Journal Publications
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. Farm debt waivers which are meant to be a one-time settlement of loans have become common in India. This paper finds, after controlling for variables related to farming distress, that the timing of waiver announcements by state governments between 2001-02 and 2018–19 is associated with the timing of elections. This points toward a pattern of policy manipulation that suggests election-year targeting of the largest special interest group in India, namely farming households. The debt waivers, either announced as policies by incumbent governments prior to upcoming elections or as election pledges by political parties which are fulfilled after winning elections, are unanticipated shocks to government revenue expenditure. We find that the waivers are associated with an increased revenue deficit, which is accommodated by a nearly 1/3rd cut in capital outlay to control the fiscal deficit, given the presence of a fiscal rule. Given its path dependence, lower capital expenditure also reduces the quality of government spending in subsequent years.
. This article contributes to the understanding of commuting mobility constraints on women in paid work in the context of urban India. With the help of a primary survey of 293 workers in the Chennai Metropolitan Region between January and June 2018, augmented with in-depth interviews of 20 women on their commuting parameters and mobility constraints, we document gender disparity in the use of modes of transport with women relying more on public transport (among low skilled workers) and cab services (among high skilled workers) compared to men's higher use of personal modes of transport. The transport mode in turn, adversely influences the time, cost and/or convenience of commuting for women. The evidence suggests that the mode of transport is not being endogenously determined, but a constraint that appears to emerge due to gender norms surrounding access to transport resources. The home location also acts as a constraint for working married women if a cultural norm requires them to move into a spouse's home location post marriage. Commuting safety is a key concern, especially for women in low-skilled occupations. We highlight the commuting challenges for women in paid work, which urban policymakers need to factor into their future city mobility plans.
. This study investigates the relationship between a married woman’s paid work participation and her exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV) in urban India. Results show that due to the male backlash channel, women in employment face significantly higher levels of IPV compared to women involved in domestic work only. The study does not find evidence that any autonomy women gain by doing paid work lowers their experience of IPV. Furthermore, this paper contributes to the literature on gender-based violence by introducing and testing for a “female guilt channel” – a phenomenon in which women in paid work justify IPV against them more than those not in paid work – that, in turn, further raises their IPV exposure. The paper finds weak evidence for the guilt channel in the overall sample and stronger evidence among women with intermediate levels of education.
. We examine the tone of the internal and external members of India’s Monetary Policy Committee. The tone of the external members’, which place a higher weight on growth relative to inflation, has a greater impact on the bond yields.
. This paper investigates if residing in a joint family affects non-farm employment for married women in rural India. Our estimates based on a longitudinal survey of over 27,000 women conducted in 2005 and 2012, and using the conditional logistic regression and instrumental variable approach suggest that living in a joint family lowers married women’s participation non-farm work by around 12% points. The adverse impact is higher for younger women, for those from families with higher social status, and for those residing in Northern India. We present evidence to suggest that women with higher education are not constrained from cultural and traditional norms since education raises women’s decision-making power in a joint family. An increased education level is likely to raise women’s earning capacity as well as the quality of jobs which may help in lowering family pressure against work. Public policies that encourage higher education, improve job accessibility along with affordable childcare, will raise non-farm employment, which has increasingly been the main source of new jobs, for women living in a rural India.
. This paper draws implications for the energy and education policies in developing countries based on the insights derived from studying the determinants of household refrigerator ownership in India. In our study the failure of the government policies to ensure reliable public services such as uninterrupted power supply and improving female education levels turn out to be the key stumbling blocks to raising household welfare in India. While a threshold level of household income is necessary for a purchase of a consumer durable, it is not a sufficient condition. Our results for the determinants of refrigerator ownership in India suggest that, even when households have sufficient purchasing power, the duration of a complementary good (electricity for >17 h per day) is critical for the ownership, all else held constant. Also, females in households tend to derive greater utility from the refrigerator usage due to its impact on lowering household burden of work and easing women’s entry into the labour market. Our results confirm the hypothesis that when women bargaining power is proxied by the level of education, households with a female with higher level of education have higher probability of refrigerator ownership.
. Reduced-form estimates of the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) first-order condition indicate that its preferences have been asymmetric with respect to exchange-rate management, with the response to the rate of rupee appreciation being relatively larger than to the rate of rupee depreciation of the same magnitude. This behaviour is shown to account for a sizable fraction of reserve accretion in recent years.
. In this paper we estimate the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) policy response to supply shocks. In particular, we exploit an important strand of the recent literature (the new inflation bias hypothesis) to understand why the two frequently cited measures of inflation in India have persistently diverged in recent years. Specifically, it is argued that the difference in coverage and weighting pattern between the indices interacting with policies pursued by the RBI to control its preferred inflation measure WPI turned out to be inappropriate with respect to stabilizing expected CPI-IW inflation. This in turn provides an explanation for the persistent divergence between the two measures of inflation.
. The present paper examines the effects of ownership structures on capital structure and firm valuation. It argues that the effects of separation of control from cash flow rights on capital structure and firm value also depend on the separation of control from management as well as on legal rules and enforcement defining investors’ protection. We obtain firm-level panel data (three stage least squares, 3SLS) estimates from four of the East Asian countries worst affected by the last crisis. There is evidence that the general wisdom that higher control than cash flow rights may lower firm value may be reversed among owner-managed family firms in the sample countries.
. This paper investigates if residing in a joint family affects non-farm employment for married women in rural India. Our estimates based on a longitudinal survey of over 27,000 women conducted in 2005 and 2012, and using the conditional logistic regression and instrumental variable approach suggest that living in a joint family lowers married women’s participation non-farm work by around 12% points. The adverse impact is higher for younger women, for those from families with higher social status, and for those residing in Northern India. We present evidence to suggest that women with higher education are not constrained from cultural and traditional norms since education raises women’s decision-making power in a joint family. An increased education level is likely to raise women’s earning capacity as well as the quality of jobs which may help in lowering family pressure against work. Public policies that encourage higher education, improve job accessibility along with affordable childcare, will raise non-farm employment, which has increasingly been the main source of new jobs, for women living in a rural India.
. We estimate an augmented Phillips curve to examine the effects of supply shocks on inflation in India. Our results suggest that supply shocks only have a transitory effect on both headline and core measures of inflation. The evidence is robust to a variety of re-specifications and core inflation measures. The potential explanation for this is that monetary policy has not provided the basis for a sustained change in the inflation process by accommodating supply shocks i.e., expanding money supply in response to negative supply shocks. Thus, monetary authorities have implicitly focused on a core measure of inflation by discounting price movements that are expected to be reversed in the short-run. In short, what is crucial in inflation determination is not supply shocks per se but how policymakers respond to these shocks.
. This paper compares the inflation targeting framework adopted by the European Central Bank (ECB) vis-à-vis the Bank of England (BOE) and argues that the ECB's strategy does not constitute the best international practice. The definition of price stability adopted by the ECB is ambiguous and therefore less effective as an anchor for inflation expectations. Furthermore, greater transparency would make the ECB more accountable, while also improving stabilisation properties of monetary policy. Thus, the success of inflation targeting depends on operational details, such as how the central bank's objectives are defined and communicated to the public.
