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Working Papers | 2015

Inflationary effects of monetary policies in newly industrialized economies with cross-sectoral labor and capital immobility

Anindya S. Chakrabarti

This paper studies the effects of monetary policies in newly industrialized economies characterized by extremely low level of labor and capital mobility between urban and rural sectors. Policies are executed in the urban sector
which sends waves of adjustments in the rest of the economy. I show that with liquidity constraints and immobility in labor and capital, the sector-
specific effects are markedly different from those in a one-sector economy. In particular, they are asymmetric and the rural sector lags behind the urban sector during the adjustment process. This explains temporary phases of significantly high inflaction with uneven sectoral effects which often accompany major reforms in the banking and monetary institutions of such economies,
e.g. in case of India. Finally, as the consumption patterns alter in such an economy undergoing structural changes, the sectoral distribution of liquidity is affected inducing dissimilar responses to shocks, both within and between sectors.

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Working Papers | 2015

Stochastic Lotka-Volterra equations: A model of lagged diffusion of technology in an interconnected world

Anindya S. Chakrabarti

We present a model of technological evolution due to interaction between multiple countries and the resultant effects on the corresponding
macro variables. The world consists of a set of economies where some countries are leaders and some are followers in the technology ladder. All of them potentially gains from technological breakthroughs. Applying the famous Lotka-Volterra equations to model the evolution of technology frontier, we show that the way technology diffuses creates
repercussions in the partner economies. This process captures the spill-over effects on major macro variables seen in the current highly globalized world due to trickle-down effects of technology.

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Working Papers | 2015

Consumer Rights in the New Economy: Amending the Consumer Protection Act, 1986

Akhileshwar Pathak

Liberalisation and globalisation of the India economy, inaugurated in 1990, ushered in a qualitatively different economy. In these decades, there has been expansion of goods and services; diversification in the means of reaching the consumer; proliferation of trade practices; coming in of e-commerce; vigorous sales promotion; and aggressive advertising. The persona of a consumer has undergone a transformation. The legislative regime for protection of consumer needs reform. The government has suggested changes in the Consumer Protection Act, 1986. Taking this as the context, the article reviews the proposed amendments and identifies further areas for amendment. The article has identified four overarching aspects of consumer rights for review, unfair terms in contracts; unfair trade practices; commerce through online platforms; and definition of consumer.

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Working Papers | 2015

Dynamic Pricing of Electricity: A Survey of Related Research

Goutam Dutta and Krishnendranath Mitra

In this paper, we survey 82 papers related to revenue management and dynamic pricing of electricity and lists future research avenues in this field. Dynamic pricing has the potential to modify electric load profiles by charging different prices at different demand levels and hence can act as an effective demand side management tool. There are different forms of dynamic prices that can be offered to different markets and customers. Forecasting of demand, and demand price relationship play an important role in determining prices and helps in scheduling load in dynamic pricing environments. Consumers' willingness-to-pay for electricity services is also necessary in setting price limits. Elasticity of demand is an indication of the demand response to changing prices. Market segmentation can enhance the effects of such pricing schemes. Appropriate scheduling of electrical load enhances the consumer response to dynamic tariffs.

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Working Papers | 2015

A Note on Estimating Variance of Finite Population Distribution Function

Sumanta Adhya, Tathagata Banerjee, and Gouranga Chattopadhyay

Estimating finite population distribution function is an important problem to the survey samplers since it summarizes almost all the relevant information of interest about the finite population. Moreover due to its nonlinearity estimation of variance of estimators of distribution function remains an active area of research since Chambers et al., 1992. Both analytic and resampling-based variance estimators are developed earlier. Here we poropse a bootstrap hybrid variance estimator of model-based semi-patametric estimator of finite population distribution function estimator. We prove its consistency and also show that its numerical performances are superior to analytical estimator.

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Working Papers | 2015

How Costly is the Deliberate Disinflation in India?
Estimating the Sacrifice Ratio

Ravindra H. Dholakia and Kadiyala Sri Virinchi

Methods followed in earlier studies for estimating the sacrifice ratio or the real cost of deliberate disinflation have focused only on aggregate supply side ignoring aggregate demand. The present study considers the adjustment path obtained as a locus of short run equilibria to arrive at a theoretically acceptable sacrifice ratio. The study uses quarterly data from the period between 1996-97Q1--2013-14Q4 in India and employs both the regression as well as the direct methods to estimate the ratio. The results have revealed a sacrifice ratio ranging from 1.7 to 3.8 depending on the method and the measure of inflation used. Such a magnitude of the real cost of disinflation in India, also relevant in the long run, clearly contradict the dominant view among policymakers that the trade-off, if any, is negligible. Deliberate disinflation policy needs to consider the real cost of sacrificing output and employment particularly when its magnitude is substantial.

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Working Papers | 2015

Specialist Services in the Indian Rural Public Health System for Maternal and Child Healthcare – A Study of Four States

Shreekant Iyengar and Ravindra H. Dholakia

The present study attempts to examine the role of specialist services in rural public health system of India in the areas of maternal and child healthcare. The study uses primary data collected through a survey of doctors and paramedical staff working at public health facilities regarding availability and quality of the specialist services in gynaecology, paediatrics and anaesthesia. The study discusses in detail the aspects of infrastructure, manpower and operational challenges faced in effective provisioning of specialist services through the rural health facilities of four largest states-Bihar, Madhya Pradesh (MP), Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh (UP). The findings of the survey reveal significant dearth of specialist doctors with their concentration at the district level. Moreover, there are severe misallocations of the specialist doctors and, lack of manpower support, equipment and basic infrastructure within the public health system causing serious challenges in effective provisioning of specialist services for maternal and child healthcare. Lastly, the efforts made by the government for providing additional manpower support for these services are also not giving desired results.

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Working Papers | 2015

Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Ordinance 2014: A Process Perspective

G. Raghuram and Simy Sunny

This paper captures the policy processes leading to the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (RFCTLARR) Ordinance, 2014. It maps the role and the influence of the three primary stakeholders - Government, industry and landowners - at various stages of the evolution of the land acquisition law in India. Land acquisition has remained a controversial issue in India resulting in conflicts between social, economic and political structures. The RFCTLARR Act 2013 was an attempt by the earlier Government to provide a fair deal to the landowners who had suffered due to the weak framework of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894. The Government also had one year until December 31, 2014 to decide on whether 13 Special Acts which had land acquisition privileges should come under this Act or be exempted. However, the Act soon faced resistance from the industry due to the impact of clauses like social impact assessment, rehabilitation and resettlement, and consent requirements on projects done in public interest. After constant pressure from the industry and consultations from the State Governments, the new Government finally brought in amendments to the 2013 Act. Given the one year deadline and the washout of the winter session of Parliament, it brought in the amendment through an ordinance.

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Working Papers | 2015

ROC Curve Analysis for Randomly Selected Patients

Tathagata Bandyopadhyay, Sumanta Adhya, and Apratim Guha

Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and the area under the curve (AUC) are widely used in medical studies to examine the effectiveness of markers in diagnosing diseases. In most of the existing literature for ROC curve analysis it is assumed that the healthy and the diseased populations are independent of each other, which may lead to bias in the studies. In this paper we consider the disease status as a binary random variable. Assuming the disease status is determined by a latent variable and the marker and the latent variable have a bivariate normal distribution, we derive the properties of the ROC curve and the AUC. We also look at the problem of choosing optimum combination of markers when multiple markers are present. Limiting distributions are obtained and confidence intervals are discussed as well. A small simulation study is performed which confirms the superiority of our methods over the general practice of considering the two populations to be independent.

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Working Papers | 2015

Economic Globalization: Boon or Bane for African Health?

Vishalkumar Jani and Ravindra H. Dholakia

The effect of globalization, especially economic liberalization, on socioeconomic development has long been debated in development economics. There is a view that globalization is not beneficial to the underdeveloped and developing world. Africa is always put forward as an example. So it is important to see what is really the impact of international integration and increasing trade on countries of Africa. Evidence for this is very limited and inconclusive. The present study attempts to decipher how health status of African countries is impacted by the economic liberalization. It aims to bridge the gap between the two strands of literature: (i) impact of economic liberalization on growth, and (ii) effect of economic growth on health status.
The findings show a positive effect of globalization on the health status of African countries with those having lower income and underdeveloped status in initial period benefiting more.

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