Taking advantage of the household expenditure data from the 68th round of the National Sample Survey, conducted in 2011-12, we offer a comprehensive and up-to-date evaluation of the pattern of poverty alleviation across social, religious and economic groups in rural and urban India both...

This paper offers a comprehensive analysis of poverty in India. It shows that no matter which of the two official poverty lines we use, poverty has declined steadily in all states and for all social and religious groups. Accelerated growth between the fiscal years 2004-05 and 2009-10 has also...

We use data from Indian manufacturing to describe the distribution of firm size in terms of employment and discuss implications for public policy, especially labor regulations. A unique feature of our analysis is the use of nationally representative establishment-level data from both the...

A common continuing criticism of the economic reforms in India has been that despite accelerated growth and all-around poverty reduction, the country continues to suffer from child malnutrition that is worse than nearly all of the Sub Saharan African countries with lower per-capita incomes....

Domestic and multinational corporations have begun to enter retailing in India, raising concerns that they will destroy the millions of small stores and street vendor businesses that presently dominate retailing in the country. Policymakers know that corporate retailers can improve the...

We offer a comprehensive analysis of the evolution of poverty by social groups in India since 1983 and study the impact of growth and openness on the headcount ratio. We show that at the national level poverty has declined with every successive quinquennial survey in both rural and urban areas...

To study the effects of the dramatic economic reforms undertaken in India in the early 1990s on inequality, this paper uses the Theil inequality measure constructed using Indian household expenditure survey data from 1988-2005. Overall inequality shows some variation over the period, rising...

Using data on Indian government-owned firms, we investigate the effect of privatization on the performance of these firms. Our results suggest that privatization is positively associated with the profitability and efficiency of of government-owned firms. Despite the small number of transactions,...

As is widely acknowledged, the incidence of poverty in India has declined steadily over the last several decades. What is debated, however, is the pace at which poverty has declined and its relationship with India's economic reforms. In particular, a key concern among policymakers and...