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Abstract
Secular trends in cohort size cause large marriage market imbalances due to the age gap at marriage between men and women. Positive cohort growth adversely affects women in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Secular decline improves their position in East Asia. I show that the age gap at marriage will not adjust in order to equilibrate the marriage market in response to persistent imbalances, even though it accommodates transitory shocks. This implies large distributional consequences on the sexes, and may increase dowries. I also analyse transition dynamics between steady states and examine how age gaps and transfers adjust in the transition.

This article examines the challenges faced by independent regulatory agencies (IRAs) in India today. It scrutinises the working of some trust-based self-regulating institutions, which the Government of India (GoI) is in the process of converting into a non-trust-based IRA framework. The article then reviews the functioning of the non-trust-based regulatory institutions through the lens of the electricity sector. It does this by examining the performance of these institutions against a '4CA' framework: Capture, Capacity, Commitment, Communication and Accountability. It then attempts to draw generic lessons for regulators across all sectors. The article further examines additional challenges sectoral regulators will face arising from three areas: first, data privacy concerns and the requirements the proposed data regulator may impose; second, the interface with cross-sectoral regulators like the Competition Commission of India (CCI) which have jurisdiction across sectors; and third, interaction between sectoral regulators themselves.

The paper surveys the LDCs' experience and focuses on the evidence from Bangladesh. This evidence permits an identification of the effects of ownership changes. Privatization does not appear to have conferred any dyanamic efficiency gains, and seems to have reduced employment and output. (DSE/DÜI)

AbstractWe examine the implications of consumer privacy when preferences today depend upon past consumption choices, and consumers shop from different sellers in each period. Although consumers are ex ante identical, their initial consumption choices cannot be deterministic. Thus, ex post heterogeneity in preferences arises endogenously. Consumer privacy improves social welfare, consumer surplus and the profits of the second‐period seller, while reducing the profits of the first period seller, relative to the situation where consumption choices are observed by the later seller.