A review of several decades of scholarship on civil war, focusing on the answers to key questions: Why do wars begin? Who fights? How are armed groups organized? How can we end and prevent internal war? A survey of the growing body of macroeconomic and microeconomic evidence to assess the...

The increase in direct taxes has not been able to offset the decline that resulted from the reduction in customs tariff and decline in excise revenue. The task facing the policymakers now is to explore ways in which the tax ratio can be pushed up without going back on the basic elements of the...

* Repo Rate increased to 7.25 per cent from 7.0 per cent. * The flexibility to conduct overnight repo or longer term repo including the right to accept or reject tender(s) under the LAF, wholly or partially is retained. * Reverse Repo Rate, Bank Rate and CRR kept unchanged. * GDP growth forecast...

The key elements of effective central banking that account for much of the improvement in monetary policy around the world today are outlined and explained. The past quarter of the century has been a revolutionary period in which the world emerged from great inflation and output instability into...

There has been a very rapid rise since the early 1990s in foreign reserves held by developing countries. These reserves have climbed to almost 30 percent of developing countries' GDP and 8 months of imports. Assuming reasonable spreads between the yield on reserve assets and the cost of foreign...

The paper argues that economism and, in particular, the individual drive to maximize utility and amass profit are not enough to ensure the efficient functioning of an economy; and that even for elementary economic activities, such as trade, exchange and contracting to occur smoothly, it is...

This article focuses on the Open Knowledge Definition and the Panton Principles for Open Data in Science. Some of the tools the group has developed to facilitate the generation and use of open data and the potential uses are discussed. This can encourage further movement towards an open...

In late March the release of data on sale of new homes in the US showed that it had dropped 10 per cent, the biggest drop in nine years. In the immediate aftermath of this report, the US currency gave up some ground against the Euro and other major currencies. Bond yields dropped and rate hike...

While Asia’s success in growth and poverty reduction is to be greatly welcomed, and should be analysed for the lessons it has for other countries, the policy discourse should take on board three key points: (i) the diversity of Asian growth experience; (ii) rising inequality as a threat to...

This paper discusses the factors that promote clusters and the role of clusters in the generation and spread of human capital The analysis in the paper is based on a comparative study of software firms in the two neighbouring south Indian cities – Bangalore and Hyderabad. Some of the...