Dr. Jessica Seddon

Jessica was awarded the International Affairs Fellowship, Council on Foreign Relations in 2010.

Her work has been supported by grants from Google.org, Australian Development Research Awards, ICICI Foundation for Inclusive Growth, Stanford University, and University of California, San Diego, among others. She was also offered the Harvard Academy Fellowship in 2004.

Jessica’s research focuses on the ways in which the information ecology interacts with institutions to affect aggregate social outcomes. One cluster of projects focuses on the institutional political economy of India, and in particular the potential for IT to enable citizen oversight to complement more traditional checks and balances. A second cluster of projects, focused on the epistemology of development, seeks to identify ways to improve the production and management of development data to improve its value for informing development policy and advocacy. A third cluster of research and pilot projects focuses on the interaction of scientific knowledge with policy and market incentives in the context of air pollution reduction.

• 2011. “Moving India, Policies and Priorities in Transport Sector Reform” (with N.K. Singh),
  forthcoming, Noll, Roger, and T.N. Srinivasan, eds. Indian Economic Reforms. Cambridge University Press.
• 2011. “Inelastic Institutions: Political Change and Intergovernmental Transfer Oversight in Post-
  Independence India,” (with T.N. Srinivasan). Forthcoming, India Policy Forum
• 2010. “Outcomes Rule: Getting Development from Development Expenditure,” (with Yamini Aiyer and Jay Chaudhuri). India Review 9(2).
• 2010. “Fire Alarms in Action: Making Sense of Large-Scale User Feedback on City Services in
  Karnataka,” India Review 9(2).
• 2009. “The Other Climate Changers,“ Foreign Affairs August/September 2009 (with V. Ramanathan).
• 2008. “Local-Global: Reconciling Mismatched Ontologies in Development Information Systems,” (with Ramesh Srinivasan). Proceedings of the HICSS, January 2009.
• 2008. “India’s Parliament as a Representative Institution,” India Review v. 7(2).
• 2008. “The Context of Poverty,” India &Global Affairs April-June 2008. (with N.K. Singh)
• 2008. “India’s Power Struggle,” in Jagdish Bhagwati and Charles Calomiris, editors, Sustaining India’s Growth Miracle. Columbia University Press.
• 2006. Federalism and Economic Reform. Cambridge University Press. (edited with T.N. Srinivasan).
• 2004. “Trade Liberalization and Intersectoral Labor Movements,” Journal of International Economics v. 64(2),December, pp. 411-439. (with Romain Wacziarg)
• 2004. “Economic, Social, and Demographic Determinants of Political Participation in Latin America: Evidence from the 1990s,” Latin American Journal of Economic Development, Issue 3, pp.151-182. (with Ugo Panizza and Alejandro Gaviria)
• 2004. “Political Institutions and Growth Collapses,” Latin American Journal of Economic Development, Issue 2,pp. 147-184. (with Ernesto Stein, Ugo Panizza, Alejandro Gaviria)
• 2004. “Globalization and the Poor,” De Economist 152(2): 251-272. (With T.N. Srinivasan)
• 2003. “Superficial Growth? Evaluating Indian Economic Reforms in the 1980s,” Economic and Political Weekly (October 2003, pp. 4312-4316)
• 2003. “Asian Regionalism and its Effects on Trade in the 1980s and 1990s,” Journal of Asian Economics 14(1): 91-129. (With Ramon Clarete and Christopher Edmonds)
• 2003. “Political Particularism Around the World,” World Bank Economic Review 17(1): 133-143. (With Alejandro Gaviria, Ugo Panizza, Ernesto Stein)
• 2000. Improving the Odds: Political Strategies for Institutional Reform in Latin America. Latin American Research Network, Inter-American Development Bank. Washington, D.C. (with Merilee Grindle, Carol Graham, and Eduardo Lora)

Editorials & Policy Writing

• 2011. “State-Level Policy Environments for PPP,” (with Ashwin Mahalingam, Sujatha Srinivan, Thillai Rajan, Venkata Santosh). Policy report for the Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Goverment of India.
• 2011. “FAQ for Policymakers,” Report of the Task Force on Hemispheric Transport of Air Pollution, forthcoming, January 2011. (Contributing Author)
• 2011. “India’s Catastrophic Landscape,” Harvard International Review, forthcoming, January 2011
• 2010 – Monthly column in Indian Express.
• 2010. “The Soot Opportunity,“ Harvard Business Review. March 2010.
• 2009. “A Tale of Two Transitions: From Public toward Private Provision of Infrastructure in India and Latin America ,” Background paper for Inter-American Development Bank (2010). India: Latin America’s Next Big Thing. Washington, D.C.: Inter-American Development Bank.
• 2009. “The Full Climate Change Tale,“ Mint (India affiliate of the Wall Street Journal), September 23.
• 2009. “Politicizing Regulation: Not All Bad,“ in Developing Infrastructure Through an Ideal Regulatory Framework. New Delhi: CUTS. (with Parashar Kulkarni)
• 2004 – 2008. Regular columns in national Indian newspapers: Indian Express and Financial Express (with N.K. Singh)
• 2006. “Electoral Systems and the Personal Vote: Update of Database of Particularism,” (with Joel
• Johnson)
• 2000. Development Beyond Economics: Economic and Social Progress Report 2000. Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank. (Contributor)
• 1998. Aspects of Decentralization. Washington DC: EDI, World Bank. Author of subsections on
• Participation, Civil Service, and Economic Growth. (Co-editor, with Jennie Litvack)

Editorials

• Article titled ‘The area of uncertainty’ – Financial Express, 21 June 2012
• Article titled ‘Why You Can’t Trust the Facts on India’s Economy’ – Businessweek, 29 February 2012
• Article titled ‘Beyond the BPL’ – The Financial Express, 28 February 2012
• Article titled ‘America’s angst, India’s advance warning’ – The Financial Express, 19 January 2012

Special edition of online magazine Prayas

• Reading between the lines – ‘Seeing’ the poor in India: Issue 6.