Essays in development economics and political economy

This thesis is a collection of three empirical essays on issues in economic development, with a focus ,on political economy and the labor market in India. Chapter 1] analyzes the effect of television coverage on political voice by examining the functioning of Question Hour, a forum for political discussion in India's Parliament, which is intended to foster government accountability to the people by allowing Members of Parliament (MPs) to raise questions about issues of concern to the electorate which the Government must answer. I use an unusual source of variation in the telecast status of Question Hour, made possible by the fact that it was only shown on television every other week, to assess what effect television had. I find that MPs did not become more likely to represent the concerns of the voters in their constituency. I argue that the evidence is consistent with party establishments exercising greater control on the participation of their MPs when Question Hour was televised than they otherwise did. Chapter 2 studies caste and religion in India's new economy sectors - IT (software) and IT-enabled services (call-centers) - by sending fictitious resumes in response to job openings in and around Delhi, India advertised in major city papers and online job sites. We find evidence of discrimination against Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and Scheduled Castes (SCs) in the call-center industry but no corresponding results for these or any other groups (including Muslims) in software jobs. We do however find that having a higher-quality resume helps SC applicants in software jobs the most, and OBCs not at all. We argue that the evidence for SCs is consistent with predictions from theories of statistical discrimination.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Economics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Datta, Saugato

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo.

• Economics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/41714

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/41714