Wednesday, March 30, 2016

4 April 2016: International Comparative Household Finance

Tarun Ramadorai
University of Oxford

Abstract:
This paper reviews the literature on international comparative household finance. The paper presents summary statistics on household balance sheets for 13 developed countries, and uses these statistics to discuss common features and contrasts across countries. The paper then discusses retirement savings, investments in risky assets, unsecured debt, and mortgages.

Date: April 4, 2016
Time: 04:30 P.M.

Venue:
Conference Hall, Ground Floor, R&T Building
National Institute of Public Finance and Policy,
18/2 Satsang Vihar Marg, Special Institutional Area,
New Delhi-110067(INDIA)

Location:

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Note:
Those who are interested may please confirm your participation at latha.balasubramanian@nipfp.org.in

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

31 March 2016: How much does a bank account help the poor?

Sankar De
former Professor, Shiv Nadar University

Abstract:
A bank account is widely regarded as the first step toward financial inclusion of the poor. Among other benefits, funds deposited in a bank account are observed to lead to higher savings. However, the existing literature does not investigate whether the savings are productively used. Using nationally representative samples, to ensure generalizability of our findings, and exploiting special features of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) of India, our empirical tests consistently indicate that households that receive NREGS wages through bank spend significantly less on education than other comparable households that receive cash payment. The findings suggest that the poor face constraints in accessing their bank accounts regularly. Further, such constraints affect discretionary expenses, including educational expenses which are discretionary for the very poor, more than essential expenses such as food expenses. Additional tests for other discretionary and non-discretionary expenses provide corroborating evidence. The results are consistent between standard OLS and instrumental variable regressions designed to correct for omitted variable bias.

Date: March 31, 2016
Time: 04:30 P.M.

Venue:
Conference Hall, Ground Floor, R&T Building
National Institute of Public Finance and Policy,
18/2 Satsang Vihar Marg, Special Institutional Area,
New Delhi-110067(INDIA)

Location:

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Note:
Those who are interested may please confirm your participation to Mr. Bins Sebastian at bins.sebastian@nipfp.org.in latest by Wednesday, 30th March 2016

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

21 March 2016: Roundtable on Dynamics of Property Rights, Informal Economy and Poverty in Developing Economies

Anne Bernstein
Centre for Development and Enterprise(CDE), South Africa

Abstract:
Rather than merely managing the poor, CDE believes that anti-poverty policies should aim to expand opportunities that allow people to lift themselves out of poverty. An important intervention in this direction is the enforcement of property rights. In many developing countries, property rights exist for some, but the poor find themselves outside the property rights framework. CDE would like to explore how important this issue is in India, especially in India’s cities; what has been achieved in strengthening property rights in both urban and rural areas, and what remains to be done.

Date: March 21, 2016
Time: 10:00 A.M.

Venue:
Conference Hall
Centre for Policy Research,
Dharma Marg, Chanakyapuri,
New Delhi–110021(INDIA)

Location:

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Note:
Please confirm your participation at landrightsinitiative@cprindia.org

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

9 March 2016: Do Criminally Accused Politicians Affect Economic Outcomes? Evidence from India

Nishith Prakash
University of Connecticut

Abstract:
We study the causal impact of electing criminally accused politicians to state legislative assemblies in India on the subsequent economic performance of their constituencies. Using data on the criminal background of candidates running for state assembly elections and a constituency-level measure of economic activity proxied by intensity of night lights, we employ a regression discontinuity design that controls for unobserved heterogeneity across constituencies and find 22-percentage point lower economic activity arising from the election of a criminally accused politician. These effects are driven by serious, financial and the number of criminal charges and are concentrated in the less developed and more corrupt Indian states. Similar findings emerge for the provision of public goods using data on Indias major rural roads construction program.

Date: March 9, 2016
Time: 03:30 P.M.

Venue:
Auditorium Hall
Indian Statistical Institute Delhi Centre,
7, S. J. S. Sansanwal Marg,
New Delhi-110016 (INDIA)

Location:

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Monday, March 7, 2016

10 March 2016: Evolving Global Trade Architecture and India

Martin Wolf
Financial Times-London

Organised by:
CUTS International and FICCI

Abstract:
Mega-regionals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) have the potential of significantly redefining the world trade architecture. In this fast-changing global trade landscape, India has to recognise the emerging challenges from the mega-FTAs, and strategise how to respond. The conference would give us an opportunity to understand the evolving global market conditions, the challenges emerging for India and our response to it.

Date: March 10, 2016
Time: 05:45 P.M.

Venue:
FICCI,
Federation House,
Tansen Marg,
New Delhi 110001

Location:

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Note:
Kindly confirm your participation to Ms. Prerna Dani Email: prerna.dani@ficci.com; Tel: 23357390 & 23487467.

11 March 2016: Social Network, Political Engagement, and Collective Action: Evidence from Rural India

Sabyasachi Das
Indian Statistical Institute

Abstract:
We study the role played by social networks in facilitating effective group based collective action, especially for a group heavily underrepresented in politics across the globe, i.e., women. We look at participation in local village meetings in rural India (Gram Sabhas) as the context of our study. To overcome the usual endogeneity challenges we focus on a factor that affects women’s social network formation and yet, is presumably not directly related to their political behavior - their membership in a Women Only Self Help Group (WOSHG). We first show that past membership in a WOSHG positively affects a woman’s present meeting attendance rate, and that it is not driven by household selection on observables. Using past existence of any WOSHG in a village as an instrument for past membership we then show that the result remains the same, while there is no such effect on men’s meeting attendance. At the village level, this significantly changed the gender composition of meeting attendees in women’s favor, which in turn resulted in more women preferred public goods (such as water, sanitation, health) being provided. We provide evidence in favor of the social network story as opposed to other mechanisms driving the results. This work highlights an unintended benefit of expanding SHGs in rural India by looking at its effect on the local politics.   

Date: March 11, 2016
Time: 04:30 P.M.

Venue:
Conference Hall, Ground Floor, R&T Building
National Institute of Public Finance and Policy,
18/2 Satsang Vihar Marg, Special Institutional Area,
New Delhi-110067(INDIA)

Location:

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Note:
Those who are interested may please confirm your participation to Mr. Bins Sebastian at bins.sebastian@nipfp.org.in latest by Wednesday, 10th March 2016

Friday, March 4, 2016

4 March 2016: More Weak Links in the Chain: Problems in Indian health policy and its analysis

Jeffrey S. Hammer
Princeton University

Abstract:
Hammer will examine Indian health policy from the lens of public economics. He will show how the major market failures characteristic of the health sector continue to remain unaddressed in India, while much attention is paid—both rhetorically and through budgets allocations–on a universal primary care system that has not been working well. Recent data on the performance of the public and private sectors in primary curative care will be presented to show why and how they illustrate a legitimate cause for alarm.

Date: March 4, 2016
Time: 03:30 P.M.

Venue:
NCAER Conference Room
National Council of Applied Economic Research
Parisila Bhawan, 11, Indraprastha Estate
New Delhi-110002(INDIA)

Location:

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Note:
Please join us for high tea and informal conversation with Prof. Hammer after the seminar. For queries, please contact Ms Sudesh Bala at sbala@ncaer.org, or on +91-11-2345-2669.

4 March 2016: Network Neutrality in India: Discriminatory Pricing and Beyond

Organised by:
Macro/Finance Group, NIPFP

Program

Date: March 4, 2016
Time: 04:30 A.M.

Venue:
Conference Hall, Ground Floor, R&T Building
National Institute of Public Finance and Policy,
18/2 Satsang Vihar Marg, Special Institutional Area,
New Delhi-110067(INDIA)

Location:

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Wednesday, March 2, 2016

7 March 2016: Due Diligence in Share Acquisitions: Navigating the Insider Trading Regime

Umakanth Varottil
National University of Singapore

Abstract:
The goal of this seminar is to unpack the underlying friction between the need to facilitate due diligence in share acquisition transactions that could place inside information in the acquirer’s hands, and at the same time to ensure that such information is not misused by the acquirer to the detriment of the other shareholders, a matter that insider trading regime regards as sacrosanct. In analysing and seeking to resolve this tension, the speaker draws upon examples from three jurisdictions, namely the United Kingdom (UK), Singapore and India. The core argument is that from a theoretical perspective the due diligence objective of acquirers can be reconciled with the goals of the insider trading regime in order to preserve the interests of the target shareholder as long as certain restrictions are placed on the conduct of the acquirer.  

Date: March 7, 2016
Time: 04:30 P.M.

Venue:
Conference Hall, Ground Floor, R&T Building
National Institute of Public Finance and Policy,
18/2 Satsang Vihar Marg, Special Institutional Area,
New Delhi-110067(INDIA)

Location:

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Note:
Those who are interested may please confirm your participation to Mr. Bins Sebastian at bins.sebastian@nipfp.org.in latest by Wednesday, 6th March 2016