Allocations to the budget for health appear to be impressive but a closer look shows that this is not so, especially taking into consideration the high inflation rate in the previous year. A substantive criticism is presented on allocation to HIV/AIDS, polio eradication, and leprosy control...

The budget 2006-07 proposals in health care fell well short of India’s march towards achieving Millennium Development Goals(MDGs), the National Health Policy (NHP) goals and fully operationalising the National Rural Health Mission. Two questions still remain: (a) when will the urban bias...

Falling costs of coordination and communication have allowed firms in rich countries to fragment their production process and offshore an increasing share of the value chain to low-wage countries. This paper proposes a Ricardian model where both of these effects are present and analyzes the...

This paper evaluates the real-time performance of the growth rate of the DSE-ECRI Indian leading index for exports for predicting cyclical downturns and upturns in the growth rate of Indian exports. The index comprises the 36-country real effective exchange rate and leading indices of...

Policy makers, therefore, often encounter the following questions while formulating the social security schemes. What are the priority social security needs of unorganized workers? What existing mechanisms and strategies do they use to meet the social security needs? Do social security needs and...

A comprehensive inventory of bilateral FTAs on a global scale, with sections on Africa and the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean. It highlights the key points of each agreement, and details planned future developments. Background paper prepared for the...

Liberalisation and the policies thereafter have lead to a definite increase in production and export from the leather accessories industry in India. The focus of this paper is on migration and labour mobility in the leather accessories manufacture in Dharavi, Mumbai. The core data for the paper...

This paper uses aggregate and firm level data to examine the characteristics of the Chinese pharmaceutical industry in general and its geographical agglomeration in particular. It addresses the following research questions: 1) Are there geographical agglomerations in China’s...

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...