One view is that concessions demanded by and granted to interests groups are responsible for steady fiscal decline, and delay in reforms. We argue that negative supply shocks combined with the political objective of protecting the poor can build in incentives leading to these results. Pricing...

The paper explores contractual types of public private partnerships that would deliver maximum value in the Indian context. Under incomplete contracts social institutions, tailored to the specific context, can contribute to effective governance. We first draw out some implications of contract...

The similarities yet differences across South Asian countries, and their differential response to recent food and oil price shocks, provides a useful opportunity to better understand the structure of inflation in these economies. Analysis of the internal goods market and external balance of...

Stylized facts for South Asia show the dominance of supply shocks, amplified by macroeconomic policies and procyclical current accounts. Interest and exchange rate volatility rose initially on liberalization, but fell as markets deepened. A gradual middling through approach to openness and...

Strategic interaction between fiscal and monetary authorities and economic agents, can lead to the creation of more populism than is socially optimal. The tradeoffs through which this occurs, important for a populous democracy with a large number of poor, is that between populism and growth....

We explore the hypothesis that macroeconomic polices are influenced by political structure, through a systematic comparison of reform period macroeconomic policy choices and outcomes, in China and India. One decade lagged Indian reform in the context of similar economic and very different...

The paper explores puzzles in Indian growth performance such as the prolonged period of below potential growth in the late nineties. Uneven behaviour of investment was a major explanation. Risk aversion and adverse expectations prevented investment from rising. Since sufficient domestic and...

Stylized facts for South Asia show the dominance of supply shocks, amplified by macroeconomic policies and procyclical current accounts. Interest and exchange rate volatility rose initially on liberalization, but fell as markets deepened. A gradual middling through approach to openness and...

A new specification is employed to test for the degree of endogeneity of commercial bank credit, and its response to structural variables relevant to the Indian context. Our specification allows us to both identify money supply in a single equation, and disentangle the contribution of the...

A short-run model incorporates instantaneous portfolio equilibrium with macroeconomic flows to clarify the structure of real-financial sector interactions. If equity and foreign exchange markets are introduced in structuralist theories of asset markets in developing countries, the key result...