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Existing studies have examined only the unidirectional impact of cultural diversity on the economic performance of countries, regions, and cities, not the other ways. They have assumed the diversity as given, while it may also grow, due to in-migration of workers and entrepreneurs, with economic growth and may be dependent on it. This paper models diversity and economic growth in a bi-directional causal frame and demonstrates that economic growth has a substantial impact on religious, language, and overall cultural diversities in the major states of India. However, the Granger causality between economic growth to language diversity and overall cultural diversity is found to be stronger and more widespread across the states than the causality from economic growth to religious diversity. The findings of this paper may have significant theoretical and empirical implications, as mainly the unidirectional way the impact of cultural diversity on economic growth has been advocated and the empirical studies have been modelled to date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the discussion in favor of simplicity of legal rules and against complex regulation is rooted in economically developed countries with strong state capacity. With economic development and state capacity comes the presumption that complex rules will be enforced. Therefore, analysis focuses on the administrative and error costs, and the unintended consequences of complex rules that are enforced. This paper argues that the Epsteinian insight is even more relevant to the developing world where countries often lack enough state capacity to even take on simple governance tasks. Developing countries often have less than 20 percent of the state capacity of developed countries. However, this does not mean they limit the regulatory structure to a fifth of the tasks. Under-enforcement or non-enforcement of complex rules imposes different costs and unintended consequences on society. Using examples from India, this paper highlights problems of enforcement swamping, deadweight loss, and corruption arising from the under-enforcement of complex rules. To avoid these problems, the paper concludes that a fortiori less developed countries should favor simple rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The related literature reveal that the papers on environmental pollution do not sufficiently analyse the cement production which is an important determinant of air pollution and health problems by using econometric methods. To fill this gap, this paper aims to examine the relationship between cement production, air pollution, mortality rate, and economic growth by employing MS Bayesian Vector Autoregressive (MScBVAR) and Markov Switching Bayesian Granger causality (MScBGC) approaches from 1960 to 2017 for China, Brazil, India, Turkey and the USA. MSIA(2)-BVAR(1) model for China, MSIAH(2)-BVAR(3) models for India, MSIAH(3)-BVAR(2) for Brazil, and MSIAH(3)-BVAR(1) for Turkey, and MSIAH(2)-BVAR(2) for the USA were selected. The MScBGC results revealed that the cement production is granger cause of mortality rate, air pollution, and economic growth in all regimes for China, India, Brazil, Turkey, and the USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the last three decades, both China and India are considered as the largest emerging market economies in the world. Both of these economies play an essential role in the global economy in terms of economic output and CO2 emissions. Hence, these countries are expected to play an important role in setting up environmental and sustainable development policies. Therefore, our paper aims to examine the role of natural gas and renewable energy consumptions on CO2 emissions and economic growth during 1965–2016 within a multivariate framework. The autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing approach to cointegration and vector error correction model (VECM) is employed to explore the long-run and causal nexus among the natural gas consumption, renewable energy consumption, coal and petroleum consumption, CO2 emissions, and economic growth, respectively. The empirical results show existence of long-run equilibrium association among the variables. The Granger causality results indicate that the short-run bidirectional causality between renewable energy consumption and economic growth in India, while no causality is found between these two variables in China. However, natural gas consumption causes economic growth in China whereas no causality is confirmed in India in the short-run. The findings further suggest that there is long-run bidirectional causality among the considered variables in both countries. Our paper addresses several important policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the link between capital account liberalization and growth for a cross - section of seventeen developing countries, including India, both theoretically and empirically. It also explores the different measures of capital account openness and the empirical evidence on the association between financial openness and growth. Theoretically, capital account openness leads to growth through two main channels: increase in aggregate investment and an improvement in productivity and efficiency. Existing empirical evidence however suggests that the link between capital account openness and economic growth is weak. The paper uses a de jure measure of capital account convertibility, calculated as the proportion of capital flows to total flow of funds. The results find a positive association between financial openness and growth. However growth is associated with an increase in the efficiency of inputs rather than due to an increase in investment per se. JEL Classification Numbers: F21, F36, F43. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of financial development, economic growth and income inequality on poverty in India from 1970 to 2015 by employing the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing procedure. The findings reveal a robust long-run relationship between financial development, economic growth, inequality and poverty. Results show that financial development and economic growth help in poverty reduction in India, whereas income inequality and inflation aggravate poverty. Empirical evidence of the Granger-causality test supports the presence of unidirectional causality from financial development and economic growth to poverty. Moreover, bidirectional causality exists between inequality and poverty. The present study provides evidence on which the policymakers may proceed with detailed investigation of how specific financial sector policies and interventions can be deployed as effective instruments for achieving favorable economic growth and income distribution. The study recommends that policies geared toward increasing financial development and economic growth should be adopted to reduce the high level of poverty and inequality currently prevailing in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses important issues in Indian public finance in the context of India’s economic development. Given the predominance of working population and with children in the age group 0-14 constituting over 40% of the population, government finance has a critical role not only in protecting life and property but also in creating physical infrastructure to expand economic activities to generate employment opportunities and in providing social infrastructure to empower them to get productively employed. The analysis of public spending, however, shows that spending on education and healthcare is woefully inadequate and expenditures on interest payments, subsidies and transfers have crowded out spending on physical and social infrastructures. The main reason for the above phenomenon has to be found in the low levels of taxation apart from lopsided priorities. The low tax ratio is due to the exemption to agricultural incomes, widespread tax preferences due to multiple objectives loaded into tax policy, tax abuse by multinationals and poor tax administration. The low tax collection is also the reason for the persistence of large deficits and debt. Despite the enactment of fiscal responsibility legislation, containing the government deficits and debt has been a major challenge and the targets are diluted, new concepts created and repeatedly postponed. The paper argues that there is a strong case for creating a fiscal council by amending the FRBM Act which should be appointed by the Parliament and should be reporting to it as recommended by the Fourteenth Finance Commission. This is in contrast to the Fiscal Review Committee’s recommendation according to which the Fiscal council should be appointed by the Finance Ministry and should report to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Designing of a sustainable forest policy is of extreme importance in our present world where the process of rapid economic growth is causing imbalance in the climatic cycles by denying ecosystems sufficient time for adaptation and the socioeconomic systems adequate opportunity for mitigation. In this paper, the forests are considered highly resilient natural resource that plays a major role in reducing the impact of global climate change through carbon sequestration, heat absorption, watershed protection, acid deposition, etc. This paper examines the prospect of sustainable forest management for an emerging economy like India, where forest coverage has gone up over the last three decades in spite of population growth, rapid urbanization, and fast economic growth. To assess the possibility of sustainable future growth in a globally congenial environment, the extent of ecological stress on Indian economy has been checked and pattern of public as well as private expenditure along with import and export of forestry and related products analyzed. The import of forestry-based products are increasing in terms of volume, value and unit prices throughout this period and the major importers of raw and semi-finished forestry-based inputs are the South and East Asian countries. From the perspective of material balance, the results of structural decomposition analysis reveal increasing dominance of economic growth over other effects indicating necessity of designing intervention to decouple potential future economic growth from forest resources to ensure long run sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decomposing the GDP growth from 1981 to 2004, this paper finds that innovation capacity has contributed significantly to the economic growth of China and India, especially in the 1990 s. Outputs of the national innovation system, measured by patents and high-tech/service exports, demonstrate the considerable progress China and India have made in innovation capacity. The enhanced innovation capacity of China and India is primarily due to their heavy investment in the inputs of innovation system, i.e., R&D expenditure and R&D personnel, in recent decades. This paper emphasizes the role that the governments have played in promoting innovation capacity and their contribution to economic development. Both governments have transformed their national innovation systems through linking the science sector with the business sector, providing incentives for innovation activities, and balancing import of technology and indigenous R&D effort. Using case studies of domestic biotech firms in China and India, this paper also offers micro-level insights on innovation capacity and economic development: (1) innovation capacity has become essential for domestic firms’ market success and (2) global institutional factors and national government policies on innovation have considerable influence on the choice of innovation at the firm level, i.e., to conduct indigenous R&D or to import foreign technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decomposing the GDP growth from 1981 to 2004, this paper finds that innovation capacity has contributed significantly to the economic growth of China and India, especially in the 1990 s. Outputs of the national innovation system, measured by patents and high-tech/service exports, demonstrate the considerable progress China and India have made in innovation capacity. The enhanced innovation capacity of China and India is primarily due to their heavy investment in the inputs of innovation system, i.e., R&D expenditure and R&D personnel, in recent decades. This paper emphasizes the role that the governments have played in promoting innovation capacity and their contribution to economic development. Both governments have transformed their national innovation systems through linking the science sector with the business sector, providing incentives for innovation activities, and balancing import of technology and indigenous R&D effort. Using case studies of domestic biotech firms in China and India, this paper also offers micro-level insights on innovation capacity and economic development: (1) innovation capacity has become essential for domestic firms' market success and (2) global institutional factors and national government policies on innovation have considerable influence on the choice of innovation at the firm level, i.e., to conduct indigenous R&D or to import foreign technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a robust multidimensional normative evaluation of the growth episode that India has experienced in the last 15 years. Specifically, the paper compares the evolution, between 1987, 1995 and 2002, of the distribution of several individual attributes on the basis of ethically robust dominance criteria. The individual attributes considered are real consumption (measured at the individual level), literacy rate, under 5 mortality and violent crime rates (all measured at the district levels). District level variables are interpreted as (local) public goods which, along with consumption, contribute to individual well-being. The robust criteria used are generalizations, to more than two attributes, of the first and second order dominance criteria of Atkinson and Bourguignon (Rev Econ Stud 49:183–201, ) and coincide with the unanimity of utilitarian value judgements taken over a specific class of individual utility functions. The main result of the empirical analysis is that all utilitarian rankings of distributions of the four attributes that assume that individual utility functions satisfy the assumptions of second order dominance agree that India is better off in 2002 than in 1987 or 1995 but that these rankings disagree as to how to rank 1987 and 1995. Furthermore, if one removes crime from the list of attributes, the dominance is shown to apply steadily over the whole period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Human development is considered to be the ultimate objective of development, with economic growth as a means to achieve it (Ranis et al. in World Dev 28(2):197–219, 2001). Development stands to be justified when it is equipped with good employment opportunities. Employment provides the means for meeting the income and subsistence needs of the individuals and their families, which fulfils the goal of overall and equitable development (Mathew in Int Labour Rev 154:497–518, 2015). Employment levels would rise when there is sufficient and efficient human capital. Human capital establishes an interconnection between employment and development. The relationship between education and employment is better understood through the labour market, which has a mediating role in influencing educational choices and employment prospects. Against this background, this paper tries to examine the interlinkages between human development, economic growth and employment situation in India with special reference to females in Kerala. Using secondary data, this paper tries to address primarily two objectives: firstly, to examine the relationship between educational attainment, employment and economic growth in India and secondly, to explore the trends and pattern in female employment state-wise with the main focus on Kerala. There exists a huge mismatch between the demand and supply gap among labour force in all Indian states. Employment trends in India, and in particular, women's employment, have been an issue of considerable discussion in scholarly writings over the last few years. Extensive literature review and data suggest that though there has been a constant rise in the educational level of women in India, the employment rates have not raised at a similar pace. Kerala, the most literate state of the country, shows an identical picture among higher educated women where unemployment rate is as high as 20–30%. Women's individual job preferences, overall high unemployment in the economy, family constraints, lack of adequate skills and discouraged worker effect are some of the probable reasons for high unemployment among females. The study concludes that "Kerala model of development," on the basis of its impressive historical accomplishment in social and human development indicators, is definitely praiseworthy but not to be replicated. It is so because though the model has surpassed every state in terms of human development indicators, it showed a development trajectory by fostering unemployment rates, especially in terms of female participation. Therefore, the study suggests that in order to achieve holistic development, there is an urgent need to understand the basic requirement of a particular state. Considering female employment, the study evokes creation of an environment that promotes women to join workforce and thereby attain economic growth. States such as Kerala which have a large pool of educated women must develop policies which aim towards enhancing their employability skills so that the benefits of human capital can be obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large literature provides empirical evidence that financial development enhances welfare by stimulating economic efficiency and offering more profitable growth opportunities, although the issues of identifying the exact mechanisms through which finance enhances welfare and dealing with the simultaneity between financial development and growth still remain contentious. This paper takes a firm-level approach to study the link between financing sources and firm growth in India. We start by observing that (domestic) financial underdevelopment should not necessarily constrain all firms' growth opportunities equally, given they can also access other non-bank finance sources such as retained earnings, foreign finance and government borrowings. Similarly, it is unrealistic to assume that similar financial structure will generate homogenous effects across firms. These considerations motivate our research questions of whether financing sources matter for firms' productivity growth and whether this depends on firm characteristics such as ownership and size. We answer these questions using a rich micro panel data set and employing econometric techniques that deal with the potential reverse causality from financial structure to productivity growth. We find that relative to retained earnings, bank and nonbank finances positively affect firm level productivity growth with bank loans having the largest and government borrowings the least effect on growth. Size is found to play a mediating role in the finance-growth nexus: access to bank loans (nonbank finance) disproportionately benefits smaller (bigger) firms. Further analysis around ownership structure suggests that all else equal, it would appear that financial structure matters only for the growth of domestic private firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Family firms and business groups play an important role in many emerging economies. In this paper we study how different aspects of family involvement influence technological innovation in a firm. Arguments drawn from agency theory and particularly the principal-principal agency hypothesize a negative influence of family involvement with respect to technological innovation. In contrast, stewardship theory predicts a positive influence of family involvement on technological innovation. Drawing on these theoretical lenses with contrasting directionalities with regard to the impact of family involvement on technological innovation, we study how family involvement in ownership, management and board of directors, and business group affiliation influence R&D investments and patents obtained by the firm. The hypotheses are empirically tested on a seven-year panel of 172 firms from the pharmaceutical industry in India. Our results indicate that family shareholding and family control over both CEO and chairperson positions have a positive and significant influence on the firm's R&D investments, broadly lending support to stewardship theory. We also find a positive influence of business group affiliation on R&D investments and patents applied by the firm. Our conjecture is that the high technology opportunity environment in the Indian pharmaceutical industry facilitates stewardship behavior which in turn promotes innovation in these firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the new methodology of National Transfer Accounts, this paper quantifies the economic impacts of age structure transition and productivity growth rate on India's economic growth over the period 2005-2050 by formal and informal sectors. Growth effects are captured by the first demographic dividend (FDD) and distinguished by sector-specific (a) productivity age profiles, (b) relative and absolute labor productivity growth rates, and (c) population distribution for the benchmark year during 2004-2005. Empirical results show that in the presence of these sector-specific differences, growth effects are higher and the sources of lower and slower FDD are attributable to lower productivity levels, growth rates of productivity, and growth rate of effective number of producers in informal sector. Further, throughout, growth effects of productivity are found to be stronger than the age structure transition. Sensitivity results show that growth effects can be remarkably higher at an annual rate of 17 % if benchmark output can be doubled in the informal sector, or FDD can be sustained up to 2050 if India's productivity profile in formal (and informal) sector has a comparable shape with that of Japan/USA (and Philippines/Indonesia/Nigeria). Overall implications show that stronger policy efforts are required for improvement in productivity levels and growth in informal sector to maximize long-run economic growth through FDD. These new results and implications may be of relevance for formulation of age-structure and informal sector related growth promotion policies in other developing countries of Asia, Latin America and Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Notable accomplishments in export have made India's software sector conspicuous. This paper attempts to discuss the determinants of software exports from India. The study notes that-besides dynamic elements of economic development across the world-the policy measures and actions of the Indian government have played proactive and facilitating roles in the growth of the software sector. The study uses the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to estimate the impact of various explanatory variables on software exports from India. Since causality is found running in both directions for many variables, the study attempts to examine the determinants of software exports from India through the regression equation in first difference. The results suggest that changes in openness index, human capital, and the GDP of high-income OECD countries have exercised positive impact on change in software exports from India. The study finds a stable long run relationship among variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Valuation of mineral resources is an exclusive activity of paramount importance that has its influence in managing the economics of the minerals produced in the country. Unlike determining the values of other product entities, valuation of minerals has its uniqueness in terms of methodologies and approaches that are adopted. There are many variables that are, directly or indirectly, associated with the valuation process. Historically, attempts were made to include valuation of mineral resources into national accounts. There are three different approaches to valuation of mineral resources. In the present paper, an attempt has been made to describe the classification of valuation models, different methods of mineral valuation, and preferred methodology adopted for the Indian mineral resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As cities throughout the developing world grow, they often expand more quickly than the infrastructure and service delivery networks that provide residents with basic necessities such as water and public safety. Why do some cities deliver more effective infrastructure and services in the face of rapid growth than others? Why do some households and communities secure better services than others? Answering these questions requires studying the large, politicized bureaucracies charged with providing urban services, especially the relationships between frontline workers, agency managers, and citizens in informal settlements. Researchers investigating public service delivery in cities of the Global South, however, have faced acute data scarcity when addressing these themes. The recent emergence of crowd-sourced data offers researchers new means of addressing such questions. In this paper, we draw on our own research on the politics of urban water delivery in India to highlight new types of analysis that are possible using crowd-sourced data and propose solutions to common pitfalls associated with analyzing it. These insights should be of use for researchers working on a broad range of topics in comparative politics where crowd-sourced data could provide leverage, such as protest politics, conflict processes, public opinion, and law and order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fiscal and monetary policies are two pillars of macroeconomic policy, for both accelerating growth and ensuring stability. Their relative roles and the nature of interface have been of great interest to both academics and policy makers. This paper presents a practitioner’s perspective of how the interface evolved in India. The pre-reform status of the interface, from 1950 to 1991, is briefly recalled. This is followed by a detailed account of the manner in which the interface was transformed during 1991-2003. The transformation was through mutual consultations between Government and RBI. This framework of interface was supplemented by unconventional measures between 2003 and 2008. It was put to test after the Global Financial Crisis—something that was experienced in other economies as well. This stressful interface between 2008 and 2015 has been replaced by an entirely new framework in 2016. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the role of services in India’s economy. Through analyzing global data on the relationship between services, manufacturing, and GDP, we show that the relationship of services to economic growth is complex and usually involves a consideration of the manufacturing sector. In India’s case, somewhat unusually, services and manufacturing grew independently of each other for many years. This independence was in large part due to public policies that encouraged low value-added, capital-intensive manufacturing through protectionist policies. This helps explain why both services and manufacturing were relatively low value added compared to other countries, such as China, that consciously sought to integrate the two sectors. We discuss policymakers’ options for promoting higher value-added services in India, what this means for the manufacturing sector, and the linkages between services and manufacturing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we explore convergence of real per capita output and health expenses across the Indian States. The new panel convergence methodology, developed by Phillips and Sul (Econometrica 75:1771–1855, 2007 ), is employed. The empirical findings suggest that these States form distinct convergent clubs, exhibiting considerable heterogeneity in the underlying growth and health expenses factors. These findings should help policy makers in designing appropriate growth-oriented and/or health sector programs and setting priorities in their implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores convergence of real health expenses across the Indian states. The new panel convergence methodology developed by Phillips and Sul (Econometrica 75:1771-1855, ) is employed. The empirical findings suggest that these states form distinct convergent clubs, exhibiting considerable heterogeneity in the underlying health expenses patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current regulatory mechanism is costly and ineffective due to weak enforcement of environmental standards in India. Harnessing the capabilities of capital markets could be a better strategy for environment friendly economic growth. Therefore, the paper aims to examine a relationship between a firm’s environmental performance and its market valuation. The study uses market value as an indicator of the financial performance using the Ohlson (Contemp Account Res 11:661-687, 1995) model, which is a better indicator in an emerging economy compared to Tobin-q and is free from the biases that Tobin-q suffers from. The study finds a positive relationship between the number of voluntary environment program implemented by a firm and its market value and significant negative relationship between a firm’s market value and pollution index. However, the relationship between resource use index and market value is not found to be statistically significant. The study indicates that India could harness the power of capital markets for improving industrial environmental performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapidly developing countries like India face numerous challenges related to social and environmental sustainability, which are associated with their fast economic growth and rising energy demand, climate change, and widening disparities between the rich and the poor. Recently, a number of claims have been made in the literature that the prospects of alternative development pathways in emerging economies in Asia are becoming more likely, and that these economies might even leapfrog Western initiatives. This paper contributes by reporting on the five most visible and established initiatives in the area of off-grid PV solar energy in India, specifically homing in on the innovative business models that are evolving. We develop a new typology of upscaling dimensions in order to analyze these five initiatives. They are found to be quite successful, but have difficulty in terms of reaching the poorest of the poor (deep upscaling) and bringing about required institutional change (institutional upscaling). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global warming is now recognized as a significant threat to sustainable development on an international scale. One of the key challenges in mounting a global response to it is the seeming unwillingness of the fastest growing economies such as China and India to sign a treaty that limits their emissions. The aim of this paper is to examine the differential incentives of countries on different trajectories of capital growth. A benchmark dynamic game to study global warming, introduced in Dutta and Radner (J Econ Behav Organ, ), is generalized to allow for exogenous capital accumulation. It is shown that the presence of capital exacerbates the 'tragedy of the common'. Furthermore, even with high discount factors, the threat of reverting to the inefficient 'tragedy' equilibrium is not sufficient to deter the emissions growth of the fastest growing economies-in contrast to standard folk theorem like results. However, foreign aid can help. If the slower growth economies-like the United States and Western Europe-are willing to make transfers to China and India, then the latter can be incentivized to cut emissions. Such an outcome is Pareto improving for both slower and faster growth economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to determine the trade-off between river pollution and the growth of the economy in the context of India using the concept of Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). According to EKC theory, environmental pressure tends to rise faster than income growth in the early stages of economic development and then declines in the later stages with further economic growth. The present study has used the cross-sectional time series data for river pollutants of Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) and Dissolved Hydrogen Ions (PH) across various states of India for the period 1990-1991 to 2005-2006. This study shows why the conventional EKC model is not sufficient to ascertain the declining path of pollution as the economy grows in the second stage. The paper uses the modified EKC theory where the EKC curve is proposed to have 2 turning points. Our results indicated 'tilted-S shaped' relationship which contradicts EKC in the early stages. Most of the regions that were studied have crossed the first turning point but are still to cross the second turning point, which means that there will be an ascent in the pollution level in the future. This calls for more stringent environment policies complementing the desired growth path. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the patterns of export productivity and trade specialization profiles in Brazil, China, India and South Africa, and in other economic groupings and regions. Various measures of trade specialization and a time varying export productivity indicator are estimated using highly disaggregated export data. The findings reveal that there are important differences in the export productivity and specialisation patterns across countries and regions. Export productivity-and export sophistication-are in line to that of wealthier and more advance economies. The results further confirm the importance of not just the volume of exports, but the type of specialisation patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of infrastructure in economic growth has been the subject of considerable research in the fields of public policy, economics, and planning. In this paper, I examine the contribution of publicly supplied infrastructure to sub national regional growth in India. I first develop and numerically examine a regionally disaggregated model of economic growth to understand the dynamics of private capital and public infrastructure. For the empirical analysis, I use a pooled data set for Indian states to examine if publicly supplied infrastructure is a significant determinant of regional growth and whether there are spatial variations in the productivity effects of infrastructure. The main findings are that transport and communications infrastructure expenditures are significant determinants of regional growth, and the positive benefits accruing from these expenditures come not only from investments made by individual states, but there are positive externalities from network expenditures made by neighboring states. Finally, the out of sample simulated regional growth predictions show divergence in private capital formation between lagging and leading states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of financial development and economic misery on life expectancy after the implementation of financial reforms in the case of Indian economy. Economic growth, education expenditure and rural-urban income inequality are included as additional determinants of life expectancy over the period of 1990QI-2013QIV. Our empirical findings from the combined cointegration approach confirm the long-run equilibrium relationship among life expectancy, economic growth, economic misery, education expenditure, financial development and rural-urban income inequality. Further, our results on the long-run impact suggest that financial development, economic growth and education expenditure have a significant and positive impact on life expectancy while economic misery and rural-urban income inequality have a substantial negative impact. Our findings offer a significant contribution to the policy and to the body of knowledge. Policy makers can formulate appropriate policies towards reducing rural-urban income inequality and economic misery so that life expectancy can further increase in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the long run relationship between military expenditures and economic growth in case of Pakistan and India using ARDL bounds testing approach for cointegration and Clemente-Montanes-Reyes approach for unit roots keeping structural breaks in a longer time series data. The study confirms the positive relationship between military expenditures and economic growth at the initial stages and then a negative relationship after a critical point for both countries. The short run results also confirm that the military expenditures can explain the per capita GDP in the short run. Importantly, the causality runs from military expenditures to GDP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using three quinquennial rounds of consumption expenditure data over two decades (1993-2012), this paper estimates the extent of money metric poverty and inequality in regions of India. Regions are made comparable, and the poverty head count ratio and the poverty gap ratio for 81 regions are derived using the state specific poverty lines as recommended by the Planning Commission of India. The gini index, rich-poor ratio and regression analyses are used to understand the extent of economic inequality in regions of India. Results indicate that though the extent of poverty has declined, economic inequality has increased in regions of India. During 1993-2012, the poverty head count ratio had decreased in 70 regions, increased in seven regions and remained similar in four regions of India. The southern regions of Odisha and southern regions of Chhattisgarh are reeling under high persistent poverty. The spread in poverty head count ratio among regions has increased from 0.38 in 1993-1994 to 0.64 in 2011-2012 confirming divergence in regional poverty in India. The pattern is similar with respect to poverty gap ratio. Regions of Tripura and Sikkim had highest improvements in poverty level. On contrast to poverty estimates, the gini index has decreased in 20 regions and increased in 61 regions. Likewise, 57 regions have recorded increase in rich-poor ratio. The rich-poor ratio was higher in developed regions and lower in less developed regions. Based on these findings, we suggest that regions with persistently high poverty be accorded priority in poverty alleviation program and explore the factors leading to increasing economic inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we use the term jugaad to describe the frugal, flexible, and inclusive approach to innovation and entrepreneurship emerging from India. We articulate why this method is appropriate within the Indian context and highlight similarities between jugaad and related types of innovation originating from other emerging (and developed) economies. Next, we identify different types of organizations that engage in jugaad and elucidate their abilities, or lack thereof, to undertake such innovation. Finally, we incorporate the notion of jugaad within current theorizing on innovation and entrepreneurship and outline an agenda for future research on this topic. Overall, we provide insights on a mode of innovating that is increasingly prevalent in India as well as certain economies around the world and take steps towards integrating this concept into the mainstream theory, practice, and policy discourses around innovation and entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India passed the Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration & Protection) Act, 1999 in compliance with the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) Agreement under the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Agreements which concluded in 1995. Article 22 of the TRIPs Agreement defines Geographical Indication as 'the indications which identify a good as originating in the territory of a Member, or a region or locality in that territory, where a given quality, reputation or other characteristic of the good is essentially attributable to its geographical origin'. Many developing countries like India has enacted legislation for greater and stronger protection of GI in order to uplift the economic condition of the poor people those who contribute to many key products of export. Since the Act has been passed 15 years back and India registered its first GI, Darjeeling tea in 2004, the total registrations now have reached to 227 in number. The present paper re-examines the challenges ahead in implementation of the Act and to suggest further amendments to the Act for better protection to Indian indigenous knowledge and reputation of products originating from India. It also tries to identify what is further required to reap the benefits of registration and problematic areas like who can be a right applicant of a GI application, Part-B registration of beneficiaries, marketing of GI products, maintaining quality of the product and counterfeiting and enforcement mechanism. It is argued that India requires a coordinated effort of Central and State Governments, proprietors of GI and beneficiaries to protect and promote Indian GIs in future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper revisits regression-based inequality decomposition, derives further theoretical results on the factor shares and applies them in an empirical setting. Noting that the approach based on Shorrocks and Fields is not directly applicable to an important welfare-based inequality index, namely Atkinson's inequality index, we generalise it to derive shares for this index. We also derive the asymptotic distribution of all share estimators for obtaining their standard errors necessary for drawing inference. Finally, we use our theoretical results to examine the major factors that contribute to income inequality in India. Our results show that education and household size are the two most dominant factors contributing to income inequality in both rural and urban areas, followed by employment status and regional differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite having equally vast endowments of natural resources and similar socioeconomic profiles, the Indian states of Bihar and Odisha pursued markedly different development strategies during India's first decade of economic liberalization. Whereas Bihar turned away from its natural resource sector and adopted policies of social empowerment, Odisha courted private investment in extractive industries and aggressively pursued market reforms. To account for this divergence, we argue that the social composition of political power in each state directly shaped the strategies that leaders embraced towards the natural resource sector and overall development. This paper makes contributions to the writings on natural resources and the political economy of India. We show that the presence of abundant natural resources does not necessarily result in a predictable pathway of sectoral and economic policy outcomes. Instead, social factors can be a powerful determinant of how resource-rich states approach their economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents authors' comments on the increasing investments in the field of research in nanotechnology in India and offers suggestions for country's rapid economic growth. Topics include investments in sectors such as education, infrastructure and entrepreneurship, nanotechnology funding by several Indian government bodies such as the Department of Information Technology, and insufficient human resources in the field of nantechnology in India.

This paper examines whether the spread between long- and short-terminterest rates contains information about future economic activity in India. Using the yields on securities with maturities ranging from three months to ten years, we construct five different yield spreads at shorter end, longer end, and policy relevant area of the yield curve. We study the predictive power of each of these spreads for output growth within aggregate and time scale framework using wavelet methodology. We find that predictive power holds only at lower frequencies for the spreads which are constructed at shorter end and policy relevant areas of yield curve. However, spreads which are constructed at the longer end of the yield curve do not seem to have predictive information for output growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper examines the challenge faced by Bangladesh on the employment front with particular reference to where it stands in relation to the "Lewis turning point". In addition, an attempt has been made in the paper to examine how the employment-generating capacity of the economy compares with the growth of the labour force. Furthermore, the paper explores whether alternative pathways, other than conventional forms of industrialisation, are available for transformation of the structure of employment in the economy. The paper concludes that the economy of Bangladesh is still far from the Lewis turning point, and with the present rate and pattern of growth, it may take another 15 years or so for fully absorbing its surplus labour. The prospects of a successful transformation of the employment structure through alternative routes also do not seem to be bright. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Has India's inclusive growth model done enough to promote economic opportunities ? While the last decade has seen substantial progress in many well-being indicators, including those for marginalised groups, less attention has been paid to the way in which marginalised groups participate in production processes, and more attention has been given to measuring development outcomes than to measuring economic opportunities and whether these are 'inclusive '. This paper argues that this is important not just from an economic perspective, but that opportunities in labour markets and as entrepreneurs also have significant implications for social cohesion and exclusion. The key questions in this paper, which was written well before the last general election, have become more significant in view of the priorities of India's new Government and its renewed focus on economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The approach paper to the Twelfth Five Year Plan focuses on promoting the tourism sector and considers it as a harbinger of inclusive growth. As per the WTTC, 2011, the direct and indirect contribution of the Indian tourism industry to the total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employment is found to be 15.8 per cent and 18.4 per cent, respectively. Hence, the objective of this paper is to analyse the role of the tourism industry in promoting employment and economic growth. In view of the use of the VAR model, the GDP, Foreign Tourist Arrivals (FTAs), Foreign Exchange Earnings (FEEs) and Employment have been taken as the variables. The endeavour was to investigate the relationship between tourism, economic growth and employment. While the annual data for India for the period 1971-2010 has been used, the results reveal that there is a long-run relationship between tourism, on one hand, and economic growth and employment, on the other. The Granger Causality Test indicates that there is a unidirectional impact from FEE and FTA to the GDP and from the GDP to employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

lthough export processing zones (EPZ) have been a part of India's development strategy since the 1960s, they have not been as successful at promoting exports and job creation as might have been hoped. Most explanations of their shortcomings focus on the poor infrastructure and bureaucratic inefficiencies that typically plague these zones. By focusing on the knowledge problems that government administrators must overcome if they are to design and manage successful EPZs, and highlighting their inevitable difficulties in overcoming these knowledge problems, this paper offers a more fundamental and compelling explanation of the poor performance of Indian EPZs than is traditionally advanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the section of plantation labourers, who are directly employed by the employers and are not contract workers. The paper shows that a high level of unionisation and adequate legislation in the plantation sector has not been effective in improving the conditions of the plantation labourers beyond a point. In the globalised scenario, the South Asian economies of India and Sri Lanka are facing competition in the plantation sector from China and Kenya. Hence, enhancing the productivity of the plantation labour would imply improving their conditions and bringing them into the mainstream of economic development. Accordingly, the paper suggests a two-pronged approach to the possible formalisation strategies for the plantation sector labourers.The paper also suggests that the effectiveness of any formalization strategy would require collective involvement and social dialogue among all the key players in the plantation sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than 60 per cent of Sri Lanka's labour force is employed in the informal sector, which comprises various economic activities in agriculture, fishing, livestock rearing, micro and small-scale enterprises, petty trade, and other small commercial activities. The informal sector is characterised by low social security and changing incomes. Given this, it is interesting to determine why such a large proportion of the labour force chooses to participate in the informal sector. This paper attempts to answer this question by using household survey data from two time periods. The paper lays special focus on assessing how access to services and infrastructure affects participation in the informal sector. The results show that a multitude of factors relating to individual preferences, location characteristics, and labour market conditions affect the occupational choice of individuals. Moreover, participation in the informal sector is due to a mix of market considerations and skill mismatches, moderated by household and societal factors. The paper argues for improving economic development in a more equitable manner across geographical regions, on the one hand, and improving the quality and relevance of educational opportunities, on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview of the theoretical positions of the contending perspectives as well as a survey of the empirical evidence on the relationship between labour market institutions and economic performance. It clearly emerges from our discussion that the theoretical basis for the advocacy of blanket labour market flexibility is rather weak. Our survey of major cross-country empirical analyses that examine linkages between labour regulation and different aspects of economic performance such as employment, economic growth, etc., substantiates it further. The paper also examines the relevant evidence, including the results of a couple of much talked about recent studies, on India, and it appears that the claims advanced by the supporters of the labour market flexibility are often exaggerated or dubious. Furthermore, it clearly emerges that many of these empirical studies are, methodologically and statistically, seriously flawed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is based on Fields (forthcoming) and on NCEUS (2009). The first part of the paper is about global poverty and how the world's poor work. As many as six-and-a-half times the number of the unemployed are the working poor, which indicates that the world has an employment problem. So does India. The second part of the paper is about combating poverty in India and internationally. The policies discussed here are workplace protections, harnessing the energies of the private sector, economic growth, labour market policies for generating more paid employment, and raising self-employment earnings. The third part of the paper presents the criteria for policy choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To keep pace with population and economic growth, the city of Hyderabad, India, will need to identify and develop new supply sources almost continually. Increasing population growth rate, declining surface water resources, overexploitation of groundwater, deterioration of ground water quality and poor sewage treatment are the major water-related issues in Hyderabad. This paper reviews the current situation facing policy makers who need to come to terms with the problem of restricted water supply and increasing demand in an urban centre such as Hyderabad, India. The City Water Balance model developed in this study can be used to analyse different scenarios that include water conservation, urban wastewater reuse and improvement of distribution and conveyance efficiency. Water conservation programs, which include a 5% conveyance efficiency improvement, reusing 90 million cubic metres (MCM) of urban runoff and adoption of water harvesting by 0.5 million households together with recycling 120 MCM of wastewater recycling wastewater would be sufficient to meet the water demand by 2031, if the population grows at a rate of 2.5%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic reforms initiated in India in 1991 have brought about visible upliftment of economic conditions of the country. This paper examines if the economic process is associated with an enhancement of India’s social development in equal measure in the reform decade of nineties. Ray (1989) considered thirteen social indicators of India and constructed the country’s social development index (SDI) as a certain weighted average of the selected indicators, for the years between 1950–51 and 1975–76. The present work broadly follows Ray () in tracking the social development in the decade of economic reforms from 1990–91 to 1999–2000. The movement of SDI in nineties has been compared with the movements of India’s per capita income and plan expenditure on the social sector. The results show that though there has been growth in the social sector, it is not by far quite encouraging and perhaps more needs to be done in the social sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]