Understanding Economic Growth in Indian States

The present study tries to understand the trends and determinants of economic growth in Indian states. For this, it considers two important determinants such as infrastructure and financial development. With the help of panel time series models, the study concludes that although both the variables are highly correlated with economic growth, it is the social sector development that is having higher impact on the economic growth. In terms of the role of financial sector, the results show that although it is necessary to have development in terms of increase in number of bank branches, it is the extent of bank business that is more important in the growth process.Growth, Infrastructure, Financial Development, Panel Time Series, India

Globalization, Growth and Poverty in India

globalization, economic growth, poverty, inequality, population shift effect, decomposition, India

Estimating Infrastructural Investment Needs for India

This paper attempts to systemically project the demand and fund requirements of the Indian infrastructure sector up to 2013. In the infrastructure sector transportation (rail, port, air and road), electricity and telecommunication sectors are covered in this study. Our analysis is performed in three stages. In the first stage, long run linkage between infrastructure variables and income are established by applying cointegration method. Subsequently, infrastructure demand functions are estimated by using Dynamic OLS (DOLS) technique. In the second stage, by using the estimated infrastructure elasticity to income of variables and IMF’s projected income data, we project the sector-wise demand and funding requirement. In the final stage, we put forward some suggestions for reforms in infrastructure financing, so the projected demand in the country would be achieved. The results of the analysis indicates that in important sectors like electricity and port, the government(the Planning Commission) has seriously underestimated the future demand, while in air transport sector, the demand seems to be overestimated. Only in telecommunication sector, the projections of this study are at par with their projections. Overall, we find that the government has at least 7% underestimated the infrastructure needs. Based on these results, we propose for initiation of a set of reforms in existing financing pattern of infrastructure in the countryInfrastructure projection, DOLS, India

External Shocks and the Indian Economy: Analyzing through a Small, Structural Quarterly Macroeconometric Model

Though a large number of structural macroeconometric models have been estimated for India, the fact that all these are based on annual data limit their usefulness for short-term policy analysis, particularly in volatile periods of the type seen during last few quarters. Therefore the present paper builds up a short-term macroeconometric model for India using quarterly data. The model has reasonably good in-sample performance. One important feature of the model is use of quadratic relation between government expenditure and credit to private sector, which shows presence of both crowding in and crowding out effects, the latter dominating the former when expenditure is high enough. Some simulations are also carried out to analyse the impact of recent external shocks such as rise in global food and fuel prices and the global financial meltdown, on the Indian economy. The results show that the current slowdown in India’s growth predates the global price shock and the global financial crisis, and is more of a regular cyclical downturn. The global developments only further deepen the slowdown and prolong the recovery.Structural model, External Shocks, India

Fiscal consolidation with high growth: A policy simulation model for India.

In this paper a fiscal consolidation program for India has been presented based on a policy simulation model that enables us to examine the macroeconomic implications of alternative fiscal strategies, given certain assumptions about other macro policy choices and relevant exogenous factors. The model is then used to estimate the outcomes resulting from a possible strategy of fiscal consolidation in the base case. The exercise shows that it is possible to have fiscal consolidation while at the same time maintaining high GDP growth of around 8 percent or so. The strategy is to gradually bring down the revenue deficit to zero by 2014-15, while allowing a combined fiscal deficit for centre plus states of about 6 percent of GDP. This provides the space for substantial government capital expenditure, which translates to a significant public investment program. This in turn leads to high overall investment directly and indirectly, via the crowding in effect on private investment, which drives the high GDP growth. The exercise has also tested the robustness of this strategy under two alternative scenarios of higher and lower advanced country growth compared to the base case.Macroeconomic modelling, Policy simulation, Fiscal policy, India

Fiscal Consolidation with High Growth : A Policy Simulation Model for India

In this paper a fiscal consolidation program for India has been presented based on a policy simulation model that enables us to examine the macroeconomic implications of alternative fiscal strategies, given certain assumptions about other macro policy choices and relevant exogenous factors. The model is then used to estimate the outcomes resulting from a possible strategy of fiscal consolidation in the base case. The exercise shows that it is possible to have fiscal consolidation while at the same time maintaining high GDP growth of around 8% or so. The strategy is to gradually bring down the revenue deficit to zero by 2014-15, while allowing a combined fiscal deficit for centre plus states of about 6% of GDP. This provides the space for substantial government capital expenditure, which translates to a significant public investment program. This in turn leads to high overall investment directly and indirectly, via the crowding in effect on private investment, which drives the high GDP growth. The exercise has also tested the robustness of this strategy under two alternative scenarios of higher and lower advanced country growth compared to the base case.Macroeconomic Modelling, Policy Simulation, Fiscal Policy, India

Co-citation Analysis: An Overview

This article gives an overview of co-citation analysis and its applications in tracking the linkages among the intellectual works and mapping the evolutionary structure of scientific disciplines. It also focuses on the features, interface, terminology used, merits and demerits of co-citation based online database applications

Role of Economic Policies in Achieving MDGs in the Asia-Pacific Region: Challenges, Gaps and Area of Interventions

This paper tries to examine the role of various economic policy measures that are unveiled in the Asia Pacific region to achieve the MDGs. In do so, in the first stage, the paper tries to bring out the extent of achievement of MDGs in the region. Further, it attempts to fix the bench marks for each macro policy variable in relation to MDG achievement. In the second stage, it undertakes the gap analysis to see the extent of distance between ‘on-track’ and ‘off-track’ countries and emphasis prioritisation of policies in the region. The study concludes that Asia Pacific as a whole are close to the bench mark countries in terms of fiscal and trade policies. But there is a lot more that needs to be done in the financial and stabilisation policies. Further, the study concludes that there is a need to emphasis more on the financial and macroeconomic reforms that helps in domestic resource mobilisation and also in the growth process that are necessary for achieving development goals in time.MDGs, Asia-Pacific, Gap Analysis,

Globalization, growth and poverty in India

In this paper an attempt is made to assess the impact of economic reforms on the incidence of poverty by decomposing the change in poverty ratio between two time points into growth/mean effect, inequality effect and the population shift effect. Based on the National Sample Survey data an analysis has been carried out for two time periods: (i) 1983 to 1993-94 and (ii) 1993-94 to 1999-2000, broadly representing the pre-reform and reform-period respectively, for the rural and urban areas of the fifteen major states, and also for the all-India level. The growth/mean effect, which determines the extent of fall (rise) in poverty incidence due to rise (fall) in mean per capita consumption expenditure, dominates in both the periods over the inequality effect, that estimates the rise (fall) in poverty due to rise (fall) in inequality. It also dominates over the population shift effect, which assesses the net impact on all-areas combined poverty, of a decline (rise) in rural (urban) poverty caused possibly by rural-urban migration. The growth effect, which is beneficial for poverty reduction, seems to have gone up in the reform period. The adverse inequality effect also fell in magnitude in the second period compared to the first. States with a greater beneficial growth effect in the second period relative to the first, also show a fall in the magnitude of an adverse population shift effect in the urban areas, i.e., a relatively less rise in the incidence of urban poverty caused by rural-urban migration. – globalization ; economic growth ; poverty ; inequality ; population shift effect ; Decomposition ; Indi