4 April 2013: Women's Status and Children's Height in India: Evidence from Joint Rural Households

Diane Coffey
Princeton University

Abstract:
Children in India are puzzlingly short relative to their level of economic development. Stunting among Indian children is important because the same early life health insults that influence childhood height also influence adult human capital and health. One candidate explanation for why Indian children are so short is the very low social status of Indian women who, as mothers, feed and care for children in the early life. However, the literature lacks a well-identi fied test of this conjecture. Our paper applies a novel strategy to identify an effect of women’s status on children’s height. Anthropological and demographic literature suggest that within joint Indian households, women married to younger brothers have lower intra-household status than women married to older brothers. We study the children of these women: children of lower ranking daughters-in-law are shorter, on average, than children of higher ranking daughters-in-law in rural Indian joint households. We provide empirical evidence that lower ranking daughters-in-law indeed have lower status in joint households and rule out several competing explanations for our findings.

Date: April 4, 2013
Time: 03:00 P.M.

Venue:
Seminar Room (First Floor)
Department of Economics,
Delhi School of Economics,
New Delhi-110007(INDIA)

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26 March 2013: Dirty but Comfortable? : Everyday state’s view of waste water in Delhi’s informal settlements

Anna Zimmer
University of Lausanne, Switzerland

Abstract:
Delhi’s informal settlements suffer from lack of access to solid waste and waste water collection infrastructure, resulting in day to day exposure of residents to waste water. This presentation explores the views and attitudes of the everyday state – the government employees and political representatives in frequent interaction with residents – regarding this issue. While these actors have specific insights in the workings of government that make problem solving in informal areas difficult, they also blame inhabitants of informal settlements for the situation to a large extent. Often, it appears as if their view of residents in informal settlements is that “they are comfortable living in a dirty place”! Differences exist however between attitudes towards slums (jugghi-jhompri clusters) and unauthorised colonies. The aim of this presentation therefore is to identify commonalities, but also shed light on the distinct positions of both types of settlements and their residents in the urban fabric.

Date: March 26, 2013
Time: 03:45 P.M.

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

Note:
For further information, please contact: Marie-Hélène Zerah at marie-helene.zerah@ird.fr or Partha Mukhopadhyay at partha@cprindia.org

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25 March 2013: Efficacy of Monetary Policy Rules for India

Deepak Mohanty
Reserve Bank of India

Abstract:
In this paper I estimate three alternative forms of Taylor Rule for India. In view of the increasing market orientation of monetary policy with the repo rate emerging as the single policy rate to signal the stance of monetary policy, I leave with the thought whether conditions are appropriate for a move towards a rule based monetary policy in India.

Date: March 25, 2013
Time: 03:15 P.M.

Venue:
Economics Lecture Theatre
Department of Economics,
Delhi School of Economics,
New Delhi-110007(INDIA)

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21 March 2013: Technological Change and Political Mobilization: Evidence from North India

Nishant Chadha
Shiv Nader University

Abstract:
This paper empirically examines the role played by a technological change in Indian agriculture (adoption of High Yielding Variety [HYV] seeds) in the political mobilization of cultivators in Northern India in 1970s and 1980s. Using panel data from the state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) from 1962-1989, I fi nd that the districts that had the largest impact of the green revolution also had the biggest increase in the vote share of the Bhartiya Lok Dal (BLD), a newly formed peasant party. This change is accompanied by a fall in political fractionalization, even as e ffective political competition increased over the period. I hypothesize that technology adoption consolidates rural votes by aligning the policy preferences of previously disparate rural groups. Examination of public good provision shows that an increase in the vote share of the BLD in a district is associated with an increase in the proportion of villages in the district that have a school (at all levels).

Date: March 21, 2013
Time: 03:00 P.M.

Venue:
Seminar Room (First Floor)
Department of Economics,
Delhi School of Economics,
New Delhi-110007(INDIA)

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11 March 2013: The Identification Problem: Some Solutions and Some Applications

Esther Duflo
MIT

Date: March 11, 2013
Time: 10:00 A.M.

Venue:
Lecture Theatre
Department of Economics,
Delhi School of Economics,
New Delhi-110007(INDIA)

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