Economics

This study takes a closer look at some of the drivers of inflation in manufacturing prices in India. It indicates that "overheating", which has recently acquired policy focus, drives inflation in the short run, whereas international materials and energy prices drive inflation over the short as well as the long run. The study implies that restrictive monetary policy might be of only limited relevance in controlling non-food inflation. Public policy aimed at minimising the impact of input cost shocks might work better in the long run. In the meanwhile, the restrictive monetary policy followed by the Reserve Bank of India might worsen the downturn that has begun in January 2010. The authors are grateful for helpful comments from an anonymous referee. However, the responsibility for errors that remain lies solely with the authors. Neeraj Hatekar (neeraj.hatekar@gmail.com) is at the Centre for. Ashutosh Sharma (ashuofrabi@gmail.com) and Savita Kulkarni (kulkarni_sav@rediffmail....

This article seeks to advance contextualised understanding of the extent to which a cashless economy in India can be a feasible developmental goal. Initially, impressed with critiques of the sudden ‘demonetisation’ on 8 November 2016, we conducted econometric research to test how banks (‘bricks’) could be brought closer to rural people. However, this traditional approach of envisaging more banks was rapidly overtaken by the massive uptake of digital payment methods (‘clicks’) in India since 2016. Partly driven by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), this has raised new concerns and research agenda focused on people’s trust in banking and new technologies, consumer skills and people’s basic rights vis-à-vis a state that, controversially, now seems to be seeking more control within a relentlessly changing postmodern scenario.

The causation between output and prices has been intensively investigated in the Indian context. Decomposing the money-output causality by frequency is likely to be highly revealing about the underlying macroeconomic processes. In this paper, we examine this issue ...

This study investigates the stability issues of real money balances considering financial development. We estimate real narrow (M1) and broad (M3) money demand in India during the post-financial reform, from 1996:Q2 to 2016:Q3. To check the short- and long-run relationships, this study uses the autoregressive distributed lag model of cointegration and other various time series techniques. After incorporating financial development into money demand, we determined short- and long-run relationships and a well-defined open-economy stable money demand specification (M1 and M3) in India. Having established money demand function, the policymaker and central bankers can use monetary aggregates as an indicator or information variable to predict output gaps and inflationary expectations under the inflation-targeting framework.

This article analyses how the different equity derivative products (index futures, index options, stock futures and stock options) have fared at NSE in the last ten years i.e. from the year of its introduction 2000-01 to 2009-10 and the shift in trend in terms of usage of different products.

The paper written from a governance perspective takes the position that a useful governance perspective must be informed by the socio-economic-cultural milieu and in the specific Indian context must sit on a tripod of 'political reality','state of decentralization'and 'basic economic principles'. Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) is one of the most important growth engines for India as it accrues tremendous revenues to the central and the Maharashtra (State) governments.

Cities in the global south are undergoing changes in the production structure brought about by globalization and liberalization. These cities also witness significant informalities in terms of shelter and livelihoods. These phenomena are reflected in the urban land use patterns. Planning in these cities is under pressure to adapt to the dynamic urban condition but is constrained by the technical and bureaucratic process of master/development plan making. Through an empirical study of an area in the suburbs of Mumbai (India), this paper shows the wedge between planned and actual land use and discusses the reasons for this dichotomy. The paper argues that master/development plans based on technical principles with micro-level detailing are unable to foresee and hence or otherwise adapt to the economic dynamics and spatial restructuring in Mumbai; they are partly undermined by “occupancy urbanism” (Benjamin, 2008). We discuss how these factors are accommodated within and outside the scope of the development plans. The paper calls for a re-thinking of urban planning in India so that plans are better able to reflect the requirements and needs of the citizens.

In developing countries, separation of powers coexists with corruption by the ruling elite. This can be attributed to informal institutions, which counter the formal checks and balances. We demonstrate, by studying the Adarsh scam, the vulnerabilities of checks and balances. Fourteen actors belonging to different tiers of the Indian federal setup who could have vetoed the project or certain permissions failed to do so.We find that 54 percent of the checks collapsed because of quid pro quo, 21 percent due to being overridden, 4 percent due to misrepresentation, 7 percent due to absorption, and 14 percent due to omissions in the process.

This study is among the first to investigate whether patterns of access to basic services could explain the disproportionately severe impact of COVID-19 in slums. Using geolocated containment zones and COVID-19 case data for Mumbai, India’s most populous city, we find that cases and case fatality rates are higher in slums compared to formal residential buildings. Our results show that while access to toilets for men is associated with lower COVID-19 prevalence, the effect is opposite in the case of toilets for women. This could be because limited hours for safely using toilets and higher waiting times increase risk of exposure, and women and children sharing toilet facilities results in crowding. Proximity to water pipelines has no effect on prevalence, likely because slumdwellers are disconnected from for- mal water supply networks. Indoor crowding does not seem to have an effect on case prevalence. Finally, while police capacity – measured by number of police station outposts – is associated with lower prevalence in non-slum areas, indicat- ing effective enforcement of containment, this relationship does not hold in slums. The study highlights the urgency of finding viable solutions for slum improvement and upgrading to mitigate the effects of contagion for some of the most vulnerable populations.