The mounting challenge of youth unemployment in India

Last month, India’s job crisis gained world attention when young applicants rioted against the alleged lack of transparency in the recruitment process of Indian Railways – one of the biggest employers in the country. Despite having a very large working-age population, and even during periods of marked economic growth, India has long suffered from intractable youth unemployment, which has been made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on key labour statistics, Radhicka Kapoor draws out the structural nature of the problem, and suggests reforms needed to correct this anomaly if India is to reap its long-promised demographic dividend

State of Working India 2021: One Year of Covid-19

This report documents the impact of one year of Covid-19 in India, on jobs, incomes, inequality, and poverty. It also examines the effectiveness of policy measures that have thus far been undertaken to offer relief and support. Finally, it offers some policy suggestions for the near and medium-term future.When the pandemic hit, the Indian economy was already in the most prolonged slowdown in recent decades. On top of this, there were legacy problems such as a slow rate of job creation and lack of political commitment to improving working conditions which trapped a large section of the workforce without access to any employment security or social protection.Our analysis shows that the pandemic has further increased informality and led to a severe decline in earnings for the majority of workers resulting in a sudden increase in poverty. Women and younger workers have been disproportionately affected. Households have coped by reducing food intake, borrowing, and selling assets. Government relief has helped avoid the most severe forms of distress, but the reach of support measures is incomplete, leaving out some of the most vulnerable workers and households. We find that additional government support is urgently needed now for two reasons - compensating for the losses sustained during the first year and anticipating the impact of the second wave

State of working India 2021 : one year of Covid-19

This report documents the impact of one year of Covid-19 in India, on jobs, incomes, inequality, and poverty. It also examines the effectiveness of policy measures that have thus far been undertaken to offer relief and support. Finally, it offers some policy suggestions for the near and medium-term future. When the pandemic hit, the Indian economy was already in the most prolonged slowdown in recent decades. On top of this, there were legacy problems such as a slow rate of job creation and lack of political commitment to improving working conditions which trapped a large section of the workforce without access to any employment security or social protectio

Essays on the macroeconomics of poverty reduction

Poverty remains one of the most pressing issues of our time. Understanding the impact of macroeconomic policy on poverty through growth and distribution of income is of considerable interest and this is what I examine in this dissertation. In Chapter 1, 'The Arithmetic of the Poverty-Growth- Inequality Triangle-Evidence from States of India', I use an arithmetic approach to examine how growth and income distribution matter simultaneously to poverty reduction by separating changes in poverty into a growth and distribution component. The results indicate that the poor benefit more from increasing aggregate growth than reducing inequality. In fact, bulk of the poverty reduction is concentrated in a period which witnessed the steepest increase in inequality since the effect of growth on poverty was large enough to overturn the effect of adverse distributional changes. Also, there is a great deal of heterogeneity in the poverty reduction performances of states, in particular the growth elasticity of poverty. I examine this heterogeneity in Chapter 2, 'The Empirics of the Poverty-Growth-Inequality Triangle: Does High Initial Poverty Matter?- Evidence from Rural India'. The more equal the initial income distribution and the higher the initial level of development, the greater is the growth elasticity of poverty. This empirical analysis also examines the impact of initial poverty on the pace of poverty reduction via its impact on economic growth and growth elasticity of poverty. Initial poverty has no adverse impact on growth; however it may lower the growth elasticity of poverty slightly. Furthermore, I find evidence of poverty convergence. In Chapter 3, 'Fiscal Policy and Macroeconomic Stabilility: Automatic Stabilizers Work, Always and Everywhere', I examine what can be done to protect the poor from macroeconomic shocks and volatility. Developed countries have in place in-built Counter cyclical automatic stabilizers to protect the poor from macroeconomic shocks and volatility and there is a vast literature on their effectiveness in reducing output volatility. Their effectiveness in developing countries has not been empirically validated. Using a sample of 49 countries, we estimate the impact of automatic stabilizers on output volatility and find that they strongly contribute to output stability regardless of the type of economy.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Understanding the Performance of India's Manufacturing Sector: Evidence from Firm Level Data

India’s overall economic performance over the last fifteen years has been outstanding, with the economy growing at an average of over 7% p.a. Growth has been service-led with the services sector accounting for over 60% of GDP growth over the period. Importantly, India’s structural transformation has been marked by a shift straight from agriculture to services led growth, leapfrogging manufacturing. The problem with this pattern of growth has been that it has generated relatively fewer opportunities of employment generation. The role of the manufacturing sector, ordinarily considered to be an important engine of growth and job creation for low and middle income countries, has been rather limited. Its share in total GDP and employment has continued to hover around 15% and 12% respectively for the last three decades

Política fiscal y estabilidad macroeconómica: Nuevas evidencias e implicaciones de política

The paper revisits the empirical link between fiscal policy and macroeconomic stability. Our basic presumption is that by definition, the operation of automatic stabilizers should always and everywhere contribute to greater macroeconomic stability (output and consumption). However, two stylized facts seem at odds with that prediction. First, the moderating effect of automaticstabilizers appears to have weakened in advanced economies betweenthe mid-1990s and 2006 (the end of our main sample). Second, automatic stabilizers do not seem to be effective in developing economies. Our analysisaddresses these apparent puzzles by accounting for the government’s ambivalent role as a shock absorber and a shock inducer for determinants of macroeconomic volatility over time. Results provide strong support for theview that fiscal stabilization operates mainly through automatic stabilizers.Este documento retoma el estudio de la relación empírica entre la políticafiscal y la estabilidad macroeconómica. Nuestro supuesto básico es que, pordefinición, el funcionamiento de los estabilizadores automáticas deberíasiempre y en todas partes contribuir a una mayor estabilidad macroeconómica(producción y consumo). Sin embargo, dos hechos estilizados parecen estar endesacuerdo con esa predicción. En primer lugar, el efecto moderador de losestabilizadores automáticos parece haberse debilitado en las economíasavanzadas entre los años 1990 y 2006. En segundo lugar, los estabilizadoresautomáticos no parecen ser eficaces en las economías en desarrollo. Nuestroanálisis aborda estos enigmas aparentes por medio del análisis del papelambivalente del gobierno como un amortiguador e inductor de shocks sobrelos determinantes de la volatilidad macroeconómica en el tiempo. Losresultados proporcionan un fuerte apoyo a la opinión de que la estabilizaciónfiscal opera principalmente a través de los estabilizadores automáticos.

Fiscal Policy and Macroeconomic Stability

The paper revisits the link between fiscal policy and macroeconomic stability. Two salient features of our analysis are (1) a systematic test for the government’s ambivalent role as a shock absorber and a shock inducer—removing a downward bias present in existing estimates of the impact of automatic stabilizers—and (2) a broad sample of advanced and emerging market economies. Results provide strong support for the view that fiscal stabilization operates mainly through automatic stabilizers. Also, the destabilizing impact of policy changes not systematically related to the business cycle may not be as robust as suggested in the literature.Economic models;Fiscal stability;fiscal policy, expenditure, discretionary fiscal policy, fiscal stabilization, cyclical fiscal policy, budget balance, public expenditure, fiscal shocks, government expenditure, fiscal impulses, fiscal policies, public spending, fiscal stabilizers, budget balances, fiscal authorities, fiscal indicators, public finances, general government expenditure, public debt, budget deficit, fiscal multipliers, fiscal stance, tax rates, national expenditure, budgetary impact, expenditure programs, fiscal behavior, expenditure control, expenditure ratio, tax revenues, government spending, weak expenditure control, fiscal stimulus, public finance, fiscal balances, government budget, fiscal stabilization policies, fiscal multiplier, tax base, budget surplus, tax changes, fiscal controls, budgetary changes, taxation, fiscal policy coordination, tax collection, fiscal studies, fiscal measures, tax bases, government budget deficit, expenditure controls, fiscal institutions, fiscal ? multipliers, fiscal space, expenditure ceilings, government expenditure ratio, fiscal balance, fiscal data, budgetary institutions, domestic expenditure, fiscal impulse, expenditure composition, fiscal council, fiscal expansions, progressive taxation, fiscal frameworks, fiscal agencies, fiscal aggregates

Informalization of the formal sector: Evidence from India's manufacturing industries

The employment structure of India's formal manufacturing sector has undergone substantial changes since the early 2000s with a steep rise in the use of contract workers in place of directly hired workers. Much of the existing literature has attributed the widespread use of contract labour to India's rigid employment protection legislation. The resulting informalisation of the workforce in the organised sector raises concerns about the sustainability of employment growth. Using a 14-year plant-level panel data from the Annual Survey of Industries, we find that in addition to labour market rigidities and the existence of a wage differential between contract and directly hired workers, plants in the organised manufacturing sector have another important incentive to hire contract workers. Plants appear to be using contract workers to their strategic advantage against the directly hired workers to keep their bargaining power and wage demand in check. Importantly, the strength of this bargaining channel varies across plants depending on their capital intensity of production, size and existing contract worker intensity

State of working India 2021 : one year of Covid-19

This report documents the impact of one year of Covid-19 in India, on jobs, incomes, inequality, and poverty. It also examines the effectiveness of policy measures that have thus far been undertaken to offer relief and support. Finally, it offers some policy suggestions for the near and medium-term future. When the pandemic hit, the Indian economy was already in the most prolonged slowdown in recent decades. On top of this, there were legacy problems such as a slow rate of job creation and lack of political commitment to improving working conditions which trapped a large section of the workforce without access to any employment security or social protectio