Anthropological Economics

  1. Ten Consequential and Actionable ‘Social’ Contributions to the Theory, Practice, and Evaluation of Development (with Michael Woolcock)
  2. Is There an Underside to Economic Growth?  A Mixed-Methods Analysis of Malaysia (with Niaz Asadullah, Monica Biradavolu and Ken Simler), October 2024
  3. A Method to Scale Up Interpretive Qualitative Analysis with An Application to Aspirations among Refugees and Hosts in Bangladeshwith Julian Ashwin, Monica Biradavolu, Nandini Krishnan, Afsana Khan, Arshia Haque and Peer Nagi), May 2022
  4. Can Economics Become More Reflexive? Exploring the Potential of Mixed-Methods, January 2022
  5. Jati Inequality in Rural Bihar (with Sharen Joshi and Nishtha Kochhar), July 2018
  6. Flies Without Borders:  Lessons from Chennai on Improving India’s Public Health Services (with Monica Das Gupta, R. Dasgupta, P. Kungananthan, TV Somanathan, and KN Tewari), September 2017
  7. Anatomy of Failure: Integrating Ethnography with a Randomized Control Trial to Evaluate an Attempt to Deepen Democracy in Rural India,” (with Kripa Ananthpur and Kabir Malik), March 2014
  8. “Dignity Through Discourse: Poverty and the Culture of Deliberation in Indian Village Democracies,” (with Paromita Sanyal), Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 629, pp:146-172, May 2010
  9. “Symbolic Public Goods and The Coordination of Collective Action: A Comparison of Local Development in India and Indonesia,” Chapter 10 in Pranab Bardhan and Isha Ray (editors) Contested Commons: Conversations Between Economists and Anthropologists, Wiley-Blackwell Publishers, 2008
  10. “The Political Construction of Caste in South India,” (with Radu Ban) mimeo, World Bank, October 2007
Volunteers repairing a mosque in Kalimantan, Indonesia

© V. Rao
Grama Panchayat Members, Bidar, Karnataka

© V. Rao

  1. “Conclusion,” (With Michael Walton), Chapter 16 in Culture and Public Action: A Cross-Disciplinary Dialogue on Development Policy, (Vijayendra Rao and Michael Walton, editors) Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2004
  2. “Culture and Public Action: Relationality, Equality of Agency and Development,” (with Michael Walton), Chapter 1 inCulture and Public Action: A Cross-Disciplinary Dialogue on Development Policy, (Vijayendra Rao and Michael Walton, editors) Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2004
  3. “Wedding Celebrations as Conspicuous Consumption: Signaling Social Status in Rural India,” (with Francis Bloch and Sonalde Desai), Journal of Human Resources, Volume XXXIX, Number 3, Summer 2004
  4. “Celebrations as Social Investments: Festival Expenditures, Unit Price Variation and Social Status in Rural India,”Journal of Development Studies , October 2001
  5. ”Poverty and Public Celebrations in Rural India,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,” Vol. 573, Pp: 85-104, 2001
  6. “Wife Beating in Rural South India: A Qualitative and Econometric Analysis,”  Social Science and  Medicine , Vol. 44, # 8, Pp. 1169-1180, April 1997.  For this paper please see this extended version: “Wife-Abuse, Its Causes and Its Impact on Intra-Household Resource Allocation in Rural Karnataka: A “Participatory Econometric” Analysis, in Gender, Population, and Development, M.Krishnaraj, R.Sudarshan, A.Sharif (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1998
  7. “Can Economics Mediate the Link Between Anthropology and Demography?” Population and Development Review, Vol. 23 #4, Pp:833-38,  December 1997
  8. “Dowry Inflation in Rural India: A Statistical Investigation,” Population Studies  Vol. 47 (July   1993).
  9. “The Rising Price of Husbands: A Hedonic Analysis of Dowry Increases in Rural India“,  Journal of Political Economy  Vol. 101, #4 (August 1993).