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Summary: This paper attempts to quantify the impact of fiscal decentralization in India on its social infrastructure and on rural development. Overall, the results in this paper indicate that Government of India within a federal framework has been fostering development equitably across its states, particularly through health and education expenditures aimed at improving human capital development. In this context, the importance of the two tier centre-states decentralization should be noted. However, the third tier of local governance, particularly the state-rural local bodies decentralization has been dismal and has not achieved significant results across states, which warrant the attention of the central and state governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the debate on the relationship between public and private investment in India along the following dimensions. First, acknowledging major structural changes that the Indian economy has undergone in the past three decades, we study whether public investment in recent years has become more or less complementary to private investment in comparison to the period before 1980. Second, we construct a novel data-set of quarterly aggregate public and private investment in India over the period 1996–2015 using investment-project data from the CapEx-CMIE database. Third, embedding a theory-driven long-run relationship on the model, we estimate a range of Structural Vector Error Correction Models (SVECMs) to re-examine the public and private investment relationship in India. Identification is achieved by decomposing shocks into those with transitory and permanent effects. Our results suggest that while public investment crowds out private investment in India over the period 1950–2012, the opposite is true when we restrict the sample to post 1980 or conduct a quarterly analysis since 1996. This change can likely be attributed to the policy reforms which started during the early 1980s and gained momentum after the 1991 crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Public participation is generally assumed to be a necessary if not fundamental condition for development. Most studies do not, however, question the kind and level of collective action that would be desirable. This paper provides a novel empirical analysis of the impact of collective action on economic development using data for South India. The paper models collective action as endogenous to economic development and distinguishes between its static and dynamic properties. The results show that while excessive activism may harm state income, collective action in the context of responsible bargaining systems may contribute toward increased economic development. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Son preference is widespread in a number of developing countries despite substantial improvements in education levels and economic development. One potential explanation for the persistence of this phenomenon is that individual household members like the mother derive large non-monetary benefits from giving birth to a son and therefore prefer boys to girls. Qualitative evidence suggests that such benefits exist and may depend on the child’s age. This paper uses large nationally representative datasets from India and tests whether having a son leads to higher decision-making powers for mothers than having a daughter. Since the number and gender composition of children is likely to be non-random for families that want a son, I focus on first-born children for whom the sex ratio of girls relative to boys is normal. The main analysis also focuses on young children of up to six months, which gives parents little time to adjust desired birth-spacing intervals that could be systematically correlated with decision-making powers and child gender. The results show little evidence of consistently large female benefits shortly after birth, and any positive impacts of having a son disappear after the first six months. There are also no large benefits for adult sons. These empirical patterns do not support qualitative evidence suggesting that women benefit from the birth of a son through larger decision-making powers in the household because of increased respect by other household members. The benefits also do not heavily depend on the child’s age, which is not consistent with a channel predicting a better bargaining position for women with adult sons who start taking over the running of the household. Overall, these results extend our understanding of individual-specific incentives for son preference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Risks due to the occurrence of climatic aberrations pose an impediment to the economic growth of the households in vulnerable regions. The frequency of these events is projected to increase in the foreseeable future, with developing countries being the worst sufferers. Dealing with this appears to be an additional burden on the resources of such countries, a large part of which is already devoted to providing better living standards for its inhabitants. Does this imply that developmental interventions should be discontinued? Is there a link between these programs and adaptation to environmental shocks? In an effort to answer such questions, the paper examines the impact of the developmental schemes on the livelihood of the households in Western Odisha, India and investigates whether they augment post disaster coping and adaptation as well. The results indicate that overall the programs have made an impact concerning their intended goals but the diffusion of benefits across beneficiary groups is heterogeneous. Additionally, the programs have contributed in post disaster coping, but only in the regions where either they performed well or their penetration was extensive. Activities promoting livelihood diversification, food security, and poverty reduction also tacitly facilitate improvements in the resilience of the individuals and communities thereby enhancing their capacity to deal with climatic risks. Policy implication advocates the continuation of developmental interventions. However, realigning their framework to incorporate actions intended toward disaster risk reduction and management would result in more inclusive impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary The last two decades of high economic growth in India has been accompanied by increasing economic inequality. The rise in inequality raises concerns about fall in opportunities for social mobility. This paper examines changes in intergenerational occupational mobility for males in India over three decades (1983–2012). Once we control for changes in occupational structure across the years, we find a decline in intergenerational occupational mobility during 1983–2012 in India. However, the decline in intergenerational occupational mobility was sharper for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, historically deprived sections of the Indian population, than for non-Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India has witnessed high economic growth since the 1980s, and a confirmed reduction in monetary poverty, particularly in poorer states. Poverty, however, has multiple dimensions. This paper thoroughly analyzes the change in multidimensional poverty in India between 1999 and 2006. We find a strong reduction in national poverty and each of its dimensions, but this has not been uniform across regions, castes, or religions. Probing further, we analyze changes in the distribution among the poor people nationally as well as within population subgroups. We find strong reductions among the poorer population nationally, but slower progress for most of the poorest groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Unlike migration, scant attention has been paid to the phenomenon of commuting by workers in developing countries. This paper fills this gap by using a nationally representative data set from India to analyze factors that affect the decision of workers to commute across rural and urban areas daily. Our results suggest that regions with large peripheral urban areas or concentration of secondary sector jobs are more likely to have commuting workers. Regional rural and urban unemployment rates and rural–urban wage differentials are important push and pull factors in the decision to commute. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper analyzes the macroeconomic determinants of portfolio flows to India and finds that lower exchange rate volatility and greater risk diversification opportunities are conducive to portfolio flows. However, higher equity returns of other emerging markets discourage these flows. Other conventional determinants of portfolio flows are domestic equity performance, exchange rate, interest rate differential and domestic output growth. An analysis of disaggregated portfolio flows shows that determinants of FIIs are similar to aggregate portfolio flows, while ADR/GDRs are significantly influenced only by domestic equity returns, exchange rate, domestic output growth, and foreign output growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Up to the 1980s it was generally accepted that many key issues in agrarian development could not be studied without an understanding of market interlinkages. Recently, however, this theory has lost its importance in development literature. Based on a household-level survey from rural Pakistan, this paper seeks to re-introduce the importance of interlinkages by illustrating their exploitative potential, particularly in unequal isolated villages where landlords are essentially monopolist/monopsonist. The solution proposed is to break isolation. Making use of an exogenous shock found in the construction of a motorway, the study finds that while connectivity does not break interlinkages completely, it does significantly reduce their exploitative nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Effective state–business relations are a set of highly institutionalised, responsive and public interactions between the state and the business sector. This paper examines the impact of effective state–business relations on economic growth across Indian states over the period 1985–2006. We propose a measure that captures the various dimensions of effective state–business relations at the sub-national level, and estimate standard growth regressions using dynamic panel data methods. Our results show that effective state–business relations contribute significantly to economic growth and appear to be driven by the intensity of the interactions between the state and the private sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper examines public–private partnerships (PPPs) for development through the example of telecenters in two Indian states. How might a developmental state position itself with respect to civil society under a PPP model of service delivery? We find that each state’s political economy is reflected in its PPP strategy, but that in both states the emerging middle classes rather than the poor benefit most from ongoing telecenter projects. Outsourcing development services to private entities need not “privatize” the state but does alter the way in which citizens “see” the state. Service delivery through telecenters becomes a symbol of government efficiency and responsiveness. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: In this paper, we test whether economic growth decreases child labor by bringing together data from the National Sample Survey of India and state-level macrodata to estimate a bivariate probit model of schooling and labor. Our results lead us to conclude that contrary to popular wisdom, growth actually increases rather than decreases child labor because it increases the demand for child workers. The level of state NDP, village wages, and household incomes are seen as the conduits through which growth influences the supply side of the child labor market. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper examines the determinants of private saving in the process of economic development, in the light of the Indian experience. It is found that the saving rate rises with both the level and the rate of growth of disposable income. The real interest rate on bank deposits has a significant positive impact, but the magnitude of the impact is modest. Public saving seems to crowd out private saving, but less than proportionately. Furthermore, the spread of banking facilities in the economy and the inflation rate have a positive impact and changes in the external terms of trade a negative impact on private saving. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The evolution of the Indian software sector is explained by the larger context of uneven and combined development. The imperatives of a market-driven global order suggest an open-ended process of development, making some economic and technological convergence realizable but also generating contradictions at various levels. This paper focuses on differential innovative capability, the uneven diffusion of technical education in India, and the increasing economic integration of the software industry as sources of uneven development. The combined nature of the development process is reflected in the coexistence of the successful software sector with several lagging sectors with all of them being functionally integrated as part of Indian social formation. To cope with the contradictions of such change a balanced development will be critical. To make development more inclusive deep structural problems that plague those outside the orbit of the successful software industry must be resolved. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The use of Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) in policy evaluations has revolutionized our approach to designing effective public policies. This essay argues that understanding the politics of policymaking is integral to the discussion of RCTs. The literature on RCTs has not sufficiently engaged with this issue. Examining a recent set of papers, the essay analyzes how the political process of policymaking as well as its political consequences may matter for the overall welfare implications of an intervention, including those involving the experimental method. Additionally, such political concerns with the method may be hard to avoid as both small and large scale RCTs may involve unintended and yet, consequential, political effects. Given the influence that RCTs enjoy within the discipline and in the wider development community, bringing the political economy considerations within the ambit of analyses could make policy evaluations more holistic, better our understanding, and consequently, bring research closer to practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]