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• Properties of multiple discrete-continuous (MDC) choice models with linear utility profile for outside good (L γ-profile MDC choice models). • Suitability of linear outside good utility (vis-à-vis non-linear utility) functions for modeling MDC choices. • Derivation of optimal demand distributions resulting from L γ-profile MDC choice models with large budgets. • Relationship between Tobit models and L γ-profile MDC choice models with large budgets. • Empirical application to the analysis of expenditures on domestic tourism trips in India. In this paper, we enhance the current understanding of the properties of multiple discrete-continuous (MDC) choice models with additively separable (AS), independent and identically distributed (IID) utility functions, and linear utility form on the essential outside good. First, we highlight that the prior implementations of this model in the literature ignore primal feasibility conditions related to the budget constraint and the essential nature of outside good in formulating the model likelihood function. Second, we evaluate the suitability and performance of the model for alternative consumption patterns relative to the budget. In addition, we provide a systematic comparison of the performance of MDC choice models with the linear outside good utility form (i.e., the L γ-profile model) and those with the non-linear outside good utility form (i.e., the NL γ-profile model). Third, for the L γ-profile model with infinite budgets (i.e., when a very small proportion of the budget is allocated to inside goods), we derive the distributions of the resulting optimal demand functions and analytic expressions for the corresponding first and second moments, and identify a property that makes it easy to estimate the utility function parameters of an inside alternative even when consumption data is not available for other alternatives. In addition, perhaps for the first time in the literature, we show how an independent system of Tobit models can be derived as a restricted version of the utility-theoretic L γ-profile MDC model structure. Finally, we apply the model for an empirical analysis of expenditure patterns of leisure trips from a domestic tourism survey sample of households in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India has the world's biggest and arguably most aggressive employment-based affirmative action policy for minorities. This paper exploits the institutional features of a federally mandated employment quota policy to examine its causal impact on the economic lives of the two distinct minority groups (Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes). My main finding is that a 1-percentage point increase in the employment quota for Scheduled Castes increases the likelihood of obtaining a salaried job by 0.6-percentage points for male Scheduled Caste members residing in the rural sector. The employment quota policy has no impact for Scheduled Tribes. Contrary to popular notion, I do not find evidence of "elite-capture" among the Scheduled Castes – the impact is concentrated among members who have completed less than secondary education. Consistent with the employment results, I find that the policy improved the well-being of Scheduled Castes members in rural areas who have completed less than secondary education. Finally, the impact of the employment quota policy varies by state characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • I examine whether households' consumption is influenced by that of their peers using Indian data. • I employ an instrumental variables/fixed effects approach. • I find robust evidence of peer effects in consumption. • Thus policies that influence household consumption are likely to have social spillovers. Abstract This paper examines peer effects in consumption in context of a less developed country. Specifically, the question that I seek to answer is whether consumption expenditure of a household is influenced by that of its peers in a less developed country. To examine this question, I use newly available household level data from India. I define a household's peer group as other households living in its village/neighborhood. In assessing the influences of peers in this context, there are two key empirical challenges including shared group-level unobservables, and simultaneity of peer influences. I address these issues by using an instrumental variables/fixed effects approach that compares households in the same district but different villages/neighborhoods who are thus exposed to different sets of peers. In particular, I use plausibly exogenous variation in idiosyncratic expenditure shocks – which are accidental and negative in nature – faced by peers as instruments for peers' consumption expenditure. Preferred specification suggests that a one standard deviation increase in average consumption expenditure of a household's peers causes the household's own consumption expenditure to increase by 0.42 standard deviations. Falsification tests and robustness checks support the validity of my results. My findings suggest that policies that influence a household's consumption will also affect the consumption of the household's peers through social interactions. This implies traditional analyses of consumption intervention programs that do not take into account such spillover effects will understate the total social impact of the programs, and hence lead to inaccurate evaluation of cost-effectiveness of such programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Past assessments of workfare schemes are inconsistent with the policy rationale in poor rural economies. • A new evaluation method is implemented for India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. • Targeting performance is good but not enough to compensate for the loss from work requirements. • The policy ranking switches in favor of a basic-income guarantee over workfare. Abstract Prevailing methods for evaluating workfare schemes are inconsistent with the arguments made for workfare in poor rural economies. Those arguments emphasize the existence of higher involuntary underemployment among the poor and the fact that the type of work provided by these schemes gives disutility, deterring non-poor households from participating. To include these features, the consumption-based welfare metric used in past assessments of workfare schemes in underemployed developing countries is generalized to incorporate a welfare loss from casual manual work, while allowing the government to independently value the work done for other reasons. Using data for India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), the paper shows that the policy ranking switches in favor of a basic-income guarantee (BIG) over workfare. Allowing for a welfare loss from casual manual labor implies a more “poor-poor” targeting performance, but this is not sufficient to compensate for the direct welfare loss from the work requirement for plausible parameter values. A BIG dominates NREGS for a given total outlay on workfare wages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this paper is to investigate the economic determinants of female-owned proprietorships for 52 metro cities in India. The National Sample Survey (NSS) unit-level data are used for the analysis. The descriptive results show that women's proprietorship is much lower than its counterpart. The Probit regression results at the individual level show that women entrepreneurs do not have a bank account or computer but use the internet, are not registered under any act or authority, and do not expand considerably. They operate within household premises with a limited number of months and duration of a day, undertaking mainly contract basis. They also face several problems that hinder their activities. City-level factors such as work participation rate, consumption expenditure, higher levels of general and technical degrees, and vocational training are essential. The likelihood of becoming a female entrepreneur is negatively impacted by the two agglomeration variables of population size and participation in mixed activity. City-level poverty and inequality also adversely affect it. State-level Human Development Index, Gender Development Index, and Gender Inequality Index are also significant. Finally, we propose important policies to enable the city environment to improve women's entrepreneurship activities for higher and sustainable economic development. • Female-owned entrepreneurship (FOE) is essential for sustainable and inclusive economic growth in developing countries. • The agglomeration size, unequal economic distribution, and less female-friendly society discourage becoming FOE. • Knowledge spillovers, labour pooling, availability of public services, and infrastructure encourage FOE. • Cities need to increase investment, employment, level of education, and delivery of public services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary It is well known that consumption patterns change with income. Relative price changes would therefore affect rich and poor consumers differently. Yet, the standard price indices are not income-specific, and hence, they cannot account for such differences. In this paper, we study consumption inequality in India, while fully allowing for non-homotheticity. We show that the relative price changes during most of the period from 1993 to 2012 were pro-poor, in the sense that they favored the poor relative to the rich. As a result, we also find that conventional measures significantly overstate the rise in real consumption inequality during this period. The main lesson from our study is the importance of accounting for non-homotheticity when measuring inequality. The price index literature has, as of yet, paid relatively little attention to this. In our application, however, it turns out that the allowance for non-homotheticity is quantitatively much more important than much discussed adjustments, such as those for substitution in consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary The Indian National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) is one of the world's largest public works programs aimed at reducing poverty. NREGS guarantees up to a hundred days of employment in public works to rural households that demand work under the program. This is one of the first papers to analyze the impact of NREGS on household wellbeing by focusing on household consumption using national-level data. By focusing on consumption, I am able to assess whether and how household use the program to improve their living standards. I exploit the cross-district rollout of the program to analyze the causal effect on household consumption. Using the Consumption Expenditure Survey data from the National Sample Survey Organization, I conduct a difference-in-difference analysis where the treatment group consists of households in 184 early implementation districts and the control group consists of households in 209 late implementation districts. I find that the program significantly increased household per capita consumption between 6.5% and 10%. For the marginalized caste group, the program increased consumption by around 12%. Therefore, historical and ongoing discrimination along with other barriers to entry have not prevented this group from benefiting from the program. I further assess the impact on household budget allocation by focusing on various consumption categories. I find that households move toward the higher caloric and more nutritional items, like protein. Finally, for households with children there was significantly greater spending on “child goods” like milk, while in households without children spending on alcohol increased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Private vehicle ownership has been growing in double digits over the last decade. This paper examines the factors determining vehicle ownership for urban and rural households in India. Separate nation-wide disaggregate vehicle ownership models for urban and rural areas in India are developed using readily available consumer expenditure survey dataset. A consumption based proxy variable is assumed to represent economic standard of households. Comparison between vehicle ownership behavior of urban and rural households show that rural households are more inclined to own private vehicle than urban households with same economic standards. Amongst households with regular salaried members, rural households' preference to own two wheelers is greater than that of urban households. While the presence of elderly member or children is considered, urban households showed more preference to own four-wheeler than rural households. As a first nation-wise study to understand the differences in vehicle ownership behavior in urban and rural areas of India, this study provides a lot of useful insights which could be valuable to various stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The paper estimates association between free sourcing of foods and diets in India. • Free collection does not increase the likelihood of having at least two meals. • It however increases the likelihood of having more than two meals. • Households that collect foods have at least 77% higher dietary diversity. • This is driven by higher probability of consuming fish, GLVs, meats. Despite recognition of the role of free collection of foods in forwarding nutritional security, there is only limited systematic research on its importance and role. This paper provides the first estimates for India, of the extent to which households depend on free collection of foods and examines its association with dietary adequacy and quality. In 2011–12 around 5.8% of all Indian households collected foods free, with some households collecting more than ten distinct food types in a month. For these households, free collection comprised, on average, 4.5% of the total value of food consumption, going upto 15% for a tenth of them. Using a pooled cross-section from 2009–10 and 2011–12 of nationally representative household level consumption data that identifies the source of food, this paper uses an instrumental variable approach to estimate the association between free collection of foods and dietary adequacy and quality. The paper finds that the probabiity of having more than two meals increases when households access free foods and there is robust evidence of higher dietary diversity (77% to four-fold), driven by specific food groups such as vegetables, meats, fish and green leafy vegetables. The findings of this paper point to a need to mainstream discussions of sources of food other than farm, market and state, recognizing explicitly the role of free collection in improving dietary adequacy and quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper presents a comprehensive set of stylized facts for business cycles in India from 1950 to 2010. We show that most macroeconomic variables are less volatile in the post reform period, even though the volatility of macroeconomic variables is still high and similar to other emerging market economies. Consistent with other emerging market economies, relative consumption volatility has gone up in the post reform period. In terms of co-movement and persistence however, India looks similar to advanced economies, and less like other emerging market economies. We report evidence that these changes are driven primarily by structural changes caused by market oriented reforms, and not by “good luck.” [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In a world increasingly affected by global environmental changes, Low Income countries will play an ever more central role in determining the future health of the biosphere. While global use of the biosphere''s capacity has increased over the past 45 years, per capita demand for biocapacity, as measured by the Ecological Footprint, has only increased in high-income countries and has remained constant or fallen in middle- and low-income nations. Consumption has increased faster than population in high-income nations, while population growth has been the dominant factor in middle- and low- income countries. Although listed in the middle-income group of countries, China showed atypical trends in the past 45 years, with a rapid increase in per capita Ecological Footprint that outstrip its gains in income. Typical trends were instead noticed for India, whose per person Ecological Footprint has fallen slightly. The results of this paper show that decisions made in China and India will be of fundamental importance for future global sustainability. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The present work intends to develop a rural hybrid renewable energy system and examines the techno-financial, and social viability of the same system for rural sites in northern India. This work analyses the performance of Solar Photovoltaic-Wind hybrid renewable energy system for a residential load demand of 51.54 kWh/day with 11.51 kW peak in standalone application. In this paper, a nine parameter based multi-target optimization and sizing scheme is executed by HOMER PRO software. This work sequentially addresses the techno-economic and socio-environmental indicators for optimization analysis. The specification of technical and financial fields are availed from the Indian local market. Seven feasible combinations of different resources are analysed for designing parameters and the optimized combination is selected by multi criteria analysis. The solar Photovoltaic-wind-diesel generator-battery storage is found best combination for consistent power supply. The net present cost and cost of energy are obtained as $ 0.179 and $31,439 respectively. Sensitivity analysis is performed for macro-economic factors and components cost to obtain better opportunity. Moreover, the technical and commercial viability of the proposed system is assured by robustness check for satisfying the consumer demand. • The techno-economic and socio-environmental feasibility is carried-out for hybrid energy system for rural consumer. • Optimal design and assessment is performed for the nine different parameters related to the four different domains. • The Net-Present Cost, Cost of Energy, Capital Cost, Energy Generated, Excess Energy, and Unmet Load, are considered. • A unique social aspect has been addressed in terms of human development index, and Job formation. • The Life Cycle Emission, Renewable Penetration and Particulate Matters are also considered as environmental factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Sustainable and equitable development is the most important challenge before mankind. After food, most pressing concern is energy for a decent living. The energy consumption has been recognized world wide as a parameter of development in a society. In the present paper an attempt has been made to review the demand of energy, the potential of renewable energy sources in India and its prospects for development in cost effective and sustainable manner. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The paper fits an ordered logit specification to primary data from a rural survey of Karnataka state in India in 2003–2004, to determine whether ease of access to liquor has a statistically significant impact on the probability of a rural household consuming liquor, further classified into occasional and daily consuming households. The inbuilt incentive in the present design of liquor taxation in the state for promoting rural access to liquor motivates the study. It is important that the struggle for fiscal resources to reach the Millennium Development Goals should not be achieved at the expense of the state becoming a partner in promoting the consumption of a potentially addictive substance. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The rural population of the Himalayas has been using firewood as the only source of energy for generations. Increasing population coupled with decreasing forest resources have led to strict environmental protection laws in the area. This paper analyses the fuelwood consumption pattern for households along an altitudinal gradient in Garhwal Himalaya, Uttaranchal. Firewood consumption was 2.80, 2.00, 1.42, 1.10 and 1.07 kg/capita/day, respectively, above 2000, 1500–2000, 1000–1500, 500–1000 and below 500 m altitude. The energy expenditure for fuelwood collection was 60.77, 62.57, 76.70, 87.23 and 85.14 MJ/capita/year, accordingly. Firewood consumption was influenced by climate and season of the year. On average, the fuelwood consumption was 2.0–3.0-fold higher in winter than summer (considering 265 days as winter and 100 days as summer). The present information on fuelwood consumption pattern by different altitude could form the basis for designing appropriate technologies for energy plantations in the region. The biomass consumption rate has also been discussed in environmental perspective in the Himalayan region. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Conventionally, measurement of cost of children by iso-prop method [Int. Stat. Inst. Anal. 9 (1895) 1] involves equating budget share on food of the two households compared. In this paper we use an alternative necessary commodity, viz., adult good (as suggested by Blackorby and Donaldson [The Measurement of Household Welfare, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1994)]) in place of food and measure the relative cost of a child using iso-prop method in a single equation framework as well as in a demand system framework. The demand system, proposed herein, is a rank-two Quadratic Logarithmic (QL) system. Household level consumption expenditure data for the rural sector of Maharashtra, India, are used in this study. The results indicate that the nature of the commodity along with the effect of children on consumption of that particular commodity, plays a major role in determining child cost. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]