In the post-colonial world, the countries of South Asia have evolved politically in different ways, amidst internal and regional conflicts, but retained some commonality of institutions and cultures. Since the 1990s, the promise of market-led development and the growth of a middle class,...

This article examines recent and potential reforms in India’s fiscal federal system. We summarize key federal institutions in India, including tax and expenditure assignments, and mechanisms for Center-state transfers. We discuss the institutional process by which reforms can and do take...

This paper considers the status of economic reform in India, to understand which further reforms might be desirable, and why they have not been successfully introduced or implemented. Rather than provide a list of reforms that “should” be undertaken, the paper attempts to understand the...

This essay provides an elementary, unified introduction to resource allocation under uncertainty in competitive markets. The coverage includes decision-making under uncertainty, measuring risk and risk aversion, insurance and asset markets, and asymmetric information.

This essay provides an elementary, unified introduction to the impacts of transaction, search and switching costs on resource allocation in competitive markets. The emphasis is on incorporating these phenomena into models of price-taking behavior, rather than the more usual treatments with...

This paper examines the impact of transaction costs on economic welfare and development. We extend the static model of Romer (1994), in which transaction costs reduce welfare by the reducing the equilibrium number of intermediate goods, and estimate the welfare losses in the case of domestic...

This paper provides a comparative assessment of fiscal decentralization in China and India, including the standard components of expenditure and revenue assignments and institutions for intergovernmental transfers, as well as the nature of subnational authorities over general economic activity....

This paper provides a self-contained overview of the present problems of state finances in India. It begins with an overview of historical evolution and current institutional structures, including economic, political, administrative and fiscal aspects of India’s federal system. The paper then...

International cooperation over the major rivers in South Asia took a new turn with the signing in 1996 and 1997 of five innovative water, power and economic cooperation agreements. The innovations include four elements: (i) the transfer of some previously diplomatic questions into the sphere of...

This paper examines the link between structural change and growth in India. It constructs indices of structural change, and performs a time series analysis of the data. It finds that 1988 marks a break in the time series of growth and structural change. There is one-way causality from structural...