Wednesday, November 30, 2011

6 December 2011: Maternal Autonomy and the Education of the Subsequent Generation: Evidence from three Contrasting States in India

Uma Kambhampati
University of Reading

Abstract:
This paper makes a significant contribution on both conceptual and methodological fronts, in the analysis of the effect of maternal autonomy on school enrolment age of children in India. The school entry age is modelled using a discrete time duration model where maternal autonomy is entered as a latent characteristic, and allowed to be associated with various parental and household characteristics which also conditionally affect school entry age. The model identification is achieved by using proxy measures collected in the third round of the National Family Health Survey of India, on information relating to the economic, decision-making, physical and emotional autonomy of a woman. We concentrate on three very different states in India – Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Uttar Pradesh. Our results indicate that female autonomy is not associated with socio-economic characteristics of the woman or her family in Kerala (except maternal education), while it is strongly correlated to these characteristics in both Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. Secondly, while female autonomy is significant in influencing the school starting age in UP, it is less important in AP and not significant at all in Kerala.

Date: December 6, 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, November 28, 2011

2 December 2011: The Allocation of a Prize

Pradeep Dubey
State University of New York

Date: December 2, 2011
Time: 11:30 A.M.

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

Location:

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30 November 2011: Bayesian Games with Contracts

Francoise Forges
University Paris-Dauphine

Abstract:
The set of all Bayesian-Nash equilibrium payoffs that the players can
achieve by signing (conditional) commitments before playing a Bayesian
game coincides with the set of all feasible, incentive compatible and
interim individually rational payoffs of the Bayesian game.
Furthermore, the various equilibrium payoffs, which are achieved by
means of different commitment devices, are also the equilibrium
payoffs of a universal, deterministic commitment game.

Date: November 30, 2011
Time: 03:30 P.M.

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

Location:

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30 November 2011: Approval Voting and Arrow's Impossibiltiy Theorem

Philippe Mongin
HEC School of Management, Paris

Abstract:
Approval voting has attracted considerable interest among voting
theorists, but they have rarely investigated it in the Arrovian
framework of social welfare functions (SWF) and never connected it
with Arrow's impossibility theorem. This note explores these two
directions. Assuming that voters have dichotomous preferences, it
first characterizes approval voting in terms of its SWF properties and
then shows that these properties are incompatible if the social
preference is also taken to be dichotomous.

The positive result improves on some existing characterizations of
approval voting in the literature, as well as on Arrow's and May's
classic analyses of voting on two alternatives. The negative result
corresponds to a novel and perhaps surprising version of Arrow's
impossibility theorem.

Date: November 30, 2011
Time: 11:30 A.M.

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

Location:

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Friday, November 25, 2011

29 November 2011: Planning versus Reality: Politics of Land-use Change along the River Yamuna in Delhi

Alex Follmann
University of Cologne

Abstract:
The presentation will examine the dynamic land-use changes along the banks of the river Yamuna and the recent plans to create a biodiversity zone along the river in the context of Delhi’s transformation into a world-class city by 2021. Based on orders by the High Court of Delhi concerning illegal encroachments on the riverbed and their negative environmental impact on the Yamuna, almost all slum settlements have been demolished along the river in recent years. Simultaneously, urban (infrastructure) mega-projects like the Akshardham Temple, the Commonwealth Games Village, an IT office park and two metro depots have been developed on the floodplain regardless of their negative environmental impacts. The most recent plans for Delhi’s riverfront, however, aim to create a biodiversity zone all along the river focusing on green and recreational spaces. The presentation will outline the inconsistency of urban planning and the role of the courts with respect to environmental protection of the Yamuna floodplain. While removing slum settlements and farmers from the banks, developing large scale transportation infrastructure, planning parks and recreational spaces, the Yamuna still suffers from an inadequate flow of water (except during monsoon) and an extremely high degree of pollution. The talk will take a holistic approach to understand the challenges of urban environmental governance in fast growing mega-cities.

Date: November 29, 2011
Time: 03:45 P.M.

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

Location:

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28th November 2011: Outward FDI from Brazil, China, and India

Adhip Chaudhuri
Georgetown University

Abstract:
This research, first, demonstrates that Outward FDIs from Brazil, China, and India are very much in accordance with the Investment Development Path predicted by John Dunning thirty years ago. Secondly, an analysis of the data shows that Chinese Outward FDI is mostly South-South, India's mostly South-North, and Brazil's Outward FDI more balanced between South-South and South-North. Finally, it is argued that the strong Country-Specific Advantages of Brazil are what made their Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) come to exercise strong Firm-Specific Advantages in international competition. On the other hand, the strong Country-Specific Advantages of China have not yet been translated into strong Firm-Specific Advantages. In contrast, Indian MNEs are exercising strong Firm-Specific Advantages, in spite of weak Country-Specific Advantages.

Date: November 28, 2011
Time: 03:00 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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Wednesday, November 23, 2011

30 November 2011: Learning by Doing: Skills and Jobs in Urban Ghana

Kim Lehrer
University of Oxford

Abstract:
This paper investigates the relationship between skills and job characteristics using a panel dataset of individuals in urban Ghana. The paper analyzes on-the-job skills acquisition and explores the link between general mathematics skills and jobs which involve handling of money. These mathematics skills are important not only in the workplace but also in general. The relationship between skills and jobs is identified by examining individuals who changed jobs between survey rounds. In the cross-sectional analysis, the authors exploit variation in the data by investigating the entire sample of employed individuals while controlling for education, cognitive ability, and the fact whether the individual’s primary work activity is self-employment or wage employment. They argue that the process of job choice in Ghana allows them to identify causal impacts. They found that money handling is positively associated with higher maths skills for both men and women. However, while for men, working in money handling intense jobs results in improvements in their basic and practical maths skills, for women the effect appears to be the development of more complex and advanced mathematics skills. These results are not driven by differences in mathematics scores by self-employment or wage employment and are robust to changes in the classification of money handling jobs. Finally, an interesting finding of the paper is that working in a job involving the handling of money is positively associated with higher maths scores only among men who have 8–10 years of education and among women with more than 10 years of schooling. This indicates that individuals at the low end of the distribution of years of education do not acquire mathematics skills through money handling jobs. It is only the approximately 40 per cent of men and 20 per cent of women who are already quite highly educated in the Ghanaian context who acquire these skills on the job.

Date: November 30, 2011
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:
For queries, please contact Ms. Sudesh Bala at sbala@ncaer.org or on 011-2345-2664

24 November 2011: Endogenous Market Structures and International Trade

Federico Etro
University of Venice

Abstract:
I apply the endogenous market structures approach to international
trade. When markets are characterized by strategic interactions and
endogenous entry, opening up to trade decreases the markups, reduces
the local number of rms and increases their production, with a
positive competition effect on welfare. This is shown in traditional
models with linear and isoelastic demand under competition in
quantities and prices, and in a 2x2x2 model which nests the
Heckscher-Ohlin model, the Krugman model and the Brander-Markusen
model. Finally, I characterize the optimal import tari for a domestic
market and the optimal production subsity for an integrated market in
the presence of endogenous entry of international rms.

Date: November 24, 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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9 December 2011: Inflation: Expectations, Targets, and the Institutional Framework for Monetary Policy

Thomas Laubach
Goethe University

Date: December 9, 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, November 22, 2011

25 November 2011: Environmental Regulation in the Presence of an Informal Sector

Soham Baksi
University of Winnipeg

Abstract:
We analyze the efficacy of environmental regulation in the presence of
an endogenous informal sector. Firms in an imperfectly competitive
formal sector produce a final good using a polluting intermediate
good. The firms can either produce the intermediate good or purchase
it from a price-taking informal sector. An environmental regulator
sets the emission intensity of the intermediate good that all formal
sector firms implement honestly but informal sector firms seek, and
are sometimes able, to evade.

We show that, depending on the stringency of the regulation and its
enforcement, the informal sector can act as a source of pollution
leakage. Stricter regulation can increase or decrease total pollution,
and may even have a non-monotonic impact. Further, price
discrimination by the formal sector, when it purchases the
intermediate good from the informal sector, can worsen regulatory
compliance by the informal sector and lead to lower welfare.

Date: November 25, 2011
Time: 02:30 P.M.

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

Location:

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1, 2, 7, 8, 9 December 2011: Natural Rates and Filtering Problems in Reduced-Form and Structural Models

Thomas Laubach
Goethe University

Date: December 1, 2, 7, 8, 9, 2011
Time: 11:00 A.M.

Venue:
Conference Hall (Ground Floor), New 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 register for the course online at http://macrofinance.nipfp.org.in/courses.html. Also, please make sure to bring a laptop with a working MATLAB and Dynare. This is a pre-requisite for attending this course.

Monday, November 21, 2011

24, 25, 28, 29, 30 November 2011: Financial Frictions and Crises in General Equilibrium Models

Thomas Laubach
Goethe University

Date: November 24, 25, 28, 29, 30, 2011
Time: 11:00 A.M.

Venue:
Conference Hall (Ground Floor), New 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 register for the course online at http://macrofinance.nipfp.org.in/courses.html. Also, please make sure to bring a laptop with a working MATLAB and Dynare. This is a pre-requisite for attending this course.

Monday, November 14, 2011

18 November 2011: Dismantling the Legacy of Caste: Affirmative Action in Indian Higher Education

Surendrakumar Bagde
Ministry of Finance

Abstract:
Public policy in modern Indian features affirmative action-policies intended to reduce persistent inequality stemming from a centuries-old caste structure. We study the effects of one such affirmative action program. Specifically, we examine the consequences of an admissions policy to engineering colleges that fixes percentage quotas, common across 214 colleges, for each of six disadvantaged castes. We have obtained access to exceptionally rich data for study of this affirmative action programdata that include the test scores that were used to administer admissions decision rules, as well as detailed independent ability metrics. Our analysis indicates that for targeted students the program has significant and substantial positive effects both on college attendance and first-year academic achievement.

Date: November 18, 2011
Time: 11:30 A.M.

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

Location:

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16 November 2011: General Equilibrium, Wariness and Bubbles

Aloisio Araujo
IMPA Brazil

Abstract:
We say that a consumer is wary if she overlooks gains but not losses
in remote sets of dates or states. We formulate this by requiring
preferences to be upper but not lower Mackey semi-continuous and
Bewley's result on existence of Arrow-Debreu equilibrium whose prices
are not necessarily countably additive holds. We relate wariness to
some concepts studied in decision theory like lack of myopia and
ambiguity aversion. Wary infinite lived agents are not impatient, have
optimality conditions, in the form of weaker transversality
conditions, that allow them to be creditors at infinity and bubbles
occur for positive net supply assets completing the markets. In a two
date economy, with infinite states, wary agents are not myopic and
bubbles occur, as asset prices do not have to equal the series of
returns weighted by state prices. A large class of efficient
allocations can only be implemented with asset bubbles. Pessimistic
attitudes lead agents to overvalue assets or durable goods with
hedging properties, like gold.

Date: November 16, 2011
Time: 03:30 P.M.

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

Location:

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16 November 2011: The World Under Pressure: How China and India are Influencing the Global Economy and Environment

Carl Dahlman
Georgetown University

Abstract:
The rapid rise of China and India is reshaping our global economic and environmental systems--raising major issues of stability, governance, and sustainability. This book develops a framework that shows the interdependence between economic size, trade, finance, technology, environment, security, and global governance. This framework provides data on the speed of global power shifts, traces the implications for nations worldwide and offers insights into our most pressing concerns.

Date: November 16, 2011
Time: 12:30 P.M.

Venue:
Conference Room, 2nd Floor
The World Bank,
70 Lodi Estate,
New Delhi-110003(INDIA)

Location:

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

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

11 November 2011: Remember when it Rained: The Illusiveness of Gender

Laura Zimmermann
University of Michigan

Abstract:
Indian girls have significantly lower school enrollment rates than
boys. Anecdotal evidence suggests that gender-differential treatment
is the main explanation, but empirical support is often weak and
seemingly inconsistent. I propose that this may be due to age-specific
forms of discrimination. I analyze school enrollment using rainfall
shocks, a plausibly exogenous source of income variation. Girls's
school enrollment is more vulnerable to rainfall shocks than that of
boys, with 6-10 year olds driving these effects. This is consistent
with young girls being out of school because boys's education is
prioritized, whereas older girls suffer from low perceived benefits of
education.

Date: November 11, 2011
Time: 11:30 A.M.

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

Location:

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11 November 2011: The Dark Side of the Vote: Misleading Signals, Social Information, and Information Aggregation through Majority Voting

Rebecca Morton
New York University

Abstract:
We present experiments on information aggregation through majority voting in which subjects can receive misleading signals. We argue that when signals are possibly misleading, majority voting can result in groups making choices inferior to those made by individuals acting alone. We also investigate the interaction between different types of social information and the bias due to misleading signals. We find that voting fails to correct for misleading signals and that group decisions can be biased as a consequence. However, we do not find a significant difference between individual and group decision-making in these cases. Yet, social information on prior choices makes group decision-making worse when signals are misleading. Theoretically, social information on consequences should alleviate the bias due to misleading signals; however, we find that in our experiments subjects appear to ignore such information and it fails to reduce the bias.

Date: November 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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Friday, November 4, 2011

11 November 2011: Japan: In Decline or Recovery?

Sheila A. Smith
Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)

Date: November 11, 2011
Time: 11:30 A.M.

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

Location:

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Wednesday, November 2, 2011

8 November 2011: It's a boy! Women and Non-Monetary Benefits from a Son in India

Laura Zimmermann
University of Michigan

Abstract:
It is well-documented that in a number of countries unnaturally few
girls are born relative to boys. Explanations have focused on a range
of potential reasons, including economic and cultural benefits from
having a son. Households are usually treated as monolithic entities,
however, and the motivations of particular household members are
understudied. In contrast, this paper looks at a potential benefit
mothers derive from giving birth to a boy - an improvement in their
position within the household. I analyze this hypothesis using
households with young first-borns from a nationally representative
Indian dataset. The results suggest that women do indeed gain in
non-monetary terms: Having a boy rather than a girl leads to increased
joint household decision-making powers and to more freedom in carrying
out activities without the explicit consent of other household
members. This implies that even young women may have a self-interest
in practicing son preference.

Date: November 8, 2011
Time: 02:00 P.M.

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

Location:

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