This thesis consists of three essays in development economics. The first essay asks the question of how the dowry system in India affects the educational attainment of Indian women. The essay finds that dowry payments have a significant role in lowering educational attainment among women in India. The second essay, looks at the minimum wages legislation for domestic workers in four states of India and tries to find out if the lives of domestic workers improved as a consequence of this legislation. The essay finds positive impact of the legislation on real wages in the short-run. However, the legislation seems to have had no impact on real wages in the long-run. The final essay analyses performance measurement system of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and raises the question of whether the gaps in the indicator framework of MDG is in anyway linked to the actual performance success measured in terms of MDG attainment ? The empirical analysis clearly shows that the data gap in performance measurement is a significant predictor of MDG performance in terms of any of the six progress measures. The essays derive the policy implications of the research and provide suggestions for future research.