TY  - JOUR
AU  - Kapur,Shilpi
AU  - Kim,Sukkoo
TI  - British Colonial Institutions and Economic Development in India
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 12613
PY  - 2006
Y2  - October 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12613
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12613.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Shilpi Kapur
Resource and Development Economics Area
Resources, Regulation and Global Security Division
The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI)
Habitat Place, Lodhi Road
New Delhi-110003
India
Tel: 91-11-24682100 
Fax: 91-11-24682144/45
E-Mail: shilpikapur@gmail.com

Sukkoo Kim
Department of Economics
Washington University
One Brookings Drive
St. Louis, MO 63130-4899
Tel: 314/935-4961
Fax: 314/935-4156
E-Mail: soks@artsci.wustl.edu
AB  - We explore the impact of British colonial institutions on the economic development of India. In some regions, the British colonial government assigned property rights in land and taxes to landlords whereas in others it assigned them directly to cultivators or non-landlords. Although Banerjee and Iyer (2005) find that agricultural productivity of non-landlord areas diverged and out-performed relative to landlord areas after 1965 with the advent of the Green Revolution, we find evidence of superior economic performance of non-landlord regions in both the pre- and the post-independence periods. We believe that landlord and non-landlord regions diverged because their differing property rights institutions led to differences in incentives for development.
ER  -