The paper aims to assess the fiscal health of five urban agglomerations (UAs) in India viz. Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Chennai, and Pune. Our sample consists of five corporations and sixty three smaller Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) dispersed in thirteen districts of five major states. The main...

A tribute to Amaresh Bagchi, a discussion of his academic career, his many interests in public finance and federalism, and an outline of his important contributions in policy formulation by a friend and colleague of many years.

This paper attempts to analyse the experience of incentivising economic reforms at the state level through central transfers to states. It reviews the experiences of the central government introducing incentives for reform directly through various specific purpose transfers as well as the...

The 13th Finance Commission has forayed into a number of areas partly warranted by its terms of reference and partly due to the approach it adopted. The Commission, besides tax devolution, has recommended as many as 12 different types of grants with a plethora of conditionalities. A critical...

Founder Director of National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, Raja Jesudoss Chelliah, a renowned economist, the doyen among Indian public finance scholars, the architect of tax reforms in the country has passed away on April 7, 2009. He'll be remembered for conceptualising and...

This working paper presents an analysis of the strategy required to generate the required resources for investment in various services necessary to achieve the MDGs. The analysis attempts to quantify the fiscal space to finance the MDGs and identify the necessary fiscal reforms required to...