PREFERENTIAL RESOURCE ALLOCATION? Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in Andhra Pradesh

Yanyan Liu is a research fellow at International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Yanyan received a joint PhD in economics and agricultural economics from Michigan State University in 2006. Before joining IFPRI in June 2009, she had worked for RTI International and for the Development Research Group at the World Bank. Her principal research interest lies in the microeconometric analysis of issues in development economics. Yanyan is especially interested in program impact evaluation, agricultural insurance and productivity analysis, and rural labor market.

Chris Barrett is the Stephen B. and Janice G. Ashley Professor of Applied Economics and Management and International Professor of Agriculture in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management as well as Professor in the Department of Economics and Fellow of the David R. Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future, all at Cornell University, where he also serves as the Director of the Cornell Institute for International Food, Agriculture and Development’s initiative on Stimulating Agricultural and Rural Transformation, and served as the founding Associate Director for Economic Development programs for the ACSF. He holds degrees from Princeton (A.B., History, 1984), Oxford (M.S., Development Economics, 1985) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (dual Ph.D., Economics and Agricultural Economics, 1994). He has held visiting professorships at Monash University and the University of Melbourne, and directed summer seminar programs at Calvin College. At Cornell, he has taught undergraduate econometrics, a writing-in-the-majors course on Contemporary Controversies in the Global Economy, and Comparative Perspective on Poverty Reduction Policy, as well as graduate courses on the Microeconomics of International Development and Food Systems and Poverty Reduction and he runs a Graduate Research Seminar in Development Microeconomics. Professor Barrett has published or in press 14 books and more than 260 journal articles or book chapters. These works have attracted over 13,100 citations, according to Google Scholar. He has been principal investigator (PI) or co-PI on more than $28 million in extramural research grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the National Science Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Rockefeller Foundation, USAID, and various other corporate, foundation, government agency and nongovernmental organization sponsors. He has supervised more than 60 graduate students and post-docs, many of whom are now on leading faculties and in research institutes worldwide. He served as editor of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics from 2003-2008, is presently an associate editor or editorial board member of the African Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, the Egerton (Kenya) Journal of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education, the European Review of Agricultural Economics, Food Security, the Journal of African Economies, the Journal of Agribusiness in Developing and Emerging Economies, the Journal of Development Studies and World Development, and was previously President of the Association of Christian Economists. He has served on a variety of boards, has won several university, national and international awards for teaching, research and public outreach, and is an elected Fellow of both of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association and of the African Association of Agricultural Economists. He lives with his wife, Clara, and their five children in Lansing, NY.

Sudha Narayanan is Associate Professor at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), Mumabi. She obtained a PhD from Cornell University, USA in 2011, specializing in agricultural and development economics. She earlier obtained M.A and M.Phil degrees in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics, India. Sudha's research interests straddle agriculture, food and nutrition policy, and human development in India. Her current research focuses on contract farming, technology adoption in agriculture, public policies for food security and employment guarantee and agriculture-nutrition linkages. Prior to studying for a doctoral degree, Sudha worked with International Food Policy Research Institute, the Right to Food Campaign in India and Cornell University, among others.

Upasak Das is working as an Assistant Professor at Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum. He submitted his PhD thesis from Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai. The thesis looks extensively on the evaluation and political economy of the rural employment guarantee programme in West Bengal. Prior to joining PhD, he completed his graduation in Physics from Delhi University and Post Graduation in Economics from IGIDR. His research interests include Public Policy Evaluation, Development Economics and Labour Economics. Upasak's current research focuses on various implementation and impact evaluation aspects of MGNREGA in Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan.

Megan Sheahan is currently a research support specialist at Cornell University. She holds an M.S. in Agricultural Economics from Michigan State University where her master's thesis explored the profitability and use of inorganic fertilizer in Kenya using household-level panel data she helped to collect. Megan also holds a B.A. in economics and international relations from Boston University where interest in Fair Trade coffee prompted a senior research project on how the certification was affecting smallholder farmers in two cooperatives in Mexico and Tanzania. Between college and graduate school, she worked in project management at Chemonics International and on the technical team for the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET). Post-graduate school, Megan has worked as an independent consultant, taking on a number of short term programmatic and research projects related to agricultural development and food security. In her free time, Megan enjoys ballet, yoga, and cooking with her husband, Graham.

Krushna Ranaware is a Research Assistant at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research. She received her MA in Economics in 2013 from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras with a minor concentration in Development Studies. Her areas of research interest include political and fiscal decentralization, gender, and agriculture. She has worked as a research intern at IFMR Finance Foundation, Centre for Budget and Policy Studies and YASHADA.