Home Publications and media Publications & Media Publications View all Development Publications Why Micro-Credit May Leave Women Worse Off: Non-Cooperative Bargaining and the Marriage Game in South Asia Micro-credit programmes targeting women continue to grow in South Asia, although research suggests that wives frequently hand over loans to their husbands. Women may also be unable to control the income generated by micro-enterprises. This article presents an intra-household bargaining model explaining these findings and showing how credit may leave women worse off, while benefiting men. This game-theoretic model also shows why a woman might rationally choose to give her loan to her husband even though she does not expect to benefit and knows he may not repay. By Sujata Balasubramanian Micro-creditMarriageLoansPovertySouth AsianFinancial Empowerment Development Publications Is the PDS Already a Cash Transfer? Rethinking India’s Food Subsidy Policies Critics argue that India’s mismanaged Public Distribution System (PDS), which sells subsidised cereals to poor families, should be replaced by cash transfers. Others fear cash may be misused. Using National Sample Survey data, this article demonstrates that families treat additional PDS subsidies wholly as a source of cash – exactly like a cash transfer. More worryingly, cereal consumption has not increased, despite higher real subsidies. Moreover, neither the PDS nor cash transfers are likely to raise total food expenditure in poor families. By Sujata Balasubramanian Indiacash transferssubsidyfood consumptionGovernment COVID-19 Publications Pandemic and containment policies in open economy This paper analyzes the economic and epidemiological externalities of containment policies in an open-economy setting with firm entry and exit, SIR virus transmission, and a production network. Motivated by empirical evidence that non-pharmaceutical intervention policies (such as workplace closure or social distancing) are substitutes for medication-related policies (healthcare facilities and vaccine development), the authors incorporated four types of containment policies into their model. By Juanyi Xu, Yousha Liang, Kang Shi, Junjie Tang HealthcareVaccineContainment policyCovid-19Pandemic Competition Publications Resource Allocation Among Competing Innovators Many innovative products are designed to satisfy the demand of specific target consumers; thus, the innovators will inevitably compete with each other in the product market. This paper investigates how a profit-maximizing principal should properly allocate her limited resources to support the innovations of multiple potentially competing innovators. The study finds that, as the available resources increase, the optimal diversification of investment may first increase and then decrease. By Yangguang Huang, Ying-Ju Chen, Pin Gao, Xiaoshuai Fan Investment strategiesMarket allocationInnovationResourceCompetitive strategy Development Publications Expanding Footprints: The Impact of Passenger Transportation on Corporate Locations This article investigates how transportation networks shape firms' geographic footprint by reducing monitoring costs of distant investments. Exploiting the staggered expansions of China's passenger high-speed rail (HSR) network, the authors document that the amount of intercity investment between a pair of cities increases by 45% with the introduction of an HSR line connecting the cities. They enhance the causal inference by applying high-dimensional fixed effects, and focusing on city pairs that are "accidentally" connected in the network. By Yatang Lin, Yu Qin, Johan Sulaeman, Jubo Yan, Jialiang Zhang TransportationGeographic footprintCorporateChina economyHSRCompetitive strategy Development Publications When student incentives do not work: Evidence from a field experiment in Malawi James Berry, Hyuncheol Bryant Kim and Hyuk Harry Son study how the structure of tournament incentive schemes in education can influence the level and distribution of student outcomes. Through a field experiment among upper-primary students in Malawi, they evaluate two scholarship programs: a Population-based scholarship that rewarded overall top performers on an exam and a Bin-based scholarship that rewarded the top performers within smaller groups of students with similar baseline scores. By Hyuncheol Bryant Kim, James Berry, Hyuk Harry Son Education EconomicsEvaluationIncentivesScholarshipStudy Competition, Development Publications Agglomeration, Misallocation, and (the Lack of) Competition Industrial agglomeration policies may limit competition. This study develops, validates, and applies a novel approach for measuring competition based on the comovement of markups and market shares among firms in the same location and industry. Then this study develops a model of how this reduction in competition affects aggregate income. In this paper, the authors apply their approach to the well-known special economic zones (SEZs) of China. This paper estimates that firms in SEZs exhibit cooperative pricing almost three times as intensively as firms outside SEZs. By Yao Amber Li, Wyatt J. Brooks, Joseph P. Kaboski China economyCompetitivenessInternalizingMarket sharesPrice competition Competition Publications Indemnification, Monitoring, and Competition: Evidence from R&D Contracts This article examines the adoption of indemnification clauses in research and development (R&D) contracts, in which a firm commits to reimbursing its agent against liabilities and legal costs. Indemnification achieves efficient risk sharing but dilutes the agent’s incentives to take precautions. Such incentives may be restored if the firm offers contingent indemnification and monitors the agent’s activities. Additionally, tougher competition can motivate the firm and agent to take more aggressive R&D activities, which leads to higher liability risks. By Xinyu Hua, Di Guo , Kun Jiang Law R&DMarket competitionIndemnificationPharmaceutical industryLegal costsCompetitive strategyContract theory Globalization & Growth Publications A Comparative Analysis of Innovation Policies in Hong Kong and Shenzhen Within the Greater Bay Area Initiative Combining documentary analysis with hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), we conduct a comparative study of innovation policies in two municipalities included in the Greater Bay Area (GBA) initiative—the Chinese government’s plan to link eleven cities into an economic and business hub. After identifying innovation policies/agencies in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, we apply the HCA to compare similarities and differences between their innovation policies and assess how these policies align with the ‘cross-border regional innovation system’ (CBRIS) conceptual approach. By Naubahar Sharif, Kevin Chandra Innovation policyCross-border regional innovation systemHierarchical cluster analysisHong KongShenzhen Globalization & Growth Publications From Creative Destruction to Creative Appropriation: A Comprehensive Framework By Naubahar Sharif, Jack Linzhou Xing Creative destructionKuhnian anomalyE-hailingCreative appropriationComplementary assetsDisruption Globalization & Growth Publications The Roles of Supply Network Centralities in Firm Performance and the Moderating Effects of Reputation and Export-orientation By Naubahar Sharif, Antonio K. W. Lau, Yuya Kajikawa Supply networkSocial network analysisReputation PageRankExport orientation Globalization & Growth Publications A Comparative Analysis of Research and Development Spending and Total Factor Productivity Growth in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Singapore In this paper, we focus on three locations in the Asia-Pacific region—Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Singapore—to analyse the impact of variations in research and development (R&D) spending on total factor productivity (TFP) growth. In each of the three cases, we compare and contrast the role of public and private R&D in boosting TFP growth as well as the pattern of causality involving public and private R&D and the capacity of both types of R&D to generate economic spillovers. By Naubahar Sharif, Kevin Chandra, Athar Mansoor, Kirti Bhasin Sinha Economic Growth Total Factor Productivity Public R&D Private R&D Hong Kong ShenzhenSingapore Working Paper Series View all Development Economic Policies vs. Identity Politics: The Rise of a Right-wing Nationalist Party in India By Sujata Visaria (On Leave), Pushkar Maitra, Dilip Mookherjee, Sandip Mitra clientelismidentity politicsrightwing nationalism Competition Search Algorithm, Repetitive Information, and Sales on Online Platforms By Yangguang Huang, Yu Xie Online platformSearch algorithmConsideration set Globalization & Growth Wealth Inequality and Endogenous Growth By Byoungchan Lee Wealth inequalityProductivity slowdownsAggregate demand Development How Does Matching Uncertainty Affect Marital Surplus? Theory and Evidence from China By Li Han, Xinzheng Shi, Ming-ang Zhang Premarital Health ExaminationSubjective Well-beingAssortative Matching Development Do the Media Bow to Foreign Economic Powers? Evidence from a News Website Crackdown By Li Han, Heng Chen Self-censorshipAccessCrackdown Development Trading Favours through the Revolving Door: Evidence from China’s Primary Land Market By Li Han, Ting Chen, James Kung, Jiaxin Xie Revolving doorTrading FavoursSurprise Audit Competition Motivating Collusion By Alminas Žaldokas, Sangeun Ha, Fangyuan Ma Product Market CollusionCorporate GovernanceManagerial Compensation Development Evaluating the Distributive Effects of a Development Intervention By Sujata Visaria (On Leave), Pushkar Maitra, Sandip Mitra, Dilip Mookherjee Distributive ImpactsProgram EvaluationAgricultural Finance Competition Settling Lawsuits with Pirates By Xinyu Hua, Kathryn E. Spier PrivacyIntellectual property Competition Merger Analysis in the App Economy: An Empirical Model of Ad-Sponsored Media By Kohei Kawaguchi (Sunada), Toshifumi Kuroda, Susumu Sato Merger simulationSSNIPAntitrust Development Environmental Gentrification By Wen Wang GentrificationResidential SortingTenure Competition Attraction Versus Persuasion By Pak Hung Au, Mark Whitmeyer Attraction and persuasion
