Abstract: This paper examines whether land use deregulation increases housing supply in the presence of additional institutional frictions, such as ill-defined property rights. India's urban land ceiling (ULC) laws, which put limits on individual ownership of private vacant land in the largest cities, were repealed during the 2000s. Using a difference-in-difference strategy, with a panel of 201 cities, we find that the reform did not lead to housing supply growth. We posit that disputes in ownership rights for vacant parcels rendered the ULC repeal to be ineffective. The disputes led to legal battles between governments and private landowners, freezing construction on vacant land. We find that, after the repeal, the number of land-related legal proceedings in ULC-enacting cities may have been substantially higher than in cities where ULC was never enacted. The findings underscore the role of institutional frictions in impeding or delaying the potential benefits of deregulation.

Abstract: This article argues that two distinctive features of India’s development pathway—its agriculture-to-services leap and its high levels of temporary, circular migration—are interlinked and mutually reinforcing. First, we mobilize multiple literatures to show that economic growth led by export services produces a polarized labor market in India’s prosperous cities, drawing rural–urban migrants but failing to provide them permanent footholds. These dynamics reinforce and expand the widespread practice of translocal householding, in which individuals and families straddle multiple locations and labor markets. We then employ an empirical strategy involving a spatial instrumental variable to show that translocal householding also facilitates an agriculture-to-services transition in migrant origins. These findings show that, as households arbitrage their labor across space, their translocality establishes a livelihood system that supports the spatial diffusion of the structural transformation process. However, because economies in migrant-sending regions are organized around local consumption, they are less poised for prosperity than those of India’s metropolitan areas, possibly leading to durable patterns of uneven development. The article calls for further inquiry into the role of translocality in shaping the economic geographies of the Global South, not only in India but in other countries witnessing similar forms of internal migration and structural transformation.

Abstract: Rent control influences more than housing markets. Using India—a country with heavily regulated housing markets—as a case study, we examine how shifts from pro-tenant to pro-landlord rent control and eviction laws impact rural–urban migration and labor markets. Additionally, we explore potential mechanisms to explain our results on migration. Relaxing rent control leads to higher rents and dampens rural–urban migration, while easing eviction laws facilitates the conversion of rental units into owner-occupied housing and increases the prevalence of "marriage migrants." The impact of relaxing rent control and eviction laws on rural–urban migration is unexpected, confirming that removing one distortion from a market riddled with others can lead to surprising outcomes.

Abstract: Most residential homes in developing countries such as India sell before construction is complete. Completed or move-in ready homes command a premium because of the compounded cost of capital and uncertainty costs incurred over time from holding under-construction homes. In this paper, we use listing data from India's six largest urban agglomerations (UAs) between 2010-2012 and show that sellers expect 2-15% move-in ready premia in five UAs. Moreover, in four UAs, individuals reselling homes expect five to eight percentage points higher move-in ready premia than developers selling new homes because of additional costs incurred by individuals from holding under-construction homes. We do not find any evidence of substantial speculative gains among individual resellers. At mean listed prices, the expected move-in ready premium is 383% of an average household's annual income in Mumbai, India's most expensive city. Our findings indicate that within the context of a developing country, lengthy construction times and expensive capital exacerbate already poor affordability conditions.

Abstract: We study the effects of a series of state and federal reforms that granted equal inheritance rights to Indian women on the quantity and quality of children. Using a difference-in-differences methodology, we find that women who were affected by the state reforms had 0.4 more children. State reforms did not have any effect on children's heights. To assess the impact of the federal reform we use a panel data of women and a novel treatment based on the timing of their fathers' death. We find that women affected by the reform had on average 0.22 fewer children and had taller children on average. While the federal reform had no effect on the number of daughters born to this group, the number of sons born declined. Thus, we see evidence that granting property rights to women could potentially impact fertility decisions, health outcomes of children, and gender imbalance.

Abstract: Production of rice and wheat increased dramatically in India over the past decades, with reduced proportion of coarse cereals in the food supply. We assess impacts of changes in cereal consumption in India on intake of iron and other micronutrients and whether increased consumption of coarse cereals could help alleviate anemia prevalence. With consumption data from over 800,000 households, we calculate intake of iron and other micronutrients from 84 food items from 1983 to 2011. We use mixed-effect models to relate state-level anemia prevalence in women and children to micronutrient consumption and household characteristics. Coarse cereals reduced from 23% to 6% of calories from cereals in rural households (10% to 3% in urban households) between 1983 and 2011, with wide variations across states. Loss of iron from coarse cereals was only partially compensated by increased iron from other cereals and food groups, with a 21% (rural) and 11% (urban) net loss of total iron intake. Models indicate negative association between iron from cereals and anemia prevalence in women. The benefit from increased iron from coarse cereals is partially offset by the adverse effects from antinutrients. For children, anemia was negatively associated with heme–iron consumption but not with iron from cereals. Loss of coarse cereals in the Indian diet has substantially reduced iron intake without compensation from other food groups, particularly in states where rice rather than wheat replaced coarse cereals. Increased consumption of coarse cereals could reduce anemia prevalence in Indian women along with other interventions.