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112. Thirteen Years of Power Sector Reform in India: Are We Still Groping in the Dark?
- Author:
- Kandula Subramaniam
- Publication Date:
- 05-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for the Advanced Study of India
- Abstract:
- In 1991, before the New Power Policy was announced opening the Indian power supply industry to private investment, the country was experiencing power shortages. Sanghvi (1991) estimated that in countries like India, electricity shortages led to a loss of 1.5 to 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Ten years later, India still experiences shortages of power in the form of load-shedding. Even grid breakdowns have become a regular feature. In 2001 alone, there were two major grid collapses, bringing several Indian states to a grinding halt for more than one day.
- Topic:
- Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Science and Technology
- Political Geography:
- South Asia and India
113. Industrial Location and Spatial Inequality: Theory and Evidence from India
- Author:
- Somik V. Lall and Sanjoy Chakravorty
- Publication Date:
- 08-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- We argue that spatial inequality of industry location is a primary cause of spatial income inequality in developing nations. We focus on understanding the process of spatial industrial variation—identifying the spatial factors that have cost implications for firms, and the factors that influence the location decisions of new industrial units. The analysis has two parts. First we examine the contribution of economic geography factors to the cost structure of firms in eight industry sectors and show that local industrial diversity is the one factor with significant and substantial cost reducing effects. We then show that new private sector industrial investments in India are biased toward existing industrial and coastal districts, whereas state industrial investments (in deep decline after structural reforms) are far less biased toward such districts. We conclude that structural reforms lead to increased spatial inequality in industrialization, and therefore, income.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, Industrial Policy, and Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- South Asia and India
114. The Transition from Official Aid to Private Capital Flows: Implications for a Developing Country
- Author:
- Renu Kohli
- Publication Date:
- 07-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- India's capital account displays a sharp swing in external financing from official assistance to private capital transfers in the 1990s. This paper examines the implications of this transition for the country. An analysis of the private resource transfer reveals that unlike official flows, private capital flows are associated with real exchange rate appreciation, expansion in domestic money supply and stock market growth, liquidity and volatility. The paper concludes with a discussion on the implications of the transition for economic policy.
- Topic:
- Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- South Asia and India
115. Went for Cost, Stayed for Quality?: Moving the Back Office to India
- Author:
- Rafiq Dossani and Martin Kenney
- Publication Date:
- 07-2003
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
- Abstract:
- Will the next great wave of globalization come in services? Increasingly, components of back-office services, such as payroll and order fulfillment, and some front-office services, such as customer care are being relocated from the U.S. and other developed countries to English-speaking, developing nations especially India, but also other nations such as the Phillipines. Though moving service activities offshore is not entirely new, the pace has of late quickened. The acceleration of this offshoring is intertwined, though not synonymous, with another phenomenon, namely an increasing willingness by firms to outsource what formerly were considered core activities. The importance of the fact that a substantial number of service activities might move offshore is that it was service jobs that were thought to be the future growth area for developed country economies as manufacturing relocated to lower labor cost regions offshore. This is especially important, because these services commonly known as "business processes" (BPs) are among the fastest growing job categories in the US (Goodman and Steadman 2002). Should these jobs begin to move offshore, a new tendency may be underway in the global economy that will be as important or more important than the relocation of manufacturing offshore, and might necessitate a rethinking of government policies across a wide spectrum.
- Topic:
- Economics, Globalization, and Industrial Policy
- Political Geography:
- United States, South Asia, and India
116. Farmer's Willingness to Pay for Power in India
- Author:
- Rafiq Dossani and V. Ranganathan
- Publication Date:
- 07-2003
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
- Abstract:
- Electric power for rural pumpset usage is subsidized by all the states in India, the subsidy being estimated at 1.1 percent of GDP. Users are charged a highly subsidized, flat, annual fee that varies with pumpset size. This fixed charge has encouraged waste and raised subsidies over time. Unwilling to bear these costs any longer, states have proposed a range of strategies, including independent regulation, metering of agricultural pumpsets, and raising prices.
- Topic:
- Economics and Government
- Political Geography:
- South Asia and India
117. Convergence Club Empirics: Some Dynamics and Explanations of Unequal Growth of Unequal Growth across Indian States
- Author:
- Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay
- Publication Date:
- 11-2003
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- This paper documents the convergence of incomes across Indian states over the period 1965 to 1998. It departs from traditional analyses of convergence by tracking the evolution of the entire income distribution, instead of standard regression and time series analyses. The findings reveal twin-peaks dynamics-the existence of two income convergence clubs, one at 50 per cent, another at 125 per cent of the national average income. Income disparities across states seem to have declined over the 1960s, only to increase over the subsequent three decades. The observed polarization is strongly explained by the disparate distribution of infrastructure, and that of education, and to an extent by a number of macroeconomic indicators; that of capital expenditure and fiscal deficits.
- Topic:
- Economics and Emerging Markets
- Political Geography:
- South Asia and India
118. Impact of Trade Liberalization on Returns from Land: A Regional Study of Indian Agriculture
- Author:
- Ghosh Nilabja
- Publication Date:
- 06-2003
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- Trade liberalization, by aligning domestic prices with world prices, is envisaged to bring welfare gains to a country. In the case of Indian agriculture, owing to the vastness and diversity of the sector, the impact is likely to be profoundly unequal across regions especially when liberalization is double-edged, acting on both output and input sides. This paper views returns from land resource as a primary determinant of farmers' economic well-being and production incentive and considers paddy both as the dominant support for the rural population and as a product with comparative advantage, as most studies have demonstrated. Working with state and sub-state level data and taking account of the differences in technologies, productivities and transport costs, the paper finds that the gains vary regionally and may not be positive in all cases when both output and input prices are globally aligned.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- South Asia and India
119. Financial Sector Development — Futile or Fruitful? An Examination of the Determinants of Savings in Sri Lanka
- Author:
- George Mavrotas and Roger Kelly
- Publication Date:
- 02-2003
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- This paper documents the financial and institutional developments of China during the past two decades, when China was successfully transformed from a rigid centralplanning economy to a dynamic market economy following its unique path. We empirically examine the relationship between financial development and economic growth in China by employing a panel sample covering 31 Chinese provinces during the important transition period 1986-2002. Our evidence suggests that the development of financial markets, institutions, and instruments have been robustly associated with economic growth in China.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- South Asia
120. The Measure of India: What Makes Greatness?
- Author:
- Joydeep Mukherji
- Publication Date:
- 11-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for the Advanced Study of India
- Abstract:
- I join you tonight to consider India on the scales of greatness. In other words, to ask: by what standards do people regard a state as great? And how does India conform to those standards? I must say at the outset, that these are not questions on which I personally would fixate. Greatness in terms of power is not a standard that moves me as a human being. My impulse when looking at countries is to say, “what's so great about being great?” I think a country's taxi drivers tell us more about it than the number of nuclear bombs it might possess. The number of Ph.D. holders, engineers, and writers driving taxicabs in a country, and where they came from, tells me a lot about the country we're in and the country from whence they came. The taxi driver in Iran who complains bitterly about the ayatollahs and wants to talk about pop music and freedom, tells me something about Iran. The engineer who fled Nigeria for the opportunity possible in America, even if it's driving a cab, tells me something about Nigeria and the U.S. Great power has little to do with it.
- Topic:
- Economics and Industrial Policy
- Political Geography:
- America, Iran, South Asia, India, and Nigeria