Water and Development in the Asian Tropics. Asia-Pacific Economic History Review 64, no. 2 (2024), pp. 145–168 (with Vigyan Ratnoo and Chung-Tang Cheng).
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Environmental conditions significantly affected development in the Asian tropics. This paper investigates the relationship between weather risk and agriculture in four regions with distinct climatological features. Using new data, we estimate the scale of crop output sensitivity to rainfall shocks across ecological zones. Output was sensitive to shocks in regions with low levels, concentrated spells and high volatility of rainfall. Canal irrigation protected some districts while others remained as or more vulnerable. Regions with high rainfall levels and long seasons remained protected. Regions with large interruptions deterred creditors while regions with small interruptions invited expansion in credit and investment.
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Credit Risk in Colonial India. The Economic History Review, 75 (2022), pp. 396– 420.
Credit was scarce and expensive in colonial India. Existing explanations assume a lack of market competition let moneylenders charge high interest rates. The article challenges this view and constructs a novel framework to explain the rationality and strategies of lenders. Using new evidence from the Madras Presidency, the study finds that the interconnected issues of climate volatility and enforcement costs shaped the supply and prices of credit. Climate volatility and uncertain seasonal incomes led to high default rates. Enforcement of contracts through courts was expensive and not appropriate where there was no wilful breach of contract. Moneylenders responded to risk in innovative ways. They rationed credit and imposed inflexible enforcement terms in the dry regions that faced higher climatic risk, but used contracts and flexible pricing strategies in the irrigated zones where risks were lower.
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Do Institutional Transplants Succeed? Regulating Raiffeisen Cooperatives in South India 1930-1960. Business History Review 95, no. 1 (2021): pp. 59–85.
Credit was scarce and expensive in colonial India. Existing explanations assume a lack of market competition let moneylenders charge high interest rates. The article challenges this view and constructs a novel framework to explain the rationality and strategies of lenders. Using new evidence from the Madras Presidency, the study finds that the interconnected issues of climate volatility and enforcement costs shaped the supply and prices of credit. Climate volatility and uncertain seasonal incomes led to high default rates. Enforcement of contracts through courts was expensive and not appropriate where there was no wilful breach of contract. Moneylenders responded to risk in innovative ways. They rationed credit and imposed inflexible enforcement terms in the dry regions that faced higher climatic risk, but used contracts and flexible pricing strategies in the irrigated zones where risks were lower.
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Special Issue Article:
Law and the Cooperative 'Movement' in India. Rivista di Storia Economica - Italian Review of Economic History. Forthcoming.
Special Issue on Colonial Legacy in South Asia
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This paper traces the expansion of credit cooperatives in rural India. It shows that the colonial government designed and implemented a top-down cooperative model which served the interests of politicians and overlooked those of peasants. Provincial governments set the terms of contract between cooperative and member, and selectively assigned managerial and regulatory responsibilities. Lack of managerial and regulatory oversight deterred peasants from contributing to cooperatives. Using new data on cooperatives in the late-colonial period, the paper finds that cooperatives reported mismanagement and high default rates where deposits were smaller than public investments. This finding persists into the 1950s and 1960s, a period of unprecedented expansion in public investment into the cooperatives sector. Weak collective participation and strong government participation persisted, and left cooperatives vulnerable to regulatory capture and moral hazard. These findings imply that reliance on external rules crowded out cooperative behaviour.