9 August 2019: Lecture on 'US-China trade/ technology war'

Dingding Chen
School of International Studies at Jinan University, China

Organised by
Centre for Policy Research (CPR)

Abstract:
China and the United States have been engaged in a trade war through increasing tariffs and other measures since 2018. The trade war can be attributed to trade imbalances, the US midterm elections and rivalry for global economic dominance. The current US-China trade conflict concerns two major set of issues. The first is the lack of reciprocity in terms of tariffs, market access, and investment. The problem is that there is a second set of issues, which concern technology transfer and high-tech industrial policy, including the Made in China 2025 initiative. The US has demanded that these programs be dismantled because they unfairly disadvantage foreign firms, but China views them as critical to its plans to transform the country into a high-tech power. Definitely, the US and China are competing for supremacy in the suite of advanced technologies that will affect the means of future economic production. US efforts to curtail China's access to American technology are threatening to unravel decades of globalisation and interdependent supply chains and raising the risk of a confrontation that has been likened to a new cold war. What is Trump's next move in the trade/technology war? How the US-China trade/technology could end?

Date: August 9, 2019
Time: 11:30 A.M.

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

Note:
Please RSVP at RSVP at president.cpr@cprindia.org

Location:

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1 August 2019: Drought Relief in India

Lisa Tarquinio
Boston University

Abstract:
To analyze the (mis)allocation of drought relief, I have constructed a panel dataset of rainfall in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Karnataka for 2008 to 2018 at the assembly constituency (AC) level, the political unit at which state-level members of parliament (MLAs) are elected. I then match the rainfall data to AC-level election data and lists of official drought declarations at the mandal/taluk level. I use a fixed-effects panel regression analysis, where the empirical specifications are derived from a simple model in which the MLA seeks to be re-elected and drought declarations increase voter preferences for the MLA. First, I have established that the formula-based resource program does, to a degree, function as designed; mainly, I find that areas that meet the necessary rainfall deviation cutoff are more likely to be declared as drought affected. However, I also show that the likelihood of a drought declaration is affected by constituency-level political variables. On average, official drought declarations are more likely to occur in constituencies where the MLA is a member of the ruling party (or coalition) or where voter turnout in the last election was higher. I also find that constituencies in which the MLA won the last election by a smaller margin are more likely to receive a drought declaration if they also meet the rainfall deviation cutoff. In whole, this suggests that in spite of national and state guidelines proscribing a formula-based approach to drought relief, there does appear to be local political influence over the allocation of relief.

Date: August 1, 2019
Time: 03:00 P.M.

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

Location:

1 August 2019: Talk on "Building Manufacturing Capability for Competing Globally - Lessons from Taiwan"

Yee Shyi Chang
National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan

Organised by:
Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies (RGICS)

Date: August 1, 2019
Time: 03:00 P.M.

Venue:
FICCI,
Federation House,
Tansen Marg,
New Delhi-110001(INDIA)

Location:

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6 August 2019: Routing Money, Not Packets

Vishal Misra
Department of Computer Science, Columbia University

Abstract:
The issue of Network Neutrality has ignited considerable public debate in the recent past. While the term and much of the discussion originated in the legal community, we started looking at it from an engineering and networking perspective a few years ago. We employed the lens of cooperative game theory and careful modeling of the Internet including the topology, peering relationships, and protocols used on the Internet.

Our primary conclusion is that Network Neutrality should be expressed in terms of how you treat competition, not in how you treat packets and we proposed a definition of Network Neutrality that expresses that. We present some of our results including our prediction back in 2008 of a rise in paid peering (last year Netflix signed paid peering arrangements with all 4 of the top broadband providers in the US), the negative impact of differential pricing on competition, the inadequacies of the Network Neutrality regulation in the US and the recent regulations in India and Canada, where they are consistent with our definition of Network Neutrality.

Date: August 6, 2019
Time: 03:30 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)

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

Location:

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9 August 2019: What drives literacy in villages without schools?: A study of Indian Villages

Sandhya Garg and Sanjukta Das
National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER)

Abstract:
A rise in the share of villages with primary school from 72% in 1991 to 83% in 2011 indicates improvement in access to schools in rural India. Using village-level geocoded data and panel data of 2001 and 2011 census rounds, we study that how the literacy rate of villages (without school) is effected by the presence of primary schools in their neighbourhood under the anticipation that people would be accessing neighbouring schools. We find that the presence of schools in the nearer neighbourhood has positive impact on overall, male and female literacy of villages without schools. Impact is higher for female literacy. The road connectivity of primary schools matters even more. It has important policy implications for countries with larger gap in access to primary schools. Our results indicate that one of the primary challenges facing the governments is to establish facilities that complement the functioning of schools, like roads.

Date: August 9, 2019
Time: 05:00 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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30 July 2019: Workshop on 'How Women Mobilise Women into Politics: Theory and Natural Experimental Evidence from Urban India'

Tanushree Goyal
Nuffield College, University of Oxford, UK

Organised by
Centre for Policy Research (CPR) and Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH)

Abstract:
How does women’s political entry affect citizen’s political involvement? Building on qualitative interviews and extending elite mobilisation theories to account for who conducts grass-roots mobilisation, I argue that female politicians increase women’s numbers in party activist roles, and prospects of cheaply mobilising women provide a strategic incentive to do so. As a result, more women receive mobilising effort, such as door-to-door party contact, where women contest. Women’s entry in activist roles has downstream effects on the quality of mobilisation. When women enter into activist roles, where they were previously absent, they induce competition for these roles and in doing so raise the quality of activist pool. This affects the political involvement, that is, political knowledge and participation, of all citizens. I provide evidence for this argument using original survey data from a natural experiment in Delhi’s Municipal Council, where randomly chosen electoral seats are reserved for women. By outlining how representation affects the calculus of mobilisation, this paper connects the literature on women’s political entry with mobilisation and political involvement.

This paper is part of an ongoing dissertation book project, provisionally titled, 'The politics of representation: How female politicians make politics inclusive in India', that examines the consequences of women’s entry through quotas in Delhi’s civic body. Drawing on a natural experiment, extensive fieldwork, interviews, and original survey, combined with insights from a new electoral polling-station level panel dataset, this book proposes to offer new theoretical insights and an empirical account of women’s agency in shaping urban politics and governance in India.

Date: July 30, 2019
Time: 03:35 P.M.

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

Location:

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24 July 2019: Does Corruption In Autocracies Growth-Intensifying? An Empirical Study Of East Asian Paradox

Shrabani Saha
Lincoln International Business School, University of Lincoln

Chair:
Saon Ray, ICRIER

Abstract:
Corruption is widely believed to negatively affect economic growth. However, many countries in East and Southeast Asia, either achieved or currently are achieving impressively rapid economic growth despite widespread corruption. Is this negative relationship equally likely to hold for autocracies and democracies? This paper examines the role of the political regime in mediating corruption-growth relationship using panel data over one hundred countries for the period 1984-2016. We find clear and unambiguous evidence that corruption-growth relationship differs by political regime, and the growth enhancing effect of corruption is more likely in autocracies than in democracies. The marginal effect analysis shows that in strongly autocratic countries, higher corruption may actually lead to significantly higher growth, while this is not the case in democracies. Hence, our findings support East Asian Paradox.

Date: July 24, 2019
Time: 03:00 P.M.

Venue:
ICRIER Conference Room (Ground Floor),
Plot No. 16&17, Pushp Vihar Institutional Area,
Sector 6, Saket,
New Delhi-110017

Location: