India's agricultural growth has been sufficient to move the country from severe food crises of the 1960s to aggregate food surpluses today. Most of the increase in agricultural output over the years has taken place under irrigated conditions. The opportunities for continued expansion of irrigated area are limited, however, so Indian planners increasingly are looking to rainfed, or unirrigated agriculture to help meet the rising demand for food projected over the next several decades. Rainfed areas are highly diverse, ranging from resource-rich areas with good agricultural potential to resource-poor areas with much more restricted potential. Some resource-rich rainfed areas potentially are highly productive and already have experienced widespread adoption of improved seeds. In drier, less favorable areas, on the other hand, productivity growth has lagged behind, and there is widespread poverty and degradation of natural resources. Even given that rainfed agriculture should receive greater emphasis in public investments, a key issue is how much investment should be allocated among different types of rainfed agriculture.

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Highlighting the problems posed by a "unitary" conceptualization of the household, a number of economists have in recent years proposed alternative models. These models, especially those embodying the bargaining approach, provide a useful framework for analyzing gender relations and throw some light on how gender asymmetries are constructed and contested. At the same time, the models have paid inadequate or no attention to some critical aspects of intrahousehold gender dynamics, such as: what factors (especially qualitative ones) affect bargaining power? What is the role of social norms and social perceptions in the bargaining process and how might these factors themselves be bargained over? Are women less motivated than men by self-interest and might this affect bargaining outcomes? Most discussions on bargaining also say little about gender relations beyond the household, and about the links between extrahousehold and intrahousehold bargaining power. This paper spells out the nature ...

Kinsey for introducing me to the villages where the experiments were conducted and to the members of the Cross-Cultural Experimental Economics group, the CSAE, and the Department of Economics at Oxford University, who offered invaluable comments. Finally, I owe a huge debt of thanks to the villagers who took part in the study for their patience and good humour. All remaining errors are my own. This research was funded by the Department for International Development through ESCOR grant R7650. Abstract: Using two economic experiments I investigate how a sample of rural communities in Zimbabwe approach social dilemmas. When provided with an opportunity to impose sanctions in the context of a public goods game, fourteen out of eighteen communities achieved higher levels of cooperation. In thirteen communities the imposition of shame-based sanctions in the form of lighthearted criticism was observed. The resulting data revealed that: both non-cooperators and cooperators were criticised; community members cared about what their neighbours thought of them and made adjustments to their behaviour accordingly; the overall pattern rather than individual experiences of criticism affected subsequent behaviour; those who made low contributions and witnessed the criticism of others who made similar contributions, made higher contributions subsequently; while those who experienced such criticism first-hand made significantly smaller adjustments to their behaviour; those who made high contributions and witnessed the criticism of others who made similar contributions, made lower contributions subsequently; and to the extent that an opportunity to criticise passed by unexploited subsequent levels of cooperation were reduced

Decentralized groups such as close knit residential neighborhoods and ethnically linked businesses often achieve high levels of cooperation while also engaging in exclusionary practices that we call parochialism. We investigate the contribution of within-group cultural affinity to the ability of parochial groups to cooperate in social dilemmas. Consistent with some recent experimental evidence, cooperation among members of culturally homogeneous groups may not come about because cultural affinity overrides individual self interest, leading members to behave altruistically towards others in their group. Rather, cultural affinity may support cooperation by altering the information structure of the interaction. We provide an economic analysis of parochial networks in which the losses incurred by not trading with outsiders are offset by an enhanced ability to enforce informal contracts by fostering trust among insiders. We show that since larger and more heterogeneous networks have lower quality information but greater trading opportunities, there is a range of degrees of parochialism for which parochial networks can coexist with an anonymous market offering unrestricted trading opportunities.

This paper examines determinants of collective success in the maintenance of infrastructure projects using theory and empirical evidence. The empirical analysis employs primary data collected by the author on 132 community-maintained infrastructure projects in Northern Pakistan. Determinants are grouped into community-specific and project-specific factors, which are identified using community fixed effects. The analysis shows that community-specific factors are important: Socially heterogeneous communities have poorly maintained projects and community inequality has a U-shaped relationship with maintenance. Project leaders are associated with higher maintenance, with attributes of hereditary leader households used as instruments for leader presence. However, the results also suggest that the effects of project-specific factors are even larger. Specifically, complex projects are poorly maintained and inequality in project returns has a U-shaped relationship with maintenance. Increased community participation in project decisions has a positive effect on maintenance for non-technical decisions but a negative effect for technical decisions. Projects initiated by non-governmental organizations are better maintained than local government projects, as are projects made as extensions of old projects rather than anew. The findings are consistent with the theory and suggest that adverse community-specific factors, such as a lack of social capital, can be more than compensated for by better project design.

Networks such as ethnic credit associations, close-knit residential neighborhoods, ‘old boy’networks, and ethnically linked businesses play an important role in economic life but have been little studied by economists. These networks are often supported by cultural distinctions between insiders and outsiders and engage in exclusionary practices which we call parochialism. We provide an economic analysis of parochial networks in which the losses incurred by not trading with outsiders are offset by an enhanced ability to enforce informal contracts by fostering trust among insiders. We first model one-shot social interactions among self-regarding agents, demonstrating that trust (i.e., cooperating without using information about one’s trading partner) is a best response in a mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium if the quality of information about one’s partner is sufficiently high. We show that since larger networks have lower quality information about specific individuals and greater trading opportunities, there may be an optimal (payoff-maximizing) network size. We then model the growth and decline of networks, as well as their equilibrium size and number. We show that in the absence of parochialism, networks may not exist, and the appropriate level of parochialism may implement an optimal network size. Finally, we explore the welfare implications and reasons for the evolutionary success of exclusion on parochial and other grounds.

The CGIAR Systemwide Program on Collective Action and Property Rights (CAPRi) is an initiative of the 15 centers of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). The initiative promotes comparative research on the role of property rights and collective action institutions in shaping the efficiency, sustainability, and equity of natural resource systems. CAPRi’s Secretariat is hosted within the Environment and Production Technology Division (EPTD) of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). CAPRi receives support from the Governments of Norway, Italy and the World Bank. CAPRi Working Papers contain preliminary material and research results. They are circulated prior to a full peer review to stimulate discussion and critical comment. It is expected that most working papers will eventually be published in some other form and that their content may also be revised. Cite as:

As part the Local Level Institutions study of local life in villages in rural Indone sia information was gathered on sampled household's participation in social activities. We classified the reported activities into four distinct types of social activity: sociability, networks, social organizations, and village government organizations. Respondents were also asked about questions about their village government: whether they were informed about village funds and projects, if they participated in village decisions, if they expressed voice about village problems, and if they thought the village government was responsive to local problems. Several findings emerge regarding the relationship between the social variables and the governance activities. Not surprisingly, an individual household's involvement with the village government organizations tends to increase their own reports of positive voice, participation, and information. In contrast, the data suggest a negative spillover on other households. There is a strong "chilling" effect of one household's participation in village government organizations on the voice, participation, and information of other households in the same village. The net effect of engagement in village government organizations is generally negative, while the net effect of membership in social organizations is more often associated with good governance outcomes. These findings indicate that existing social organizations have a potentially important role to play in enhancing the performance of government institutions in Indonesia and in the evolution of good governance more generally. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 2981, March2002 The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exch...

that inhabit a particular region since the determinants of welfare are highly varied. For rural development, who produces in agriculture matters for efficiency and welfare, for instance small holders as opposed to large commercial farmers. Where agricultural production takes place also matters, for instance in better endowed versus marginal areas. What non-farm sources of income exist in particular regions and which particular classes of households are able to participate to those is important for the determination of household incomes. How households aggregate in communities and the level of social capital they contain explains the efficiency of rural institutions and the ability to cooperate in the provision of public goods and the appropriation of common pool resources. And how sizable are the local linkages between farm and non-farm activities, particularly the multiplier effects created by the expenditure of farm incomes, matters for the creation of non-farm incomes that suppleme