This paper studies the productivity and distributional effects of large irrigation dams in India. Our instrumental variable estimates exploit the fact that river gradient affects a district's suitability for dams. In districts located downstream from a dam, agricultural production increases, and vulnerability to rainfall shocks declines. In contrast, agricultural production shows an insignificant increase in the district where the dam is located but its volatility increases. Rural poverty declines in downstream districts but increases in the district where the dam is built, suggesting that neither markets nor state institutions have alleviated the adverse distributional impacts of dam construction.

This paper presents the results of two experiments conducted in Mumbai and Vadodara, India, designed to evaluate ways to improve the quality of education in urban slums. The authors argue that resources alone may not be sufficient to improve educational outcomes. The authors study the impact of a remedial education programme which hired young women from the community to teach basic literacy and numeracy skills to children lagging behind in government schools. A computer-assisted learning programme also provided each child in the fourth grade with two hours of shared computer time per week, in which students played educational games that reinforced mathematics skills.