The National Food Security Act (NFSA) 2013 combines and expands the scope of some existing food-based welfare schemes. It will be distributing raw rations, meal(s) and/or cash. Approximately 81.35 crore persons or 16.57 crore households are to benefit under the targeted public distribution...

The public distribution system (PDS) has been one of the main policy instruments of the Government of India (GoI) to provide food security to the people of this country, especially the vulnerable ones. The recently enacted National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013, also relies heavily on it to...

In-kind transfers can provide insurance benefits when prices of consumption goods vary, as is common in developing countries. We develop a model demonstrating that in-kind transfers are welfare improving to beneficiaries relative to cash if the covariance between the marginal utility of income...

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to significant changes in where people work, eat and socialise. We use novel data on the food and non-alcoholic drink purchases from stores, takeaways, restaurants and other outlets to quantify the impact of the pandemic on the diets of a large, representative panel...

This study examines the effect of quality of electrification on empowerment of women in terms of economic autonomy, agency, mobility, decision-making abilities, and time allocation in fuel collection in India. It moves beyond the consensus of counting electrified households as a measure of...

Closely following the seminal contribution of Jappelli and Pistaferri (2014) - based on Italian household survey data - we employ data of 22 European countries to assess the role of heterogeneity of the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) for fiscal policy in the Euro area. We document an...

In this study, we examine the behavior of self-employed taxpayers who "bunch" at an income level just below a critical threshold, which triggers a transition from a simple tax regime to a more complex one. Under the simple regime, individuals complete their tax forms independently, while the...

The paper presents a case for a phased rolling out of direct benefits transfer (DBT) for Food in India. By studying all states and Union Territories on three broad parameters: demographics, performance of the existing Public Distribution System (PDS), and current state of banking infrastructure,...