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3558 items in total found

Working Papers | 1998

Market Reforms and the Criticality of Institutions: A Few Issues in the Indian Context

Patibandla Murali

This paper brings out a few issues on how prevailing institutional conditions are inadequate for an efficient functioning of markets, and on the role of government policy in the transition period in the Indian context. We approach the issue of market institutions form the new institutional economics perspective. The basic argument of the paper is that the prevailing institutional conditions are not totally consistent and are inadequate with the spirit of free market economy and the approach of the reforms has been lopsided. To put it in the words of Williamson (1994), the approach of the reforms should be not just getting the prices right but getting the institutions right: to get the prices right one has to get the institutions right.

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Working Papers | 1998

Operating Characteristics of Empty Solar Cooker

Girja Sharan

In this report we present some of the operating characteristics of an empty box solar cooker, under climatic conditions of Ahmedabad.

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Working Papers | 1998

Demand for Forest Products in India: Past Trends and Projections to 2010

Kumar Arvind and Vijay Paul Sharma

This paper provides a brief summary of the results of growth performance and projections of demand for forest products in India and uses these results to provide a background for discussion of implications for forest policy and management. The trends indicate that the production of most forest products grew slightly at slower growth rates than its consumption. The growth rates for production and consumption of many products during 1981-94 have been lower than for 1970-80 period. The model used to forecast the demand and supply of forest products performed satisfactorily in terms of goodness of fit and its predictability. The forecasts of demand and supply showed a deficit of all types of forest products at national level; except for wrapping and packaging paper and paperboard, which was sufficient for the next one and half decades. Demand for forest products is likely to increase form current levels, but the rate of increase is likely to be lower than in the past. Moreover, the forest products and the raw material required to produce them will change with the changes in the market and the substitutes of these products. Therefore, the national forest policy and management should take into account all these changes and their effect on extent and composition of demand for forest products.

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Working Papers | 1998

Indias Export Since the Reforms: Three Analytic Industry Studies

Patibandla Murali and Ghemawat Pankaj

Our analysis of markets, competitors and suppliers in three key Indian export industries-diamonds, garments, and software – sheds light on the effects of India's recent economic reforms on export competitiveness. It also calls attention to the imperative to upgrade in international competition. And finally, it affords some insight into the process of such upgrading in the context of a relatively poor country. Our somewhat unexpected inferences about demand conditions and related and supporting industries suggest the following testable hypothesis: internationally competitive industries from poor countries will tend to have a standalone character, at least intially. That is, they will be relatively detached from both domestic demand and domestic related and supporting industries.

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Working Papers | 1998

How Different are Multinational Subsidiaries from Local Firms in a Developing Economy: A Study of Indian Industry

Patibandla Murali

1424 The spell-overs associated with superior production and marketing practices of multinational (MNC) firms to local firms in a developing economy are germane only when MNC firms are significantly different from local firms in technological, organizational and marketing practices. The spill-overs and competition induced deliberate efforts of local firms should make the best practices common contributing to growth process, especially in developing countries such as India which have achieved a certain degree of industrialization and technological capabilities. This paper makes a conceptual distinction between exogenous and behavioural response variables that determine the differences among MNC and domestic firms. The empirical exercise tests for how different are MNCs from local firms in production efficiency, vertical integration, R&D behaviour, marketing, exporting and importing intensity for five Indian industries on the basis of firm level panel data. The explanation for the observed differences or lack of differences is drawn from the arguments of exogenous and behavioural response variables.

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Working Papers | 1998

Estimating Strength of Electrical Back-up for Box Solar Cooker Using Simulation

Chaudhuri T K and Girja Sharan

In this paper we use simulation to estimate the strength of back-up needed in Ahmedabad region to make the box cooker usable throughout the year. A lumped parameter model is made of double glazed cooker marketed in Gujarat. Its performance is simulated using climatic data of Ahmedabad during August, when insolation is the lowest. Simulations are done on an empty cooker, placed on horizontal surface at 8 A.M. Plate and cover temperatures are tracked till 4 P.M. at interval of less than a minute. Unassisted cooker will fail to be of use in August, because plate temperature rises very slowly and does not reach 120 degree centigrade, considered necessary. A back-up of 50 W is found necessary to make the cooker perform satisfactorily in August, and hence in other months. This will keep the cooker essentially a slow cooking solar device as it is.

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Working Papers | 1998

Internal Policy Reforms and Evolution of Market Structure: A Study of Indian Industry

Patibandla Murali

The recent market reforms in developing economies have led to increasing presence of multinational firms which has significant implication on the evolution of the domestic market structure. This paper builds a simple theoretical model which considers firm level asymmetries in terms of time of entry, costs of production, and firm-specific intangibles under oligopolistic competition in explaining the evolution of markets in the context of the Indian industry. The main propositions of the model are empirically verified by econometric exercises based on firm level panel data for a set of industries. The results, for four of out of six industries studies, show that new entrant MNCs export at higher intensity than incumbents. Exports at the initial period helps new entrants to realize minimum efficient scale and subsequently adopt strategies towards enhancing domestic market shares. The results suggest a positive explanation of domestic market shares of firms by their relative technical efficiency in production. Increased competition form new entrant multinational firms is driving domestic firms to undertake deliberate technological efforts for enhancing production efficiency. Investment in research and development expenditure (in the host Indian market) appears to be more important for domestic firms than for new entrant multinationals for increasing technical efficiency in production.

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Working Papers | 1998

Weak Localization and the Utilitarian Choice Functions: A Note

Lahiri Somdeb

In axiomatic bargaining (choice theory), a choice function of some importance is the utilitarian choice function. Basically, this choice function selects the vector of utilities whose sum is greatest, among all utility vectors. There have been several axiomatic characterizations of the utilitarian choice function. Notable among them are the ones due to Myerson (1981), and Moulin (1988). A variant of the utilitarian choice function, called the additive choice function (: the latter being defined on a larger domain, than the domain permissible for the utilitarian choice function) has been axiomatically characterized in Lahiri (forthcoming). In this paper, we present an axiomatic characterization of the utilitarian choice function, which is similar to the axiomatic characterization in Moulin [1988], except that we now replace Nash's Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives by an assumption called Weak Localization, essentially due to Peters [1992].

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Working Papers | 1997

Revitalizing the State: 7. Options for India

Khandwalla P N

Successful experiments in governance the world over suggest a number of options for revitalizing the Indian state. Several options are first considered for revamping the political system. These include options for achieving fairer representation in the legislature, for selecting in good and selecting out bad candidates for election, for professionalizing politics, for stabilizing fragile governments, and for professionalizing political executives. Based on the lessons of successful efforts in several Commonwealth and East Asian countries, options are discussed concerning the revitalization of the Indian bureaucracy. These include creative fragmentation of the monolithic bureaucracy, options for strengthening the responsiveness of public agencies to the public, options for revamping justice, options for energizing the management of social development, selective privatization, and selective deregulation. Next, the cancer of corruption and the way corruption manifests itself in developing countries are discussed, and a number of options for vanquishing corruption are presented. The case for a corporatist but democratic Indian state is presented, involving deliberation councils and modifications to comprehensive state planning. The emergent model of the Indian state is compared and contrasted with the model of the state promoted by the World Bank. A case is made for a strong but democratic hub of India's federal structure. It is suggested that the options for revitalization of the Indian state are extendable to many other developmental states.

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Working Papers | 1997

Revitalizing the State: 6. The Performance of the Indian State

Khandwalla P N

The performance of a state depends upon how effectively it copes with its crisis points. These crisis points can arise because of arbitrariness, excessive bureaucratizaiton, insufficient democratization, insufficient participation of the people in the management of public purpose, incapacity to cope with international expectations, etc. A revitalization strategy for a state needs to be tailor-made to its context, based on an assessment of the state's performance in a global context. There are special challenges in revitalizing the Indian state. The Indian state is a vast, enormously differentiated, loosely coupled, development-oriented, federal democratic system. An assessment of its performance in a global context supports two contradictory propositions: that the Indian state is a disaster; and that the Indian state is one of the world's more effective developmental states. The assessment indicates that while there is nothing to be ashamed about the performance of the Indian state after India's independence, and there are many strengths, there are also many dark spots that need to be tackled, and several options need to be considered for considered for removing these dark spots.

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