This paper evaluates the impact of access to groundwater on poverty using data from rural India. The estimation exploits the fact that the technology required to access groundwater changes exogenously due to constraints imposed by laws of physics at a depth of eight meters. I find that rural poverty in areas where depth from surface is below the cutoff is 9 to10 percent higher. Using survey dat...

Can directed technical change be used to combat climate change? We construct new firm-level panel data on auto industry innovation distinguishing between “dirty” (internal combustion engine) and “clean” (e.g. electric and hybrid) patents across 80 countries over several decades. We show that firms tend to innovate relatively more in clean technologies when they face higher tax-inclusive fuel pr...

Over the past several decades, significant efforts have been made to regulate the use of resource and pollution in most industrialized countries, and the stringency of pollution regulations has continued to increase globally. At the same time, physical and social infrastructures are influenced by changes in the use of resources which contribute to the wealth of many regions. Technical progress ...

In MENA, household food insecurity, which is closely related to poverty and undernourishment, is most severe in rural areas and concentrated within Iraq, Sudan, and Yemen. 25% of the MENA population may be poor and 7% undernourished. The key to increased national and household-level food security is pro-poor growth, driven by export-oriented, labor-intensive sectors. Agricultural sector policie...

Using the most comprehensive developing country dataset ever compiled on air and water pollution and environmental regulations, the paper assesses India’s environmental regulations with a difference-in-differences design. The air pollution regulations are associated with substantial improvements in air quality. The most successful air regulation resulted in a modest but statistically insignific...

Abstract Introduction The goal of neoadjuvant chemothepaeutics(NACs) and surgical excision breast cancer is to control ultimately eliminate the malignant tumour. Despite advances in treatment, a subset patients will develop disease recurrence. Tumour stromal cells(TSCs) are non-cancerous cells that support malignancy within tumour microenvironment(TME). In particular, TSCs can suppress host imm...

Can targeting information to network-central farmers induce more adoption of a new agricultural technology? By combining social network data and field experiment in 200 villages Malawi, we find that central is important spur the diffusion process. We also provide evidence one explanation for why centrality matters: process governed by complex contagion. Our results are consistent with model whi...