enduring institution that forms the basis of many economic decisions. Is decision making within the family efficient? The empirical literature on this issue is inconclusive to date, hence this paper uses a quasi-field experiment to examine this question. The experimental analysis involved real-time observations of individual investment decisions made by three hundred families in rural South India. Participants' control over family income was varied through how they shared earnings from their investment decisions with their spouse, and also through the form of payment. Information was varied through what spouses were told about participants' investments options and actual choices, once the decisions were made. We found direct evidence of inefficiency in investment decisions. Both for men and women, investment efficiency was very sensitive to the control they wielded control over family income generated. However, the nature of information their spouse received ex-post had little impact. Strikingly, even when there was no tradeoff between maximizing household and private income, about a third of the men in the sample undercut their own private income so as to narrow the income gap with their wives. In all other decisions too, these men were less inclined to maximize household income, and so were their wives. While women did care about control over family income, it was the absolute income, rather than income relative to their husbands that seemed to matter. The findings suggest that family decisions are a mixture of cooperation and conflict, with members willing to sacrifice some efficiency for control and power

Is there a political cycle in bureaucrat assignments? : evidence from the Indian Administrative Service

We use data on bureaucrat assignments from the Indian Administrative Service to examine whether there is a political cycle in bureaucrat assignments. We find a significant increase in bureaucrat transfers during election years. Detailed month-level data indicates that this is not primarily driven by the incumbents’ desire to influence elections. We find that the increased bureaucratic turnover is much more likely to be caused by the actions of the incoming government after elections

Politics, Information and the Urban Bias

Governments in many developing countries skew public resources towards urban sectors, despite a majority of citizens residing in rural areas. This paper develops a novel political argument for this urban bias phenomenon in a framework where all voters, rural and urban, have equal voice, but di?er in their access to information. We argue that this di?erence is su?cient to give governments an incentive to ine?ciently overallocate resources towards urban areas. The bias is shown to worsen during adverse economic times, leading to increased migration. We also examine how voter informativeness a?ects e?ciency of the electoral process in weeding out incompetent governments.Urban Bias, Information, Heterogeneous Electorate, Migration.

Poverty and aspirations failure

We develop a model of internal constraints to show that a greater degree of initial disadvantage results in a higher likelihood of low aspirations and low achievement. Our model and results are supported by evidence from anthropology, sociology and social psychology. Our analysis suggests that internal constraints are a key ingredient in perpetuating poverty traps. We show that a poor person will choose to restrict her cognitive window (the set of other individuals who are her role models) and study the conditions under which a role model could alter her aspirations and achievement. We show how enodgenously chosen cognitive windows interact with the inital distribution of status to determine whether or not a society is connected, and hence the transmission of aspirations across individuals in that society. Our work provides a normative justification for programs that aim at empowering disadvantaged individuals by directly shocking their aspirations

Traveling agents : political change and bureaucratic turnover in India

Political principals face high-powered electoral pressures while bureaucrat-agents face longer term, low-powered incentives. Given constitutional constraints, what "carrots and sticks" do politicians employ to control bureaucrats and how do bureaucrats respond to such incentives? We use a simple career concerns framework and a unique dataset from the Indian Administrative Service to address these issues. State level politicians (Chief Ministers) exert control over bureaucrats when they assume office, through a novel mechanism of reassignment (transfers) to new jobs. Transfers are less likely if district politicians belong to the same party as the Chief Minister, i.e. he appears to treat local politicians and bureaucrats as substitutes. We use a framework where bureaucrats differ in their willingness to invest in job expertise or political loyalty. Consistent with this framework, we find in our data that more able bureaucrats and those with greater job-specific experience are less likely to be reassigned when a new politician assumes office. In accordance with politicians district reassignment patterns, we do not find robust evidence of any negative impact of such politically-induced transfers on development and policy outcomes at the district level

The Power of Political Voice: Women's Political Representation and Crime in India

Using state-level variation in the timing of political reforms, we find that an increase in female representation in local government induces a large and significant rise in documented crimes against women in India. Our evidence suggests that this increase is good news, as it is driven primarily by greater reporting rather than greater incidence of such crimes. In contrast, we find no increase in crimes against men or gender-neutral crimes. We also examine the effectiveness of alternative forms of political representation: large scale membership of women in local councils affects crime against them more than their presence in higher level leadership positions.crime; women’s empowerment; minority representation; voice

The Power of Political Voice: Women's Political Representation and Crime in India

Using state-level variation in the timing of political reforms, we find that an increase in female representation in local government induces a large and significant rise in documented crimes against women in India. Our evidence suggests that this increase is good news, driven primarily by greater reporting rather than greater incidence of such crimes. In contrast, we find no increase in crimes against men or gender-neutral crimes. We also examine the effectiveness of alternative forms of political representation: large scale membership of women in local councils affects crime against them more than their presence in higher level leadership positions.crime, women's empowerment, minority representation, voice

Believing in oneself : can psychological training overcome the effects of social exclusion?

This paper examines whether psychological empowerment can mitigate mental constraints that impede efforts to overcome the effects of social exclusion. Using a randomized control trial, we study a training program specifically designed to reduce stigma and build self-efficacy among poor and marginalized sex workers in Kolkata, India. We find positive and significant impacts of the training on self-reported measures of efficacy, happiness and self-esteem in the treatment group, both relative to the control group as well as baseline measures. We also find higher effort towards improving future outcomes as measured by the participants’ savings choices and health-seeking behaviour, relative to the control group. These findings highlight the need to account for psychological factors in the design of antipoverty programmes

Mine, yours or ours? The efficiency of household investment decisions : an experimental approach

We conduct an experiment to measure the relative importance of key factors that influence the efficiency of household investment decisions. We find that, both for men and women, their spouse's access to information does not affect efficiency. However, they are willing to sacrifice much efficiency for greater personal control over household income. Intriguingly, even when spouses' control over household income is exogenously assigned, inefficiency persists: As a wife's assigned share increases, husbands undercut their own income to reduce hers. This self-destructive and spiteful behavior is best explained by non-economic factors such as identity, seldom emphasized in mainstream household economic models