A review and extended discussion is presented of The Cult of Statistical Significance: How the Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice and Lives by Deirdre McCloskey and Stephen Ziliak, a work that raises important issues related to the practice of statistics and that has been widely commented...

When analyzing the appropriate response for monetary policy during a currency crisis it is important to keep in mind two distinct channels: (a) the impact of raising interest rates on exchange rates; and (b) the direct impact of exchange rate changes on output. The first pertains to the monetary...

During the recent period, many countries compete with each other to attract foreign investment. When MNCs invest in a host country, it is assumed that a part of their technology spills to the host country firms. But empirical studies on spillover effects of FDI have failed to find robust...

This paper attempts to identify the factors that determine the export competitiveness of firms in the Indian pharmaceutical industry. Our findings suggest that the competitiveness of firms depends not only on firm specific advantages but also on government fiscal incentives. Among the firm...

Theoretical literature identifies two variants of crowding out in an economy–real and financial. The real (direct) crowding out occurs when the increase in public investment displaces private capital formation broadly on a dollar-for-dollar basis, irrespective of the mode of financing the...

This paper assesses the impact of India’s unilateral tariff reductions and lowering of quantitative restrictions since 1991. It then evaluates the WTO commitments on nonagricultural market access in the light of these reductions. This short paper based on hard quantitative analysis is a...

A large body of empirical literature highlights the need for stakeholder participation within the context of policy change and democratic governance. This makes intuitive sense and may appear to be a straightforward process of managing conflicting interests, building consensus, and lining up...

A desert journey, from a pool where both humans and camels drank, to a bavadi then to a water tap in Khaba village has some valuable lessons about the ground realities of the social forces around water.