We estimate the impact of the world's largest public works program, India's National Rural Employment Guarantee (NREG), on agricultural wages. NREG was rolled out across India in three distinct phases, and this phased introduction is used to identify difference-indifference estimates of the program effect. Using monthly data on wage rates from the period 2000-2011 in 209 districts across 18 Indian states, we include districtspecific fixed effects and trends to control for differences in wage rates in the absence of the program. We find that, on average, the program boosted the growth rate of real daily agricultural wages by 4.3% per year. The effect of the scheme is more consistent with an increase in the growth rate of wages than with a discontinuous jump in wages. The effect was concentrated in some states and in the agricultural peak season, appears to have been genderneutral and was biased towards unskilled labor. Since many of the world's poorest depend on casual agricultural labor for their livelihood, while at the same time minimum-wage legislation is unlikely to be effective in many developing countries, we argue that rural public employment programs constitute a potentially important anti-poverty policy tool.

This paper studies the interaction of incentive pay and social distance in the dissemination of information. We analyse theoretically as well as empirically the effect of incentive pay when agents have pro-social objectives, but also preferences over dealing with one social group relative to another. In a randomised field experiment undertaken across 151 villages in South India, local agents were hired to spread information about a public health insurance programme. Relative to flat pay, incentive pay improves knowledge transmission to households that are socially distant from the agent, but not to households similar to the agent. JEL Codes: C93, D83, I38, M52, O15, Z13

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To what extent have NGO microfinance programmes for adivasi households promoted livelihoods and reduced poverty and vulnerability among them? This question is analysed with the help of primary data collected from Karnataka and Tamil Nadu states. Although adivasi households have joined microfinance groups, made small savings and availed credit facility, microfinance activities have not significantly improved livelihoods and reduced vulnerability. In the absence of savings products to meet expenses on housing and marriage, and access to formal social security services such as health insurance, adivasis are forced to borrow from informal sources. This places them into inextricable debt traps, undoing whatever positive impact that microfinance programmes may have. To avoid such a situation, meaningful savings products and access to social security are needed.