Tuesday, August 30, 2011

3 September 2011: Tastes, Castes, and Culture: The Influence of Society on Preferences

Karla Hoff
The World Bank

Abstract:
Economists have traditionally treated preferences as exogenously given. Preferences are assumed to be influenced by neither beliefs nor the constraints people face. As a consequence, changes in behaviour are explained exclusively in terms of changes in the set of feasible alternatives. Here we argue that the opposition to explaining behavioural changes in terms of preference changes is ill-founded, that the psychological properties of preferences render them susceptible to direct social influences, and that the impact of "society" on preferences is likely to have important economic and social consequences.

Date: September 3, 2011
Time: 03:00 P.M.

Venue:
AMEX Conference Room (Second Floor),
Department of Economics,
Delhi School of Economics,
New Delhi-110007(INDIA)

Location:

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Wednesday, August 24, 2011

26 August 2011: Millennium Development Goals: How is India Doing?

Sudipto Mundle
NIPFP

Date: August 26, 2011
Time: 03:30 P.M.

Venue:
NIPFP Auditorium (Ground Floor)
National Institute of Public Finance and Policy,
18/2 Satsang Vihar Marg, Special Institutional Area,
New Delhi-110067(INDIA)

Location:

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Tuesday, August 23, 2011

29 August 2011: Middle Class Dreams: India’s One-Child Families

Alaka Basu
Cornell University and
Sonalde Desai
University of Maryland

Abstract:
While rapid fertility decline in India during the last two decades has received considerable attention, much of the discourse has focused on the decline in high parity births. However, this presentation finds that almost hidden from the public gaze, a small segment of the Indian population has begun the transition to extremely low fertility. Among the urban middle classes, it is no longer unusual to find families stopping after one child, even when this child is a girl. Using data from the India Human Development Survey of 2004–2005, the presentation examines the factors that may lead some families to stop at a single child. Better understanding of the correlates of this small but distinct segment of society also provides a window into the role of demography in shaping the future of social inequality in a society undergoing rapid transition.

Date: August 29, 2011
Time: 03:30 P.M.

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

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Thursday, August 18, 2011

19 August 2011: India's Struggle against Malnutrition: Is the ICDS Program the Answer?

Monica Jain
University of California Riverside

Abstract:
This paper uses recent demographic health survey’s 2005-6 data, providing information on child level usage of India’s only national program for combating widespread child malnutrition – Integrated child development scheme (ICDS) - to assess the impact of its flagship supplementary nutrition program on children’s physical growth. Using matching techniques and difference-in-difference, I find that girls 0-2 years old who are receiving supplementary feeding daily are at least 1cm (0.4 z-score) taller than other girls in rural India. The estimates are the same for boys 0-2 years old but less robust. Given that these height differentials are most likely irreversible, supplementary nutrition could potentially bridge these height differentials are most likely irreversible, supplementary nutrition could potentially bridge the height gap between the richest and poorest girls by at least 28%, and for boys by 19%, at adulthood. Although the focus of supplementary nutrition has been on children ages 3-5, I find no evidence of a positive effect on growth for children in this age-group.

Date: August 19, 2011
Time: 11:30 A.M.

Venue:
Seminar Room 2, New Building
Indian Statistical Institute Delhi Centre,
7, S. J. S. Sansanwal Marg,
New Delhi-110016 (INDIA)

Location:

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24 August 2011: Distributional Implications of Climate Change in Rural India and the Role of Adaptation

Hanan Jacoby
World Bank

Abstract:
Global warming is expected to reduce productivity of low-latitude agriculture, the dominant source of livelihood for the world's poor. We develop a framework for quantifying the household welfare impacts of this shock and implement it using micro-data from rural India. Our approach accounts for climate-induced changes in the return on agricultural land and on labor of di erent types, changes in global food prices, and the feedback e ects of these food price changes in the rural labor market. We also contrast the distributional consequences over the short-run, in which adaptation is limited, to those over the long-run, in which farm production methods and sectoral labor allocations adjust to a warmer climate.

Date: August 24, 2011
Time: 12:30 P.M.

Venue:
Second Floor Conference Room
The World Bank,
70 Lodi Estate,
New Delhi-110003(INDIA)

Location:

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Note:
Please confirm attendance by mail to Jyoti Sriram at jsriram@worldbank.org by August 23

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

18 August 2011: India's Struggle against Malnutrition: Is the ICDS Program the Answer?

Monica Jain
University of California Riverside

Abstract:
This paper uses recent demographic health survey’s 2005-6 data, providing information on child level usage of India’s only national program for combating widespread child malnutrition – Integrated child development scheme (ICDS) - to assess the impact of its flagship supplementary nutrition program on children’s physical growth. Using matching techniques and difference-in-difference, I find that girls 0-2 years old who are receiving supplementary feeding daily are at least 1cm (0.4 z-score) taller than other girls in rural India. The estimates are the same for boys 0-2 years old but less robust. Given that these height differentials are most likely irreversible, supplementary nutrition could potentially bridge these height differentials are most likely irreversible, supplementary nutrition could potentially bridge the height gap between the richest and poorest girls by at least 28%, and for boys by 19%, at adulthood. Although the focus of supplementary nutrition has been on children ages 3-5, I find no evidence of a positive effect on growth for children in this age-group.

Date: August 18, 2011
Time: 03:00 P.M.

Venue:
AMEX Conference Room (Second Floor),
Department of Economics,
Delhi School of Economics,
New Delhi-110007(INDIA)

Location:

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Friday, August 12, 2011

17 August 2011: Does Management Matter? Evidence from India

Aprajit Mahajan
Stanford University

Abstract:
A long-standing question is whether differences in management practices across firms can explain differences in productivity, especially in developing countries where these spreads appear particularly large. To investigate this we ran a management field experiment on large Indian textile firms. We provided free consulting on management practices to randomly chosen treatment plants and compared their performance to a set of control plants. We find that adopting these management practices raised productivity by 18% through improved quality and efficiency and reduced inventory. Since these practices were profitable this raises the question of why firms had not previously adopted them. Our results suggest that informational barriers were the primary factor explaining this lack of adoption. Since reallocation across firms appeared to be constrained by limits on managerial time, competition did not force badly managed firms to exit.

Date: August 17, 2011
Time: 12:30 P.M.

Venue:
Second Floor Conference Room
The World Bank,
70 Lodi Estate,
New Delhi-110003(INDIA)

Location:

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Note:
Please confirm attendance by mail to Jyoti Sriram at jsriram@worldbank.org by August 16

Monday, August 8, 2011

11 August 2011: Relational Contract Farming: Theory and its Emergence in Ghana

Rahul Deb
University of Toronto

Abstract:
Contract farming is a widespread practice in the developing world and is a means by which farmers get access to credit for inputs and consumption as well as a market for their output. The providers of the credit benefit as the use of better inputs ensures better quality produce. These contracts are often informal word of mouth contracts and, as a result, there are numerous hurdles which must be overcome in order for them to function successfully. For example, the farmer may misuse the loans provided for inputs in non-production activities or she may choose to default on the loan entirely by side selling to a buyer other than the with whom she has contracted. We develop a relational contracting model which highlights the conditions under which contract farming can function successfully despite these issues. We show that under different situations, the nature of the profit maximizing contract varies- credit is either provided in-kind or as a combination of in-kind and cash. We provide case evidence from the literature in support of our results.

The model is employed to explain the dramatic rise in contract farming amongst Ghanaian pineapple farmers over 1996-2001. Contracting emerged after a technological innovation in the market- sea shipping became available in 1996 which had lower cost than air freight. However, sea shipping involved much longer transit times which meant that, unlike under air freight, the quality of the fruit was no longer observable at the time of shipment. Using our model, we argue that this change in observable quality facilitated contracting by altering farmers' default incentives. In this way, the theory we develop shows how credit arrangements can arise spontaneously, absent non-market interventions, in response to a change in market conditions.

Date: August 11, 2011
Time: 03:00 P.M.

Venue:
AMEX Conference Room (Second Floor),
Department of Economics,
Delhi School of Economics,
New Delhi-110007(INDIA)

Location:

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Monday, August 1, 2011

5 August 2011: Human Capital Use, Innovative Activity, and Patent Protection in a Model of Regional Economic Growth

Amitrajeet A. Batabyal
Rochester Institute of Technology

Abstract:
We provide the first theoretical analysis of the aggregate effects of the trinity of human capital use, innovative activity, and patent protection, on regional economic growth. In our model, consumers have constant relative risk aversion preferences, there is no human capital growth, and there are three kinds of manufacturing activities involving the production of blueprints for inputs or machines, the inputs or machines themselves, and a single final good for consumption. Our analysis generates four salient results. First, we delineate the balanced growth path (BGP) equilibrium and show that the BGP growth rate depends negatively on the rate ? at which patents expire. Second, we characterize the transitional dynamics in our regional growth model. Third, we determine the value of the patent expiry rate ? that maximizes the equilibrium growth rate of the regional economy under study. Finally, we show that a policy of setting ? =0 (offering perpetual patent protection) does not necessarily maximize social welfare in our regional economy at time t=0.

Date: August 5, 2011
Time: 11:30 A.M.

Venue:
Seminar Room 2, New Building
Indian Statistical Institute Delhi Centre,
7, S. J. S. Sansanwal Marg,
New Delhi-110016 (INDIA)

Location:

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3 August 2011: Revealed Preference Tests of the Cournot

Rahul Deb
University of Toronto

Abstract:
The aim of this paper is to develop revealed preference tests for Cournot equilibrium. The tests are akin to the widely-used revealed preference tests for consumption, but have to take into account the special features of the oligopoly setting. These include the presence of strategic interaction, multiple and simultaneous changes to the underlying environment (shifts to both demand and cost functions), and the possibility of non-concave objective functions. The tests take the form of linear programs, the solutions to which also allow us to recover cost information on the firms. To check that these nonparametric tests are sufficiently discriminating to reject real data, we apply them to the market for crude oil.

Date: August 3, 2011
Time: 03:30 P.M.

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

Location:

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