NBER Publications by Kaivan Munshi

This paper examines the hypothesis that the persistence of low spatial and marital mobility in rural India, despite increased growth rates and rising inequality in recent years, is due to the existence of sub-caste networks that provide mutual insurance to their members. Unique panel data providing information on income, assets, gifts, loans, consumption, marriage, and migration are used to link caste networks to household and aggregate mobility. Our key finding, consistent with the hypothesis that local risk-sharing networks restrict mobility, is that among households with the same (permanent) income, those in higher-income caste networks are more likely to participate in caste-based insurance arrangements and are less likely to both out-marry and out-migrate. At the aggregate level, the ...

Parochial politics is typically associated with poor leadership and low levels of public good provision. This paper explores the possibility that community involvement in politics need not necessarily worsen governance and, indeed, can be efficiency-enhancing when the context is appropriate. Complementing the new literature on the role of community networks in solving market problems, we test the hypothesis that strong traditional social institutions can discipline the leaders they put forward, successfully substituting for secular political institutions when they are ineffective. Using new data on Indian local governments at the ward level over multiple terms, and exploiting the randomized election reservation system, we find that the presence of a numerically dominant sub-caste (caste eq...

This paper documents the presence of non-economic career motivations in the U.S. labor market, explores reasons why such motivations could arise, and provides an explanation for why they might have persisted across many generations. The analysis links ethnic (migrant) labor market networks in the American Midwest when it was first being settled, the local identity or attachment to place that emerged endogenously to maintain the integrity of these networks, and occupational choice today. While fractionalization may adversely affect the performance of secular institutions, ethnic competition in the labor market could at the same time have strengthened within-group loyalty and parochial institutions. These values and their complementary institutions, notably the church, could have mutually re...

Entrepreneurship has been traditionally concentrated in the hands of a few small communities in most developing economies. As these economies restructure, it is evident that these communities will be unable to satisfy the increased demand for new entrepreneurs. The analysis in this paper suggests that new business networks will compensate for the weak family background of first-generation entrepreneurs under some circumstances, supporting occupational mobility even in industries with significant barriers to entry. Using new firm-level data on the Indian diamond industry, the empirical analysis documents the important role played by an underlying community network in the expansion from agriculture to international business in one historically disadvantaged community over the course of a sin...