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Posts by Paul Novosad

The long-run effects of agricultural productivity gains: Evidence from irrigation canals in India

Evidence from canals in India shows that labour mobility is a key channel to agricultural growth. This article shows that villages with access to canal water have persistently higher agricultural yiel...

  • Articles

Digging for dirt: Rent-seeking among elected politicians in India’s mineral belt

The Indian mining industry is no stranger to corruption scandals and every year dozens of environmental activists are murdered for exposing illegal mining activities. This article discusses the impact...

  • Articles

The SHRUG: A new high-resolution data platform for research on India

The Socioeconomic High-resolution Rural-Urban Geographic Dataset on India (SHRUG) is a new data source that describes socioeconomic development in India. In this post, Asher, Lunt, and Novosad describ...

  • Perspectives

Rapid urbanisation, rural-to-urban migration, and rural development: Evidence from 8,000 Indian towns

Rapid urbanisation and declining rural poverty are central features of many developing countries today, but there is little research on their relationship, especially on the impacts of rapid urbanisat...

  • IGC Research on India

How do rural roads affect development? Evidence from India

Despite broad consensus that high transportation costs are a large barrier to economic development, many of the world’s poor live in rural communities without paved roads, impeding their access to o...

  • IGC Research on India

Do ruling coalition-affiliated MLAs bring more development to their constituencies?

Despite the dismantling of the License Raj in the 1990s, interaction with government officials remains an important impediment to doing business in India. This column analyses the role of politics in...

  • Articles

Rapid Response Project on Indian Firm Data

In March 2015, IGC organised a Workshop on Industry Data, held in Delhi. The workshop provided an opportunity for academics, policy makers and government agencies to discuss difficulties they face wit...

  • IGC Research on India