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This study analyses the dynamics of consumption inequality among various occupational groups using household survey data from National Sample Survey (NSS). Three rounds of NSS data namely, the 50th (1993–1994), 61st (2004–2005), and 66th (2009–2010) were taken for the purpose of analysis. Various measures such as Gini coefficient, overlapping index, and raking matrices are estimated for the whole as well as the subgroups using ANOGI methodology. From the analysis, it is found that the level of overall inequality as well as the between‐group inequality is on the rise during the period of analysis. Further, the measures such as relative overlap index and ranking matrices give conclusive evidence that the difference between various groups in terms of consumption expenditure pattern is increasing over time. From the ranking matrices, it is seen that the last six groups, constituting households with occupation in the unorganized sector and low level organized workers falls below the 30th percentile of consumption expenditure distribution of the first group groups that consists of individuals holding to technical, administrative, managerial, and executive occupations. Worsening inequality across various occupational groups is a matter of concern, especially from the policy perspective. As economic growth without equitable distribution of income is not a desirable outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities are the engines of economic growth, drivers of structural and spatial transformation processes, and the generators of wealth. However, city finances in India are in an abysmal state, and its urban local bodies are progressively losing fiscal autonomy. The problem is deeply rooted in the hierarchy set up defined as per the fiscal federalism framework adopted by the nation. The objective of the paper is to critically review India's federalism, discuss its prevailing expenditure‐revenue assignment framework, and analyse the key issues in fiscal decentralization. This paper overviews the entire public finance system in India, brings out the anomalies in expenditure and revenue assignments between the higher levels of government and the urban local bodies, and addresses the areas of concerns at the urban local government level. It also suggests policy measures to put Indian urban local bodies on a strong footing in the public finance map of India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examines the dynamic linkage between financial development and economic growth by taking saving as an intermediary variable in the case of India using annual data from 1970 to 2018. The result indicates the existence of long‐run cointegrating relationship between financial development economic growth. Result from the long run granger causality test reveals unidirectional causal flow from economic growth, savings (both total and private savings) and financial development. On the other hand, financial development also causes economic growth but not through savings. The short‐run causality test results show that economic growth granger causes financial development, but there is no causal flow from financial development to economic growth. Economic growth Granger causes savings (both domestic and private savings) but the savings does not cause economic growth. Bidirectional causalities run from financial development to savings and vice versa. The study concludes that savings can be taken as an important intermediary to run tri‐variate financial‐growth nexus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

House price is a key macroeconomic variable that affects decisions made by many economic agents. This article attempts to examine whether uncertainty or fluctuations in house price affects major macroeconomic variables in the Indian context. It investigates the long‐run effect of house price volatility on inflation (INF) and economic growth (EG) by using quarterly time series data for the period 2008–2017. Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bound test is applied to detect the long‐run relationship between the variables, while Granger causality test is applied to detect the direction of causal relationship. The ARDL bound test results confirm the long‐run association of house price with INF and EG. Finally, the empirical findings indicate that the house price positively affects INF though it has no influence on EG. The study suggests that there is a need to discourage house price bubbles in India, which can help to reduce INF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of stock markets in the financial sector has been important. The expansion of stock markets has compelled various researchers to analyze its relationship with the economic process and development of countries. The studies have revealed that the performance of stock markets in a nation has a positive correlation to its economic growth. Bearing this relationship in mind, studies are being undertaken to recognize the elements responsible for stock market development in several nations. The researchers all around the world are trying to better understand determinants so that government establishments can create and target policies that may help the development of stock markets which further helps in economic development of the state. Throughout the past three decades, the global stock markets surged, and emerging markets played a vital role in this boom. Recent researches have begun to concentrate on the linkages between the stock markets and economic development. There has been an extensive analysis of the connection between the stock market and economic growth, but there is a dearth of theoretical empirical proof on what determines stock exchange development. Keeping in view the importance of stock markets in the development of economic development, the researchers in the present study have tried to bring out the factors that play a positive role in the development of stock market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the long run relationship between public debt and economic growth in India for the period 1980–2018 using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach. The bounds test results suggest that gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, internal and external public debt, fixed investment and trade openness are cointegrated implying the existence of a long run equilibrium relationship between these variables. We find that both internal and external public debt have significant negative effect on economic growth in the long run whereas, investment has significant positive effect on the growth rate of output per capita. The error‐correction model shows that the long run equilibrium relationship is stable and the adjustment towards equilibrium is relatively high. Our findings suggest that too much reliance on public debt must be discouraged since it has adverse effect on economic growth in the long run. The government should adopt investment‐supportive policies to enhance economic growth of the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to explore the nexus between the form and function of government and economic growth in the fragile states of India. To study the dynamics of the directional casual relationship between the government forms and functions and economic growth in Jammu and Kashmir, this study tries to apply the Granger causality test followed by LS multivariate regression analysis on the time series data. The study found that the government functions like resource allocation for asset creation, revenue‐generating capacity, and promoting infrastructure are having a positive and significant impact on economic growth, while law and order are having a significantly negative impact on economic growth in the state. On the other hand, the different government forms, the majoritarian government in the state is suitable for consistent economic growth than coalition and governor's rule. The results found are of amicable use in setting up the smooth growth trajectory of any region through arranging and rearranging political institutions from time to time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present globalization economic world, exchange rate plays a major role in every country's economic activity. Here, exchange rate policy has been identified as one of the endogenous factors that can affect the economic performance of a nation. Exchange rate plays a key role in international economic transactions because no nation can remain in isolation due to varying factor endowment. Movements in the exchange rate have ripple effects on other economic growth. The study used secondary data that were collected from the World Development Indicators data base and analysed. The study used the ordinary least square and VECM Granger Causality method of estimation for data covered the period from 1990 to 2017. The results from the econometric analyses show that there is a short‐run relationship between exchange rate, inflation rate, interest rate and GDP. The result obtained from the unit root analysis indicates that least one time series variable property is stationary. The study concludes that in India, the factors that influence the level of growth rate are extent of exchange rate and its variables. Based on the findings, from the Granger causality investigation procedure at 5% critical value are EXCH, INT, INF, IMP and EXP among other variables that affect economic growth. The study recommends the need to be technologically inclined in all sectors of Indian economy; excess and over budgetary inflation and implementation should be cut to barest minimal level to avert the ideal of external borrowing which most consequently result in external debt and services. The Indian government should show the path of redirecting its investment profile by channelling it towards capital projects of the government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2019–20 Union budget aims to signal that the economic gains from cleaning of the financial system are likely to be recognizable in the future. The non‐performing assets in commercial banks have dropped substantively in last year subsequent to unprecedented recoveries over the past 4 years due to Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code and other legal measures, provision coverage ratio is now at its highest in 7 years, and domestic credit growth has risen to 13.8%. The government has smoothly carried out the consolidation of public sector banks. However, the drop in banks' NPAs appears to be reflected by a liquidity squeeze and mirrored by mounting NPAs confronting the non‐banking finance company (NBFC). In addition, the problems are acute for the analyzed sub‐group of Housing Finance Corporations. While the government has announced its decision to streamline the regulatory processes within this sub‐sector, it has mandated the banks, the chief source of funds to mobilize capital for the NBFCs that appear vital to revive India's economic growth. The government has raised tax rates for the uber‐rich and import duties on a few articles such as Gold while offering tax credits on affordable housing and electric vehicles. It has attempted to improve the microstructure of the capital markets, mitigate inefficiencies in the pension space and enhance market penetration of insurance and incentivize foreign investment through budgetary proposals. This article offers a critical commentary on the proposed policy actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between energy consumption, industrialization, urbanization, economic growth, and financial development in India from 1980 to 2017. The ARDL bound testing; Johansen & Juselius cointegration approach and Gregory & Hansen structural break cointegration technique confirm the long‐run relationship exists among variables. The result of long‐run analysis indicates that the industrialization, urbanization and economic growth play a vital role in increasing energy consumption in India. However, financial development indicates negative relation to energy consumption. The coefficient of error correction term is negative and statistically significant at 1% confidence level, it means last‐period's deviation from a long‐run equilibrium. It is clear from the results of Toda‐Yamamoto Causality, there is a unidirectional causality running from industrialization to energy consumption. However, there is bidirectional causality showing between energy consumption and urbanization, economic growth and energy consumption, and urbanization and Economic growth. Urbanization facilitates fuel switching, as decentralized rural energy sources like traditional wood‐burning are replaced by centralized energy sources. From the above findings, we argue that proper awareness should be made at the urban center regarding use of energy saving equipments and public infrastructure should be improved to harness the effect of urban agglomeration. As rapid development of energy intensive‐industries and economic activity in Indian economy, there is need of energy efficient technology in industry in order to reduce energy consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the impacts of fiscal consolidation programmes and their composition on the growth rate of national income for Indian economy. More specifically the study tries to address two questions that is, composition of consolidation and its resultant impact on growth rate of income and the relative desirability of alternative sources of deficit financing that is, internal versus external borrowing. The study employed time series data from 1990–1991 to 2017–2018 and used the technique of ordinary least square and generalized method of moments. The study finds that, in long run, fiscal consolidation need not be necessarily recessionary in nature. Moreover, the composition of consolidation was found to have a significant impact. The study could not extend empirical support in favour of back‐loaded (spending financed) consolidation design as has been established for advanced economies. Moreover the study could not establish the negative impacts of revenue funded (both tax and non‐tax) fiscal consolidation on the growth rate of economy. The study documented that it is desirable to target expenditures such as subsidies, transfers and interest payments to infuse more discipline. A judicious mixture of both spending cuts and revenue increase may be a better strategy to consolidate in order to have better returns. The study highlighted that the external source of deficit financing is always costlier against the internal borrowings. The study noted that it is imperative on part of policymakers to shift their focus from quantity to the quality of deficits and the resultant consolidation programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the effect of foreign direct investment, remittances, and official development assistance on economic growth in India and Sri Lanka. The study uses annual time series data of both countries for the period 1980–2016. In order to find the short‐run and long‐run relationship among the variables, we use Granger causality test and vector error correction model. We also carry out a vector decomposition analysis to predict the forecast variance error of the future periods and impulse response function to analyze the effect of shocks in the independent variables on that of the dependent variable. Our results indicate that foreign direct investment and remittances have a significant impact on economic growth in India, whereas in Sri Lanka, foreign aid and remittances play an important role in enhancing economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the interaction between real effective exchange rate (REER) with select macroeconomic variables such as gross domestic product (GDP), foreign direct investment, foreign institutional investors (FII), fiscal deficits, terms of trade, trade openness, and foreign exchange reserves from 1981–2017. Autoregressive distributed lag bounds test results confirm the existence of long‐run relationships among the considered variables. The study finds that among the selected macroeconomic variables, GDP and remittances have positive and significant impact on REER. The study also reveals that although the variables official development assistance, FII, and fiscal deficit have positive impacts on REER, the results are not statistically significant. Further, our study indicated that the speed of convergence of REER towards long‐run equilibrium is 30% per annum, which is below standard in nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]