The Performance of Nations


Book Description

Why do some nations fail while others succeed? How can we compare the political capacity of a totalitarian regime to a democracy? Are democracies always more efficient? The Performance of Nations answers these key questions by providing a powerful new tool for measuring governments’ strengths and weaknesses. Allowing researchers to look inside countries down to the local level as well as to compare across societies and over time, the book demonstrates convincingly that political performance is the missing link in measuring power and military capability. This groundbreaking work will be an essential resource for scholars, policymakers, and institutions interested in measuring the political capacities of nations and in knowing where foreign aid and investment will be most effective.




Revisiting Regional Growth Dynamics in India in the Post Economic Reforms Period


Book Description

The post 2000 period for India has been quite eventful for Indian economy. The Book examines the implications of growth for inequality and some of the major drivers of growth like infrastructure, health and credit. The book discusses the key challenges as well the game changer initiatives that will shape India's growth in the medium term.




From “Hindu Growth” to Productivity Surge


Book Description

This paper explores the causes of India's productivity surge around 1980, more than a decade before serious economic reforms were initiated. Trade liberalization, expansionary demand, a favorable external environment, and improved agricultural performance did not play a role. We find evidence that the trigger may have been an attitudinal shift by the government in the early 1980s that unlike the reforms of the 1990s, was probusiness rather than promarket in character, favoring the interests of existing businesses rather than new entrants or consumers. A relatively small shift elicited a large productivity response, because India was far away from its income-possibility frontier. Registered manufacturing, which had been built up in previous decades, played an important role in determining which states took advantage of the changed environment.




Economic Growth and Income Disparity in BRIC


Book Description

It is not necessarily true that such income transfers would invariably reduce growth rates. The relationship between economic growth and income inequality depends on certain initial conditions. For instance, if the initial distribution of income is fairly unequal, growth induces greater equality. On the other hand, at high levels of per capita incomes, growth may raise inequality if the initial level of inequality is not very high. This brings a new dimension in the "inverted-U hypothesis." Based on econometric modeling of growth-inequality nexus, the book examines the patterns of growth and economic disparities in BRIC countries over long periods of time, including the recent high growth phase. Two inequality measures applied in this study are Gini coefficient and Theil's entropy measures, depending on data availability. Attempts have been made to identify the sources of inequality and the role of initial conditions in determining the patterns of development.




ECONOMIC INEQUALITY AND GROWTH A new look through Human Capital as you designed and shown


Book Description

This book tries to portray the link between economic inequality and long-run growth via human capital and the major take of the book is to analyze the growth panorama through the lens of the ‘idea’ or ‘knowledge’ generation’ which is eventually considered as the ‘engine of growth’ being fueled by productivity enhancement through the innovations of new technologies. But this is not the end of the story as it involves enormous controversies. Simply the controversy started with the basic question --- why are some countries richer than other countries? To put it in another way, why growth is a miracle, why it is not driven homogeneously for economies, or whether the economies would converge or not? Another issue is predominantly crucial, that is, economic inequality in the process of economic expansion. In this context, the present book has given emphasis in explaining the selective growth theories starting from classical foundation to new growth theories including their inner implications in the passage of history of economic growth. In consequence, the vast landscape of theoretical contours about political philosophies and model analyses of economic growth including diverse generic versions of the said link between economic expansion and distribution are explained, and, the most important feature of the textbook is that the link is explored by focusing on a single factor, human capital. The prime emphasis of the present textbook is to look at the link between growth, inequality and human capital accumulation and their resultant outcomes in a new way as New Look by substantiating the issue through empirical analyses relating to the Indian States. The whole journey of the book consists of the political philosophy, models and empirics, the trio, without which the all-around venture of economic theories would become incomplete. For this reason, the whole perspective of empirical analysis is done to keep in mind the necessities of the learners such that they should not feel awkward with a set of data. It is, in that context, the empirical and structural issues are taken up to make the issues distinctively clearer with the presumption that the whole perspective would become, then, more delightful and easy to digest.




Changing Contours of Indian Agriculture


Book Description

This book presents an extensive study on India’s agricultural and nonfarm sectors, examining prices, investments and policies, and suggesting various essential technological changes. It offers appropriate financial, institutional, and policy frameworks that can help to sustain agricultural growth and augment farmers’ incomes across geographical locations. Further, it addresses agricultural growth and rural poverty reduction through multiple pathways that also tackle varied geographical locations, making it a highly useful guide to understanding the changing contours in agriculture and rural areas across the country and among rural households with various social and economic backgrounds.




IMF Staff Papers, Volume 52, No. 2


Book Description

This paper examines contractionary currency crashes in developing countries. It explores the causes of India’s productivity surge around 1980, more than a decade before serious economic reforms were initiated. The paper finds evidence that the trigger may have been an attitudinal shift by the government in the early 1980s that, unlike the reforms of the 1990s, was pro-business rather than pro-market in character, favoring the interests of existing businesses rather than new entrants or consumers. A relatively small shift elicited a large productivity response, because India was far away from its income possibility frontier.




Growth and Developmental Aspects of Credit Allocation


Book Description

Growth and Developmental Aspects of Credit Allocation: An Inquiry for Leading Countries and the Indian States focuses on bank credit and deposit within a variety of economies and specifically examines Indian states to demonstrate how these two financial components are linked to their income growths and levels of development.




The Demographic Dividend


Book Description

Large cohorts of young adults are poised to add to the working-age population of developing economies. Despite much interest in the consequent growth dividend, the size and circumstances of the potential gains remain under-explored. This study makes progress by focusing on India, which will be the largest individual contributor to the global demographic transition ahead. It exploits the variation in the age structure of the population across Indian states to identify the demographic dividend. The main finding is that there is a large and significant growth impact of both the level and growth rate of the working age ratio. This result is robust to a variety of empirical strategies, including a correction for inter-state migration. The results imply that a substantial fraction of the growth acceleration that India has experienced since the 1980s - sometimes ascribed exclusively to economic reforms - is attributable to changes in the country’s age structure. Moreover, the demographic dividend could add about 2 percentage points per annum to India’s per capita GDP growth over the next two decades. With the future expansion of the working age ratio concentrated in some of India’s poorest states, income convergence may well speed up, a theme likely to recur on the global stage.




Political Economy, Growth and Liberalisation in India, 1991-2008


Book Description

This book examines the key period of liberalisation in India from 1991 to 2008. It analyses the relationship between growth and liberalisation and, in particular, the recent ‘miracle growth rate’ and its sustainability in the current Indian economic environment. This book is a significant contribution to the growing debate on economic growth and liberalisation, and the broader subject of economic development in India and other developing countries.