वित्त मंत्रालय के तहत एक स्वायत्त अनुसंधान संस्थान

 

Events

Seminar

Ethnic Diversity and Microenterprise Start-Ups

  • Speaker Vinod Mishra, Monash University, Australia.
  • Speaker profile

    Dr. Vinod Mishra is Senior Lecturer, Monash Business School, Department of Economics, Monash University, Australia.

  • Date शुक्र, 16 दिसमबर, 2016
  • Time 03:00 बजे - 04:00 बजे
  • Venue Auditorium, NIPFP
  • Abstract

    Until recently, factors determining the decisions made by microfinance institutions (MFIs) to extend loans to business start-ups had not been explored. Recent evidence shows that MFI performance with regards to funds issued for small business start-ups depends on MFI-level characteristics such as profit orientation. We argue that these decisions do not only depend on MFI-specific practices or characteristics, but also on the role that ethnic diversity plays. Using data on microfinance lending activities for business start-ups, we examine the impact of ethnic diversity on microenterprise start-ups. Results show that ethnic diversity negatively affects the provision of financial capital for business start-ups. 

  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Productivity and Growth in the Indian Economy from the 1950s to the 2010s: What Can We Learn After a Track Record Of Six Decades?

  • Speaker Sumit Majumdar, Professor of Technology Strategy, University of Texas at Dallas.
  • Date गुरू, 15 दिसमबर, 2016
  • Time 03:30 बजे - 05:00 बजे
  • Venue NIPFP Auditorium
  • Abstract

    The seminar will deal with some aspects of a 63-year study of the performance of the Indian economy from 1950-51 to 2013-14. Certain aspects of the detailed empirical analysis carried out for the author’s forthcoming book, ‘Capital and Capitalism: India’s Journey’ (Oxford University Press, 2017) will be presented. First, the transformation of the structure of Indian economy over a 63-year-period from 1950-51 to 2013-14 will be presented and discussed. The implications of these changes for future national development, in the light of global economic and technological changes, will be discussed. Second, an evaluation of the productivity of the industrial sector of the economy for a 63-year-period from 1950-51 to 2013-14 will be presented and discussed. A specific evaluation of the impact of industrial productivity on economic growth over the last six decades of India’s Independence will also be presented and the implications of these results discussed in light of the current policy thrust on the manufacturing sector. Hence, the relative importance or unimportance of the manufacturing sector for sustained economic growth in the future will be assessed. Third, an evaluation of the determinants of industrial productivity in India over the six decades will be presented. Finally, the seminar will deal with the evolving dimensions of technological change and its impact on India’s economic growth performance.

  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Emerging Issues in State Finances Post-Fourteenth Finance Commission: Analysis of State budgets (BY INVITE)

  • Date मंगल, 13 दिसमबर, 2016
  • Time 04:00 बजे - 06:30 बजे
  • Venue Conference Hall - II, India International Centre, New Delhi
  • Abstract

    The National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, New Delhi is organising a seminar on "Emerging Issues in State Finances Post-Fourteenth Finance Commission: Analysis of State budgets", as part of the IDRC (International Development Research Centre, Canada) project on "Intergovernmental Fiscal Transfers in India". Click here for details of the project.

     

    Dr. Pinaki Chakraborty, Professor, NIPFP, will deliver a presentation on "Analysis of State Budgets of 2016-17: Key Findings", at the event. Participating dignitaries include Shri Ratan P.  Watal, Principal Adviser, NITI Aayog (Awaiting confirmation); Shri Ashok Lavasa, Finance Secretary & Secretary (Expenditure), Government of India; Shri Gobind Mohan, Principal Resident Commissioner, Govt. of Sikkim; Shri S. Krishnan, Principal Secretary, Govt. of Tamil Nadu & Chairman, Fifth State Finance Commission, Tamil Nadu; and Shri P. P. Ghosh, Director, Asian Development Research Institute, Patna; Shri Sumit Bose, Vice-Chairman, NIPFP and Dr. Rathin Roy, Director, NIPFP.

  • Schedule
  • Contact email manish.gupta@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

NPCI Initiatives in Digital Payments

  • Speaker Dilip Asbe, COO, NPCI
  • Speaker profile

    Shri Dilip Asbe is the Chief Operating Officer of National Payments Corporation of India(NPCI).

    Detailed profile

  • Date बुध, 16 नवमबर, 2016
  • Time 02:00 बजे - 03:00 बजे
  • Venue Ground floor, Conference hall, R & T building, NIPFP
  • Abstract

    National Payments Corporation of India(NPCI) is mandated by the Reserve Bank of India to run retail payment systems. It is improving the National Electronic Clearing Service into an Automated Clearing House. It has launched Rupay Cards. It has pioneered faster payments in india through Immediate Payment Service and the recently launched Unified Payment Interface. All these initiatives are promoting digital payments in the country.

  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Framework for Issuing, Using, and Validating Identification Documents

  • Speaker Dr. Anupam Saraph
  • Speaker profile

    Dr. Anupam Saraph has to his credit, the design of at least two identification programs and has researched the UID’s functional creep since its inception. He has been dissecting the myths of what it is or is not. He has also tracked the consequences of its linkages on databases that protect national security, sovereignty, democratic status and the entire banking and money system in India. He has also highlighted the implications of its use for targeted delivery of cash subsidies from the Consolidated Fund of India. In his seminar he will provide a quick introduction to the devastating impact of the UID number on development programs, national security and the governability of India.

  • Date शुक्र, 11 नवमबर, 2016
  • Time 03:30 बजे - 05:00 बजे
  • Venue NIPFP Auditorium
  • Abstract

    Identity frauds and organised crimes are facilitated when identification documents are not based on a compelling logical framework. Unfortunately, most identification documents are issued adhoc and through a confusion of approaches, technologies and intentions. A logically compelling framework for the issue of identity or address documents is discussed along with the consequences for the individuals, organisation, nation and the world at large when identity documents are not issued on any such framework. In this seminar, he will provide a quick introduction to the devastating impact of the UID number on development programs, national security and the governability of India. Talk is based on the attached paper.

  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

New Thinking on Health Policy (Registration required)

  • Date शुक्र, 04 नवमबर, 2016
  • Time 10:30 बजे - 04:00 बजे
  • Venue Ground Floor Conference Room, R & T Building, NIPFP
  • Abstract

    At the seminar, the participants will showcase new research in various fields of health care, along with policy recommendations. This will include health care regulation, health information systems, the implementation of health-related schemes, non-communicable diseases, etc. 

  • Schedule

    Click here

  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Conference

ADB-Asian Think Tank Development Forum 2016: Promoting Sustainable Urbanization in Asia and the Pacific


Seminar

How central planning came to India

  • Speaker Kumar Anand, Free A Billion, Mumbai
  • Speaker profile

    Kumar Anand leads the research team at Free A Billion in Mumbai.

    Detailed profile

  • Date शुक्र, 21 अक्टूबर, 2016
  • Time 04:30 बजे - 05:30 बजे
  • Venue Ground Floor, Conference Hall, R&T building, NIPFP
  • Abstract

    This session revisits independent India’s economic history, especially the first two decades. What were the policies that were implemented by the leaders of the time? What was the thinking and motivation behind some of these policies? Why is it that rapid industrialisation did not lead to a corresponding improvements in the general living standard of Indians? An answer to some of these questions are attempted, which contradicts the prevailing mainstream opinion on some of these matters. It is often believed that ideas of economic freedom and reforms are “not Indian” and have been imported from the ‘West’. However, research into modern Indian history showcases the rich indigenous liberal tradition that stood against ideas of a centrally planned economy. This session also briefly presents an overview of such a tradition, which remains largely overlooked or forgotten today.

  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Public choice theory: a story of the ideas

  • Speaker Kumar Anand, Free A Billion, Mumbai
  • Speaker profile
    Kumar Anand leads the research team at Free A Billion in Mumbai.
  • Date शुक्र, 21 अक्टूबर, 2016
  • Time 03:00 बजे - 04:00 बजे
  • Venue Ground Floor, Conference Hall, R&T building, NIPFP
  • Abstract

    Public Choice Economics uses the insights of economics to explain political processes such as elections and bureaucracy. It explains that the probability of "market failure" must be compared with the probability of "government failure", in order to make rational choices about what should be done by governments and  what should be done by markets. This session introduces the field of Public Choice and its origins. This is a talk where we take a closer look at the history of ideas in Public Choice, how it developed over the last three centuries, who were the thinkers, what were the building blocks that were introduced, and what present day public policy relevance does the theory has for us.

  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Impact of FFC and restructuring of Centrally Sponsored Schemes of Centre and States on Health Expenditure (Registration required)

  • Date मंगल, 18 अक्टूबर, 2016
  • Time 10:15 बजे - 04:45 बजे
  • Venue Ground Floor, Conference Hall, R&T building, NIPFP
  • Abstract

    NIPFP is organising a seminar to deliberate and discuss the impact of the changed fiscal scenario in lieu of the 14th Finance Commission recommendations and restructuring of the Centrally Sponsored Schemes, on the Health Expenditure commitments of the Centre and States. These changes have initiated a process of overhaul of the fiscal architecture at both Central and State levels. The motivation for the seminar is to bring together researchers and stakeholder to share their views and initiate a dialogue.

  • Schedule
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Conference

Senior Economists Roundtable: Tax Levy and its implications on India's Gold Ecosystem (By invite)

  • Date सोम, 17 अक्टूबर, 2016
  • Time 09:00 बजे - 05:30 बजे
  • Venue NIPFP Auditorium
  • Details

    The India Gold Policy Centre, IIM Ahmedabad and the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy is organising the first Senior Economists Roundtable on "Tax Levy and its implications on India's Gold Ecosystem" on October 17, 2016. The roundtable will host a panel comprising of Dr. Saurabh Garg, Joint Secretary (Investments), Ministry of Finance, Prof. Arvind Sahay, Head, IGPC, Prof. Ashish Nanda, Director IIM Ahmedabad, Prof. Errol D’Souza, Dean (Faculty), IIM Ahmedabad, P.R. Somasundaram, Managing Director, India World Gold Council, Dr. Rathin Roy, Director, NIPFP, Dr. R. Kavita Rao, Professor, NIPFP, Dr. Ajit Ranade, Corp. Economic Cell, Aditya Birla Group, Girish Vanvari, Partner & Head – Tax, KPMG, Johnson Lewis, MD and Head – Sales and Trading, The Bank of Nova Scotia,  Saumyakanti Ghosh, Chief Economic Advisor, State Bank of India, Surjit Bhalla, Chairman, Oxus Investments, Dr. Venkatachalam Shunmugham, Chief Ecomomist, MCX and R.K. Anand Dy. General Manager (Economist), Punjab National Bank.


Seminar

Problems of market abuse in India

  • Speaker Sandeep Parekh
  • Speaker profile

    Sandeep Parekh is the founder of Finsec Law Advisors, a financial sector law firm based in Mumbai.

    Detailed bio

  • Date गुरू, 06 अक्टूबर, 2016
  • Time 04:30 बजे - 06:00 बजे
  • Venue Ground Floor, Conference Hall, R&T building, NIPFP
  • Abstract
    The concept of securities regulations covers a field straddled between the fields of finance and law. While both, manipulation and insider trading prohibition, fall under the broad umbrella of fraud, in India the law on insider trading has somewhat diverged on its own course. 
     
    A fair securities market is one in which the savers and the users of capital are brought together in a mutually beneficial partnership. A significant impediment in a productive relationship is asymmetry of information, which, along with conflict of interest, ranks among the major ills that adversely affect the interests of investors. Greed, leading to dropping one's guard, is equally at the root of investors coming to grief. The securities market has no shortage of persons who take advantage of the unequal relationship between the less informed investor and the better informed but less scrupulous purveyor of products. It merits saying that the securities market in the absence of fraud, manipulation, mis-selling, insider trading and the like, can reward all participants. Yet, regrettably, some investors have seen the bulk of their savings vanish on account of illegal and criminal practices. This seminar will discuss the broad contours of both fraud and insider trading and progress to current issues in the enforcement and interpretation. Both false positives and false negatives are an issue with the enforcement.
  • Schedule
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Conference

1st Law Economics Policy Conference 2016 (By Invite)

  • Date बुध, 28 सितमबर, 2016 - शुक्र, 30 सितमबर, 2016
  • Venue India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, India
  • Schedule

Seminar

The evolution of India Stack and the Unified Payments Interface

  • Speaker Sanjay Jain
  • Speaker profile

    Sanjay Jain is an active volunteer with iSPIRT and is an active member of the Open API, and the cashless India teams.  He has been working with the NPCI to define the next generation payment systems (the Unified Payment Interface), as well as with regulators and other bodies to help entire processes go paperless.  He has been one of the key contributors to help create, and evangelize various govt open APIs, which are collectively referred to as the India Stack.  He was earlier the Chief Product Manager at the UIDAI.

  • Date मंगल, 27 सितमबर, 2016
  • Time 04:30 बजे - 06:00 बजे
  • Venue Ground Floor, Conference Hall, R&T building, NIPFP
  • Abstract
    The Government of India’s Open API Policy (2015) stated that the Government envisaged making its services digitally accessible to citizens through multiple channels, such as web, mobile and common service delivery outlets. The JAM trinity - Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and Mobile phones makes it possible for digital services to reach every Indian.
     
    The India Stack is a name used to collectively cover specific APIs that allow govts. and businesses to utilise govt. services to deliver services to Indian residents.  These APIs have been developed by various organizations over the last 7 years, starting with Aadhaar, which launched an authentication API in 2010.  These APIs are owned by government departments, and other public organisations. India Stack provides 4 distinct layers: a presence-less layer where a universal biometric digital identity allows people to participate in any service from anywhere in the country; a paper-less layer where digital records move with an individual's digital identity, eliminating the need for massive amount of paper collection and storage; a cashless layer where a single interface to all the country's bank accounts and wallets democratizes payments; and, a consent layer which allows data to move freely and securely to democratize the market for data. Each layer has a specific technology - Aadhaar authentication and eKYC, eSign and Digilocker, Unified Payments Interface, and consent architecture - with corresponding public APIs.
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Drones for building land title databases

  • Speaker T L Satyaprakash, Deputy Commissioner, Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon
  • Speaker profile
    T L Satyaprakash is the Deputy Commissioner of Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon. An IAS officer of the 2002 batch, Mr. Satyaprakash was earlier posted as the Director of Industries & Commerce, Haryana and Managing Director of Haryana State Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation, where he achieved measurable outcomes in development programmes and proposed compelling views on matters of public policy.
     
    T L Satyaprakash graduated with Bachelor of Science (Agriculture) from CCS Haryana Agricultural University. He won the Junior Research Fellowship for Genetics and Plant Breeding from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. He has a Masters in International Development Policy from Duke University. He has several papers to his credit. His research paper “Phenotypic variability in guar (Cyamopsis tetragonaloba) germplasm” led to the development of numerous high-yielding, commercial cluster-bean varieties. He contributed a chapter titled “Integrating Rural Poor into Markets” for the publication “What ails Indian agriculture”.
  • Date सोम, 19 सितमबर, 2016
  • Time 04:30 बजे - 06:00 बजे
  • Venue Ground Floor, Conference Hall, R&T building, NIPFP
  • Abstract
    Property rights in India are unclear and badly recorded. Though the genesis of the problem lies in the colonial period, they have persisted for years due to consistent lack of effort and attention by successive Governments. Land titling, which involves keeping a record of land titles and ensuring that the records are always true and reliable is a cornerstone of land administration. It is one of the ways of eliminating problems around land ownership and marketability of land rights. 
     
    Developments in technology can help solve this massive administrative problem. Drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles are being used extensively in land surveying and solving problems of land titling around the world. In India, use of drones for this purpose will first require coordination among various departments of the Central Government in order to ensure that drones are permitted to be used for such purpose. State Governments will have the primary responsibility of ensuring this, as land administration is a state subject under the Indian Constitution. The legal and administrative issues surrounding the use of this technology need to be carefully evaluated and assessed.
  • Schedule
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Independent Judiciary and Rent Seeking in India

  • Speaker Shruti Rajagopalan
  • Speaker profile

    Shruti Rajagopalan is an Assistant Professor of Economics at State University of New York, Purchase College and a Fellow at the Classical Liberal Institute at NYU School of Law.

    Detailed bio

  • Date गुरू, 15 सितमबर, 2016
  • Time 05:00 बजे - 06:30 बजे
  • Venue Ground Floor, Conference Hall, R&T building, NIPFP
  • Abstract

    What explains the nature and volume of interest-group activity in the judiciary in recent decades? The existing literature has attributed this shift to the increasing power of the Indian Supreme Court; fractured legislatures; coalition politics; changes in ideology; greater emphasis on positive rights, etc. I explain this by examining the incentives faced by interest groups while choosing the judiciary as the forum for rent seeking. Unlike the typical explanations from the perspective of the judiciary supplying the changes in rules; the talk offers a demand-driven explanation, analyzing the incentives of interest-groups seeking rule changes.

  • Schedule
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Cesses in the Indian tax regime: A historical analysis

  • Speaker Ashrita Prasad Kotha
  • Speaker profile
    Ashrita Prasad Kotha is Assistant Professor & Assistant Director, Centre for Comparative & International Taxation Studies; and Senior Programme Associate, Centre for Postgraduate Legal Studies, Jindal Global Law School, O.P. Jindal Global University.
  • Date गुरू, 15 सितमबर, 2016
  • Time 03:30 बजे - 04:30 बजे
  • Venue Auditorium, NIPFP
  • Abstract
    The Constitution of India is quasi federal, a feature which is also apparent from the provisions regulating distribution of revenues between the union government and the various state governments. India’s “co-operative federalist” fiscal structure has historically empowered the union and state governments to raise revenue by levying taxes, fees, cesses, surcharges, etc. In the schedule to the Indian Constitution which delineates the legislative competence of the respective governments to impose taxes and fees, there is no mention of cess. That may be owing to the fact that a cess, as clarified by judicial precedents, is either a tax or a fee depending on the specific facts. The unique feature of a cess though is that it raises revenue for an earmarked purpose.
     
    By virtue of a constitutional amendment in the year 2000 union cesses are not required to be shared with state governments. Recent enquiries into the usage of funds collected under the head of cess has revealed a lack of accountability. This has resulted in the Fourteenth Finance Commission cautioning against the frequent usage of cesses. Even so, the union government has only recently announced a new cess (Swachh Bharat Cess) to promote its cleanliness and sanitation drive. The following questions emerge for study: Where does the power to levy cesses emanate from? Has the power been exercised in consonance with the avowed object backing it? In the wake of the criticism that cesses have been met with, will history help us to defend the power to levy cesses? Or is it the end of the road?
  • Schedule
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

The “Know-Do” gap in primary health care in India

  • Speaker Jeffrey Hammer
  • Speaker profile

    Prof. Jeffrey Hammer is a Visiting Professor in Economic Development at Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University. 

    Detailed bio

  • Date मंगल, 23 अगस्त, 2016
  • Time 04:30 बजे - 06:00 बजे
  • Venue Ground Floor, Conference Hall, R&T building, NIPFP
  • Abstract
    Recent literature has dealt with the “know-do” gap in medical care. That is, what doctors actually do in practice is often very different from what they know they should do. This paper presents some descriptive statistics comparing measurements of these two concepts. For the “know” dimension, data from interviews presenting hypothetical cases to both MBBS and non-MBBS practitioners are presented. These are compared with actions taken by the same providers in their actual practices as observed by standardized patients – actors presenting with the same symptoms as the hypotheticals. The differences between the two are not well explained by usual theories of “supplier-induced demand” or “asymmetric information” that are common in the literature.
  • Schedule
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

National Agriculture Market and the Political Economy of Agriculture Marketing

  • Speaker Pravesh Sharma
  • Speaker profile

    Pravesh Sharma, Visiting Senior Fellow, ICRIER.

    Detailed bio

  • Date गुरू, 04 अगस्त, 2016
  • Time 04:30 बजे - 06:00 बजे
  • Venue Ground Floor, Conference Hall, R&T building, NIPFP
  • Abstract

    The launch of the National Agriculture Market (NAM) in April 2016 by the Prime Minister signalled the first serious resolve of the NDA government to address the challenge of creating a unified national market for agricultural produce. It was expected that the launch of the e-marketing portal seeking to virtually integrate physical mandis would be vigorously followed up by the government to create an alternative buying option for farmers by the time the kharif marketing season came up in October this year. However, the early progress of e-NAM suggests a familiar lapse into hesitation and confusion, as the roll out remains sluggish and legacy players in agriculture trade prepare to reap the real harvest of a (so far) bountiful monsoon. This talk seeks to throw light on the fate of NAM in the larger political economy of agriculture marketing, especially at the State level, and uses past experiences of similar reform initiatives to predict some likely outcome scenarios.

  • Schedule
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Fate of Medical Malpractice around Legally-Defined Code of Conduct for Medical Professionals

  • Speaker Prof. R. K. Sharma
  • Speaker profile

    Prof. R. K. Sharma is an alumnus of the prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.

    Detailed bio

  • Date गुरू, 14 जुलाई, 2016
  • Time 04:30 बजे - 06:00 बजे
  • Venue Ground Floor, Conference Hall, R&T building, NIPFP
  • Abstract
    Cases of medical malpractices are widely reported from across India. A lot of violence is also reported against doctors and other healthcare professionals. Why do these all happen? Are doctors alone responsible for these or consumerism and unrealistic expectations from doctors, and spiralling healthcare costs responsible too?
     
    The profession of medical practice is changing its shape. From being an art, it has become one dependent on machines. The cost of setting hospitals has gone through roof. An MRI machine costs five crores. As government has failed to provide healthcare to masses, private sector has come in a big way in providing healthcare facilities and they are obviously not on a charitable mission; they want to make money as fast as others are making in other businesses. So how do they go about it? They do it through the doctors, forcing them into malpractices and violation of code of conduct. The common medical malpractices are referrals, fee sharing, commission from diagnostic labs and favours from pharmaceutical companies. Consent is also a concern which needs to be addressed.
  • Schedule
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

The law on medical malpractices and possible reform areas

  • Speaker Gopinath N. Shenoy
  • Speaker profile

    Dr. Gopinath N. Shenoy is a medico-legal consultant who exclusively appears for doctors in consumer courts and medical councils all over India.

    Detailed bio

  • Date गुरू, 30 जून, 2016
  • Time 04:00 बजे - 05:30 बजे
  • Venue Ground Floor, Lecture Hall, R&T building, NIPFP
  • Abstract

    The speaker will be sharing his experience as member of the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (NCDRC) on the Medical malpractice and the existing regulations and the involvement of enforcement agencies in streamlining medical practice. He will concentrate on four key areas: (i) disclosures mandated by law; (ii) referral practices and commissions; (iii) consent; and (iv) duty of physician towards patients - all in terms of protecting the patients, especially, where they spend; how and on whom they spend; when they spend; and, are these logical?

  • Schedule
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

The Multiplier Debate and the Eurozone Crisis

  • Speaker Joshua Felman, International Monetary Fund
  • Speaker profile

    Joshua Felman is currently stationed in Delhi, working as a long-term expert provided by the IMF.

    Detailed bio

  • Date गुरू, 23 जून, 2016
  • Time 04:30 बजे - 06:00 बजे
  • Venue Ground Floor, Conference Hall, R&T building, NIPFP
  • Abstract

    In a famous paper, Blanchard and Leigh (2013) discovered that there was a strong link between fiscal consolidation projected in Spring 2010 and subsequent growth forecast errors. They interpreted this link as indicating that forecasters had used multipliers that were far too low. This paper argues that this interpretation was not correct. The real problem was that forecasters failed to foresee the euro area crisis.

  • Schedule
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Integration between spot and futures markets and the way forward in commodity markets

  • Speaker Samir Shah
  • Speaker profile

    Mr. Samir Shah is the Managing Director & CEO, NCDEX.

    Detailed bio

  • Date गुरू, 09 जून, 2016
  • Time 04:00 बजे - 05:30 बजे
  • Venue Ground floor conference hall, R&T building, NIPFP
  • Abstract

    Indian agricultural market structure is characterised by over 7000 markets (APMCs). Each market in most states (other than a few states which have started the reform process) act as disconnected markets where a skewed market structure exists with an average of only 4-5 buyers to every seller. This deprives the small and marginal farmer from effective access to markets. We believe that 'right to market access' should be a cause that needs to be championed for farmers in India. 'Right to market access' means the ease with which a farmer can sell across grade, location and time. NCDEX Group and Government of Karnataka pioneered the beginning of this program of 'right to market access' through a reform program by building the first ever State Agri Market (SAM) initiated a few years ago. More recently Government of India has initiated an e-NAM project to set up a National Agri Market. Agri futures have been developed by NCDEX over the last 13 years. How can we build an effective market structure that integrates NAM, SAM, Futures seamlessly?

  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Dissenting Diagnosis

  • Speaker Arun Gadre and Abhay Shukla
  • Speaker profile

    Dr. Arun Gadre and Dr. Abhay Shukla are authors of the book, Dissenting Diagnosis. Dr Arun is a Gynaecologist by training and practicing, and is a full time author currently. Dr. Abhay Shukla, is an Internal Medicine Specialist working at SATHI, an NGO aimed at creating awareness and promoting social aspects of healthcare service delivery.

  • Date शुक्र, 27 मई, 2016
  • Time 04:30 बजे - 06:00 बजे
  • Venue Ground floor conference hall, R&T building, NIPFP
  • Abstract

    Complaints about the state of medical care are increasing in today's India; whether it is unnecessary investigations, botched operations or expensive, sometimes even harmful, medication. But while the unease is widespread, few outside the profession understand the extent to which the medical system is being distorted. Dr. Arun Gadre and Dr. Abhay Shukla have gathered evidence from seventy eight practicing doctors, in both the private and public medical sectors across six states and across 23 fields of medicine (including traditional), to expose the ways in which vulnerable patients are exploited by a system that promotes unscrupulous medical practices. Drawing on the frank and courageous statements of these seventy-eight doctors dismayed at the state of their profession, Dissenting Diagnosis lays bare the corruption afflicting the medical sector in India and sets out solutions for a healthier future.The duo will be talking on how medical malpractice has pushed India to face poverty, how regulatory insufficiency has pushed medical personnel to promote "Hospital Mall" culture in medical practice.

  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Financial Regulations for Improving Financial Inclusion

  • Speaker Liliana Rojas-Suarez
  • Speaker profile

    Liliana Rojas-Suarez is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development.

    Detailed bio

  • Date शुक्र, 13 मई, 2016
  • Time 04:30 बजे - 06:00 बजे
  • Venue Ground floor conference hall, R&T building, NIPFP
  • Abstract
    The rise of digital technology has nurtured a growing industry around the world in financial services that benefit the poor, from mobile payments and money transfers to micro-savings and mobile-based crop insurance. But as the financial landscape evolves to include these disruptive innovations, new players and new business models could bring fresh risks to individual users and to financial systems. So how should policymakers respond?
     
    A new, major report from the Center for Global Development, Financial Regulations for Improving Financial Inclusion sets out how regulators can make the goal of financial inclusion compatible with the traditional mandates of financial regulation: safeguarding the integrity and stability of the financial system, while also protecting consumers from fraud. The report advances specific recommendations on three key three key regulatory issues: What should a pro-inclusive competition policy be? How can regulations support leveling the playing field between providers? And how should know-your-customer rules be designed? Examples from a number of developing countries, including India support the report’s recommendations.
     
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Enabling a national market in agriculture: Components of a national market and related legal issues

  • Speaker Devesh Roy
  • Speaker profile

    Devesh Roy is a Research Fellow in the Markets, Trade and Institutions Division of the International Food Policy Research Institute, New Delhi.

    Detailed bio

  • Date मंगल, 03 मई, 2016
  • Time 04:30 बजे - 06:00 बजे
  • Venue Ground floor conference hall, R&T building, NIPFP
  • Abstract
    The proposed National Agricultural Market (NAM) in India is conceived as a nationwide electronic trading portal that would create a network of wholesale markets  (mandis) and market yards. Structured as a virtual market place, to a large extent like existing models of e-commerce, identically it requires the back end support that takes the form of both infrastructure (for example - warehousing, grading, packaging and standards) as well as institutions (formal changes in laws and its implementation protocols). NAM as a virtual marketplace will allow a farmer with subscription to portal to sell his produce to the destination with the best price (net of the marketing costs). Any buyer, for example, a food processor, can benefit from not having to be physically present or having to depend on traders in the relevant Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) area. Since taxes and charges will still apply, in essence it is a common market not a single market.
     
    NAM envisions one license for the entire state and a single-point levy. Further, it envisages electronic auctions for price discovery. With these provisions, it is expected that seamless transfer of agriculture commodities within the state and beyond can take place thereby expanding the market for farmers and traders. By virtue of being a common national market, in some respects at least the NAM would have to supersede the structure of the existing APMC. Under the current system of APMC that are under the respective jurisdiction of the state governments, different licenses are needed to trade in each market. Similarly, there are market specific fees that need to be incurred. 
     
    With this background this paper addresses the following research questions with regard to NAM. How far do indicators suggest a basis for NAM? Does the current state of market exhibit lack of effective integration and in which commodities? What are the elements of the NAM on the backend? To what extent are the attributes of the existing marketing infrastructure such as backend support suited for the NAM? What changes in the backend (infrastructure and institutions) would be needed to make NAM effective?
     
    We argue that with buyers and sellers anonymous and not proximate, NAM will need commensurate development at the backend (infrastructure and institutions) for the actual transaction to take place in a reasonably frictionless way. Based on a simple analysis of the marketing infrastructure and institutions, we believe that a lot needs to be done in order to make an arrangement like NAM work. 
     
    Institutionally also NAM would require several changes. Agriculture is a state subject and APMC act covers a wide array of commodities including cereals, oilseeds and high value items such as fruits and vegetables and meat products. In that sense, commodities that have diverse marketing requirements are more or less treated in the same manner. Even with market liberalization, allowing private trade and removing marketing parastatals are necessary but not sufficient for efficient markets to evolve. In the absence of proper infrastructure and institutions, spatially dispersed markets may continue to lack integration. 
     
    We first look at the extent of integration across markets by taking a core periphery approach where the principal market is defined based on comparatively high market arrivals. Towards this, we use prices data from the wholesale markets at high frequency and use time series techniques to assess spatial integration. We find that there are several commodities that are characterized by a lack of spatial integration. The lack of integration implies that there are frictions in markets. NAM is expected to bring down the level of frictions that would lead to spatial integration. With spatial integration, prices will tend to equalize and there will be a co-movement of prices across markets. 
     
    Minimizing friction in transactions characterized by disaffiliate buyers and sellers would require changes that go beyond merely creating the online platform. To analyze this issue, we employ a sparsely available data to map out the state of the wholesale markets that exist in the country and try to assess their readiness for NAM. In the context of food products, several physical and institutional infrastructure are necessitated by design. Example of these requirements include weighing, grading and transport infrastructure, food safety certification systems, cold storage, quality standards among others. Mapping out the wholesale markets we find that markets are severely lacking in terms of their credentials to support an initiative like NAM.  In terms of the organizational structure, NAM envisions about conforming to the regulations of the each state’s Mandi act. Moreover, all transactions that actually take place would be considered a throughput of the local mandi which would continue to earn the transaction fee (SFAC 2015). Hence, the transformation of the system could be revenue neutral for the states and may even be revenue expanding depending on the elasticity of the transactions with respect to the base expansion that would likely follow from NAM. 
     
    Apart from a one single license for trading in each state and a single point levy of transaction fee, apart from the revenue implications, political economy would also play a critical role in the adoption of NAM by state governments. Note the important backend support embedded in the functioning of the common market platform in Karnataka. First, there is a single licensing system. Rashtriya e-market Services Limited (ReMS), offers automated auction and post auction facilities (weighting, invoicing, market fee collection, accounting), assaying facilities in the markets, facilitate warehouse-based sale of produce, facilitate commodity funding, price dissemination by leveraging technology. Under NAM, these amenities are going to be needed on a scale that would be many times larger. 
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Aadhaar by Numbers

  • Speaker Sunil Abraham
  • Speaker profile

    Sunil Abraham is the Executive Director of Bangalore based research organisation, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS).

    Detailed bio

  • Date शुक्र, 29 अप्रैल, 2016
  • Time 04:30 बजे - 06:00 बजे
  • Venue Ground floor conference hall, R&T building, NIPFP
  • Abstract

    This talk will reflect on several aspects of the Aadhaar project from a technical perspective. First, there will be a reflection on biometrics as a unique, identification and authentication technology. Second, there will be a critique of open washing by the UIDAI through their adoption of free software and open standards and finally there will be an analysis of alternative technical solutions and architecture which will allow India to harvest the benefits of identity management without the harms and risks of centralized biometrics.

  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Understanding the Slowdown in Capital Flows to Emerging Markets

  • Speaker Weicheng Lian
  • Speaker profile
    Dr. Weicheng Lian is an economist in the research department of the IMF. Before that, he spent two years working on real and financial issues of Baltic countries and the Czech Republic in the European department of the IMF. His research fields are international economics and macroeconomics. His recent papers study aggregate land share dynamics in the United States and the implications for housing price dynamics, the exchange rate and trade linkages, and capital flows in emerging markets. He received B.S. in physics and M.A. in economics from Beijing university, and Ph.D. in economics from Princeton university.

    Detailed bio

  • Date शुक्र, 22 अप्रैल, 2016
  • Time 03:30 बजे - 05:00 बजे
  • Venue NIPFP Auditorium
  • Abstract
    Net capital flows to emerging market economies have slowed since 2010, affecting all regions. This chapter shows that both weaker inflows and stronger outflows have contributed to the slowdown and that much of the decline in inflows can be explained by the narrowing differential in growth prospects between emerging market and advanced economies. The chapter also highlights that the incidence of external debt crises in the ongoing episode has so far been much lower, although the slowdown in net capital inflows has been comparable in breadth and size to the major slowdowns of the 1980s and 1990s. Improved policy frameworks have contributed greatly to this difference. Crucially, more flexible exchange rate regimes have facilitated orderly currency depreciations that have mitigated the effects of the global capital flow cycle on many emerging market economies. Higher levels of foreign asset holdings by emerging market economies, and in particular higher levels of foreign reserves, as well as lower shares of external liabilities denominated in foreign currency (that is, less of the so-called original sin) have also been instrumental.
     
    Details in chapter two of the recently released Spring 2016 IMF World Economic Outlook (attached and available at www.imf.org/weo )
     
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in
  • Paper

Seminar

Impact of regulatory structure on quality of medicines in India

  • Speaker Dinesh Thakur, Sciformix Corporation
  • Speaker profile

    Dinesh Thakur, Sciformix Corporation.

    Detailed bio

  • Date मंगल, 19 अप्रैल, 2016
  • Time 04:30 बजे - 06:00 बजे
  • Venue Ground floor conference hall, R&T building, NIPFP
  • Abstract
    Quality of medicines dispensed in the Indian market has been an area of concern for quite some time now. Prosecution of Ranbaxy Laboratories, once India's largest pharmaceutical company in the US brought issues of data integrity and product quality to light. Since that time, foreign regulators like the US FDA and  the EMA have increased their focus on Indian manufacturers to make sure that the medicines made in India and sold in those markets are of high quality. Unfortunately, precious little has changed in India.
     
    One of the key challenges to creating public awareness about this issue is the lack of think-tanks and research organizations which focus on this issue. This talk outlines the efforts undertaken to approach the Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of the legal framework that forms the basis of drug regulation with an intent to develop a better understanding among policy analysts.
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

International Comparative Household Finance

  • Speaker Tarun Ramadorai
  • Speaker profile
    Tarun Ramadorai is Professor of Financial Economics at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.
  • Date सोम, 04 अप्रैल, 2016
  • Time 04:30 बजे - 06:00 बजे
  • Venue Ground floor conference hall, R&T building, NIPFP
  • Abstract
    This paper reviews the literature on international comparative household finance. The paper presents summary statistics on household balance sheets for 13 developed countries, and uses these statistics to discuss common features and contrasts across countries. The paper then discusses retirement savings, investments in risky assets, unsecured debt, and mortgages.
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

How much does a bank account help the poor?

  • Speaker Dr. Sankar De
  • Speaker profile
    Dr. Sankar De has served on the faculty at national and international institutions including University of California-Berkeley, University of Texas-Austin, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Indian Institute of Management – Calcutta, Indian School of Business, and Shiv Nadar University. His current research interests are broadly, the interface between development economics and financial markets and, specifically, access to finance for underserved sectors, including small businesses and farmers. His academic publications include a book and a monograph, book chapters, and articles in refereed international journals. His recent non-academic publications include opinion pieces in Knowledge@Wharton, Ideas for India, and Times of India. Articles about his research work have appeared in all English financial newspapers, and some local language papers, in India.
     
    Professor De has been a Fellow of Wharton Financial Institutions Center at the University of Pennsylvania since 2006. He has served as Director (2010 – 2012) and President (2012 – 2014) of the Asian Finance Association, the umbrella body of finance faculty at all business schools in the Asia-Pacific region, and as a member of the Reserve Bank of India’s Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) on Money, Foreign Exchange and Government Securities. He received his PhD in Financial Economics from University of California-Berkeley, Post-Graduate Diploma in Management from Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, and BA (economics) from Presidency College, Calcutta.
  • Date गुरू, 31 मार्च, 2016
  • Time 04:30 बजे - 06:00 बजे
  • Venue Ground floor conference hall, R&T building, NIPFP
  • Abstract

    A bank account is widely regarded as the first step toward financial inclusion of the poor. Among other benefits, funds deposited in a bank account are observed to lead to higher savings. However, the existing literature does not investigate whether the savings are productively used. Using nationally representative samples, to ensure generalizability of our findings, and exploiting special features of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) of India, our empirical tests consistently indicate that households that receive NREGS wages through bank spend significantly less on education than other comparable households that receive cash payment. The findings suggest that the poor face constraints in accessing their bank accounts regularly. Further, such constraints affect discretionary expenses, including educational expenses which are discretionary for the very poor, more than essential expenses such as food expenses. Additional tests for other discretionary and non-discretionary expenses provide corroborating evidence.  The results are consistent between standard OLS and instrumental variable regressions designed to correct for omitted variable bias.   

  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Social Network, Political Engagement, and Collective Action: Evidence from Rural India

  • Speaker Sabyasachi Das
  • Speaker profile

    Post-Doctoral Fellow in Economics at the Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi.

  • Date शुक्र, 11 मार्च, 2016
  • Time 04:30 बजे - 06:00 बजे
  • Venue Conference hall, R&T building, NIPFP, New Delhi
  • Abstract

    We study the role played by social networks in facilitating effective group based collective action, especially for a group heavily underrepresented in politics across the globe, i.e., women. We look at participation in local village meetings in rural India (Gram Sabhas) as the context of our study. To overcome the usual endogeneity challenges we focus on a factor that affects women’s social network formation and yet, is presumably not directly related to their political behavior - their membership in a Women Only Self Help Group (WOSHG). We first show that past membership in a WOSHG positively affects a woman’s present meeting attendance rate, and that it is not driven by household selection on observables. Using past existence of any WOSHG in a village as an instrument for past membership we then show that the result remains the same, while there is no such effect on men’s meeting attendance. At the village level, this significantly changed the gender composition of meeting attendees in women’s favor, which in turn resulted in more women preferred public goods (such as water, sanitation, health) being provided. We provide evidence in favor of the social network story as opposed to other mechanisms driving the results. This work highlights an unintended benefit of expanding SHGs in rural India by looking at its effect on the local politics.

  • Schedule
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Due Diligence in Share Acquisitions: Navigating the Insider Trading Regime

  • Speaker Umakanth Varottil
  • Speaker profile

    Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore.

  • Date सोम, 07 मार्च, 2016
  • Time 04:30 बजे - 06:00 बजे
  • Venue Ground floor conference hall, R&T building, NIPFP
  • Abstract

    The goal of this seminar is to unpack the underlying friction between the need to facilitate due diligence in share acquisition transactions that could place inside information in the acquirer’s hands, and at the same time to ensure that such information is not misused by the acquirer to the detriment of the other shareholders, a matter that insider trading regime regards as sacrosanct. In analysing and seeking to resolve this tension, the speaker draws upon examples from three jurisdictions, namely the United Kingdom (UK), Singapore and India. The core argument is that from a theoretical perspective the due diligence objective of acquirers can be reconciled with the goals of the insider trading regime in order to preserve the interests of the target shareholder as long as certain restrictions are placed on the conduct of the acquirer.

  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

The Union Budget 2016-17: Reforms and Development Perspectives (By Invite)

  • Speaker Rathin Roy, Shekhar Shah, S.K. Shanthi, Rajat Kathuria, Pratap Bhanu Mehta
  • Date शनि, 05 मार्च, 2016
  • Time 10:00 बजे - 01:30 बजे
  • Venue Royal Ballroom, The Imperial, Janpath, New Delhi.
  • Abstract
    In March 2007, the directors of five of India’s leading economic policy research institutes came together for the first time to present their assessment of the reform and development implications of the Union Budget.  As we have now done for the past nine years, these five institutions will come together for the 10th time this year to present their more reflective assessment of the Union Budget 2016-17. 
     
    On behalf of the five institutions whose logos are shown above, CPR, ICRIER, IDF, NCAER, and NIPFP, NIPFP has the great pleasure of inviting you to the 5-Institute Budget Seminar 2016-17 on Saturday, March 5, 2016 at the Royal Ballroom, The Imperial Hotel, Janpath, New Delhi. Registration will start at 10.00 am, and the 5-IB Seminar will be followed by lunch at 1.30 pm. 
     
    Expectations from this third budget of the NDA Government of Prime Minister Modi are running high. In the run up to Budget 2016-17, we have seen a lively debate on the pluses and minuses of maintaining fiscal consolidation and the implications for monetary policy. Several important fiscal reforms are expected that we hope will improve the fiscal health of the economy and lay strong foundations for sustained, rapid growth that creates rural and urban jobs. We also expect a roadmap for improved fiscal governance. The sharp decline in oil prices has yielded an unexpected oil bounty, but major expenditures related to the 7th Pay Commission, OROP, UDAY Bonds, and other schemes lurk ahead. At the same time, uncertainty in global markets shows no signs of letting up.
     
    Against this background, the heads of the five institutes will provide a reflective view of the Union Budget and its longer-term implications for the Indian economy as the NDA Government approaches its half-way mark. Mr Ashok K. Bhattacharya, Editor, Business Standard, will moderate the discussion and the Q&A with the audience.
     
    Please confirm your participation at rr1@nipfp.org.in or honey.karun@nipfp.org.in for what should be an exciting and thought-provoking discussion. For queries, please email as above or call on +91-11-2685-7274 or +91-9891000630
     
    We look forward to seeing you at 10:00 am on Saturday, March 5, 2016 at the 5-Institute Budget Seminar. 
  • Schedule
  • Contact email rr1@nipfp.org
  • Photographs (Print)

Conference

Network Neutrality in India: Discriminatory Pricing and Beyond

  • Date शुक्र, 04 मार्च, 2016
  • Time 04:30 बजे - 07:30 बजे
  • Venue Ground Floor Conference Room, R&T Building, NIPFP.
  • Details

     

    Over the past decade, the subject of “network neutrality” has remained one of the central debates in Internet policy and governance. It has raised new questions about the impact of network neutrality on the design and architecture of the Internet, privacy and user rights and the future of communications networks. Governments all over the world have been investigating whether legislative or regulatory action is needed to limit the ability of providers of Internet access services to interfere with the applications, content, and services accessed by users on their networks.

     

    Earlier this month, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) released a regulation prohibiting discriminatory tariff for data services based on content, initiating regulatory intervention on network neutrality in India. The regulation was preceded by an extensive consultation exercise that saw spirited public participation and academic debate on the issue.

     

    In this context, the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, New Delhi is organizing a “Symposium on Network Neutrality in India: Discriminatory Pricing and Beyond” on 4th March, 2016 in New Delhi, India from 4.30 to 7.30 PM. The discussions will be followed by dinner.

     

    The symposium will be attended by the Chairman and senior officials from TRAI, key policy makers, academicians, entrepreneurs and stakeholders from the telecom industry. Our aim is to generate a high quality discussion on TRAI's regulation on discriminatory tariff and its implications for stakeholders. The symposium will also focus on the fundamental question of bridging the digital divide and expanding access to the Internet in India. In addition, we will brainstorm on the next steps towards a legislative framework  for network neutrality in India.

     

  • Schedule
  • Contact email bins.sebastian@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Thinking about Tax Administration

  • Speaker Michael Keen
  • Speaker profile

    Michael Keen is Deputy Director of the Fiscal Affairs Department of the International Monetary Fund, where he was previously head of the Tax Policy and Tax Coordination divisions. Before joining the Fund, he was Professor of Economics at the University of Essex and visiting Professor at Kyoto University. He has led technical assistance missions to nearly thirty countries on a wide range of issues in tax policy, and consulted for the World Bank, European Commission, and the private sector. He has served on the Board of the National Tax Association in the U.S., and on the editorial boards of American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, International Tax and Public Finance (of which he was joint founder), Journal of Public Economics, the Review of Economic Studies and many other journals. He is co-author of books on The Modern VAT, the Taxation of Petroleum and Minerals, and Changing Customs.

  • Date बुध, 02 मार्च, 2016
  • Time 03:30 बजे - 05:00 बजे
  • Venue NIPFP Auditorium
  • Schedule
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Unlocking the land assets: Empowering citizens, updating land records, reducing corruption

  • Speaker Barun Mitra, Chair: Shri. Vijay S. Madan, Secretary, Land Resources.
  • Speaker profile

    Barun Mitra is a commentator on current affairs, with a particular interest in economic development, environmental issues, democracy and property rights. He has been published widely in newspapers around the world. He is the founder of Liberty Institute, an independent think tank based in Delhi. One of his current areas of interest is to explore ways of making policy proposals politically viable.  Together with ARCH Vahini, they developed the website Right to Property, with the aim of helping some of the remote rural communities document and map their claims over land and forest resources under the Forest Rights Act, 2006.

    Detailed bio

  • Date गुरू, 25 फ़रवरी, 2016
  • Time 05:00 बजे - 06:30 बजे
  • Venue Ground floor Conference Hall, R&T building, NIPFP
  • Abstract
    Land has emerged at the top of the political agenda. The political pendulum has swung from gross abuse of eminent domain to severe restrictions on scale and scope of land acquisition. However, the poor quality of land records and various land laws, including ceiling, zoning and taxations, have grossly distorted the land market. This has resulted in an artificial scarcity of land on the one hand. On the other hand, it has greatly limited the ability of land owners, particularly farmers, to capitalize their assets appropriately and diversify away from agriculture. 
     
    Hernando de Soto, the Peruvian economist, had identified a similar problem in his path breaking book, “The Mystery of Capital” (2001), and estimated hundreds of billions of dollars locked up in assets that cannot be legally capitalised.  
     
    In India today, high transaction costs, and regulatory restrictions, have created a mismatch between supply and demand for land. This has created a nexus between the rich and powerful securing access to land, and fuelling enormous corruption. At the same time this led to displacement and dispossession, reflecting in land alienation and growing protests, which has now built up a social and political coalition against such arbitrary intervention. 
     
    Now there is a window of opportunity to leverage the social unrest, political realization, and administrative desire to drastically reform the land laws, regulations and records. While the administration is digitizing the land records, many citizens and communities are engaged in documenting the ground situation using GPS and satellite images. A complementary relationship between the two efforts would rapidly help in updating the land records. The social and political convergence, aided by greater access to technology, including blockchain, could lead to rationalizing the laws and regulations governing land, steps towards a viable land market, with lower transaction cost, eliminate both land alienation and scarcity, thus, greatly reduce corruption. 
     
    Such a transparent and participative approach would empower the citizens and create a sense of community, with secure property ownership. It will also stimulate credibility and mutual trust between the people and the administration. In the process unimaginable value of assets will be unlocked and become available for more productive use. Poverty, after all, is primarily a reflection of people’s inability to capitalize whatever little assets they may possess. 
  • Schedule
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

WTO, State and Legal Capacity Building: A Unique Indian Model

  • Speaker James J. Nedumpara
  • Speaker profile
    Dr. James J. Nedumpara is an Associate Professor of Law and Executive Director, Centre for International Trade and Economic Laws, Jindal Global Law School. 
  • Date सोम, 22 फ़रवरी, 2016
  • Time 04:30 बजे - 06:00 बजे
  • Venue Ground floor conference hall, R&T building, NIPFP
  • Abstract

    This is an attempt to examine the background of the key WTO disputes which triggered a policy shift in India towards the State playing a more proactive role in encouraging the building of trade-related legal capacity. In particular, the talk will focus on the features of the unique trade-related capacity model chosen by India and how it differs from the alternate models established by other major developing countries that have an active profile in WTO dispute settlement. By undertaking such an analysis, the speaker seeks to explore as to how the Indian model is more geared towards hybrid policy making in contrast to other trade-related legal capacity models.​

    Abstract source

  • Schedule
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Special lecture

The Public Economics of Health Policy in Developing Countri​es

  • Speaker Jeffrey S. Hammer
  • Speaker profile
    Jeffrey Hammer is a Visiting Professor in Economic Development at W​oo​drow Wilson School, Princeton University. Jeff comes to the Woodrow Wilson School after 25 years at the World Bank, where he held various positions related to public economics, the last three in the New Delhi Office, and was an author of the World Development Report 2004 "Making Services Work for Poor People". His research interests include economic development, public economics and health in poor countries, particularly in Asia and Africa and more particularly in South Asia. His current research is on the quality of medical care in India, absenteeism of teachers and health workers, determinants of health status and improving service delivery through better accountability mechanisms. He has received a Ph. D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
  • Date सोम, 08 फ़रवरी, 2016 - शुक्र, 12 फ़रवरी, 2016
  • Venue Ground floor Conference Hall, R&T building, NIPFP
  • Details

    The public lecture series present the basic principles of public economics as it applies to the health sector in developing countries. It identifies the characteristic market failures related to health and healthcare, examining three broad categories of policies:

    1) public goods, preventive and promotive services

    2) primary, curative, health care and

    3) hospital based care or insurance.

    Going somewhat beyond standard economics, it compares the potential welfare improvement of the different categories of interventions to their relative difficulty of implementation to discuss priority setting given practical constraints.  While g​​eneral in scope, most examples are drawn from Indian experience and research.

  • Schedule
  • Contact email bins.sebastian@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Why Does the Global Economy Fail to Pick Up?

  • Speaker Ashoka Mody
  • Speaker profile

    Charles and Marie Robertson Visiting Professor in International Economic Policy and Lecturer in Public and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, USA.

  • Date सोम, 25 जनवरी, 2016
  • Time 04:00 बजे - 05:00 बजे
  • Venue Ground floor Conference Hall, R&T building, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, New Delhi
  • Abstract

    Every IMF global forecast expresses disappointment that growth has come in lower than expected but then goes on to promise that a pick up is around the corner. This has now gone on for 7 years. Why? The story forecasters tell always centers around some exceptional event just before the forecast. That is no longer credible. Do other stories: such as financial disruption and secular stagnation hold up? Or is this a simpler tale of a long-term decline in global productivity growth that was obscured by a global bubble, which has yet to fully burst? 

    https://www.princeton.edu/ceps/workingpapers/248mody.pdf

  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Regulatory Impact Assessment for Improving Regulation in India

  • Speaker Scott Jacobs, Managing Director of Jacobs, Cordova & Associates
  • Speaker profile

    Scott Jacobs is a leading global expert and author with 30 years of experience in regulatory reform and good business environments. He is Managing Director of Jacobs, Cordova & Associates, an international corporation specializing in regulatory reform solutions. He organized and directed the OECD Program on Regulatory Reform from 1995-2001, where he wrote many of the recommended regulatory practices that are now used as worldwide benchmarks. He has worked with over 90 developing and industrialized countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas in designing and implementing some of the largest regulatory reforms in the world and as well as targeted policy/sectoral reforms.

  • Date गुरू, 21 जनवरी, 2016
  • Time 04:30 बजे - 05:30 बजे
  • Venue Ground floor, Conference hall, R&T building, NIPFP
  • Abstract
    Regulations have widespread impacts, which affect multiple stakeholder groups in different ways. A sub-optimal regulation has the potential to increase the cost of administration and compliance, raise complexity and uncertainty, and most importantly, limits the likelihood of achievement of its objectives. Therefore, estimating impacts of regulation is necessary.
     
    Regulatory Impact Assessment is a process of systematically identifying and assessing the direct and indirect impacts of regulatory proposals, using consistent analytical methods. The talk will introduce RIA, its goals, and benefits experienced in countries that have successfully implemented the tool. The indispensible place of RIA in the regulatory reform package for India will be highlighted. The role of different stakeholder groups in promoting the adoption of RIA, building capacity and making India RIA ready will be discussed.
     
    The seminar will be organised in collaboration with Customer Unity & Trust Society (CUTS International), Jaipur.
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

​Central Banking Past and Present: Lessons from the career of Alan Greenspan


Seminar

The World Today, The Emerging Countries, And India: A View from the Global Consumption and Income Project

  • Speaker Sanjay G. Reddy
  • Speaker profile
    Sanjay G Reddy is an Associate Professor of Economics at The New School for Social Research. He is an Affiliated Faculty Member of the Politics Department of the New School for Social Research and a research associate of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University. He has previously taught at Columbia University, and been a visitor at diverse academic institutions in Europe, India and the US. He holds a PhD  in economics from Harvard University, an MPhil in social anthropology from the University of Cambridge, and an AB in applied mathematics with physics from Harvard University. He has held fellowships from the Center for Ethics, the Center for Population and Development Studies at Harvard University, the Center for Human Values at Princeton University, the Justitia Amplificata program of the Goethe University of Frankfurt and Free University of Berlin and, and the Advanced Research Collaborative of the City University of New York. He has received research support from various sources including the inaugural grants program of Institute for New Economic Thinking.
     
    He is one of the co-founders of the Global Consumption and Income Project. He has worked extensively as a researcher, consultant, or expert for development agencies and international institutions, including the G-24 (group of developing countries), the International Labour Organization, Oxfam, the UN Alliance of Civilisations, the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations Children's Fund, UN Development Programme, UNU World Institute for Development Economics Research, UN Research Institute for Social Development and the World Bank and has contributed to various expert consultations.  
     
    He has been a member of the advisory panel of the UNDP's Human Development Report, the UN Statistics Division's Steering Committee on Poverty Statistics and the advisory board of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. He has been elected a Fellow of the Human Development and Capabilities Association. He was or is a member of the editorial advisory boards of Development, Ethics & International Affairs, the European Journal of Development Research, Humanity, the Review of Agrarian Studies, the Review of Income and Wealth, and the Journal of Globalization and Development, and was Associate Editor of the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities. He was previously Co-Academic Director of the India China Institute at the New School. His work has been translated into Catalan, French, German, and Portuguese.
  • Date सोम, 18 जनवरी, 2016
  • Time 12:00 बजे
  • Venue Conference Hall, Centre for Policy Research, Dharma Marg, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi
  • Abstract

    How rapidly is the relative and absolute position of emerging countries in the world economy changing and what impact is it having?  What is India's role compared to other fast-growing and sizable countries, especially China?  What do these patterns suggest about the possible role in the future about these countries, including India? We introduce the Global Consumption and Income Project, which makes possible an unprecedented portrait of the changing levels of consumption and income of persons over time, within and across countries, around the world, and use it to address these questions.

  • Contact email president.cpr@cprindia.org
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Seminar

Why we Cheat: Experimental Evidence on Tax Compliance?

  • Speaker Raymond Duch
  • Speaker profile
     
    Professor Raymond Duch is an Official Fellow at Nuffield College. He also is the Director of the Nuffield Centre for Experimental Social Sciences (CESS). Prior to assuming these positions he was the Senator Don Henderson Scholar in Political Science at the University of Houston. He received his BA (Honours) from the University of Manitoba in Canada and his MA and PhD from the University of Rochester. In addition, he has held visiting appointments at the Hoover Institute and the Graduate School of Management, Stanford University, The Institute for Social Research Oslo, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, and the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung.
     
    Detailed CV can be accessed at http://www.raymondduch.com/bio/

     

  • Date गुरू, 14 जनवरी, 2016
  • Time 04:30 बजे - 05:30 बजे
  • Venue Ground floor, Conference hall, R&T building, NIPFP
  • Abstract
     
    Successful redistributive taxation requires that the rich actually pay their taxes. National survey data indicate that the rich typically have much lower tax morale. Is it the case that simply acquiring wealth results in an antipathy towards taxation? This essay suggests a somewhat more nuanced view: individuals who demonstrate high levels of ability or effort, who typically are rich, are much less likely than others to comply with taxation. A causal mechanism contributing to tax cheating appears to be ability as opposed to wealth per se.
     
    There is overwhelming evidence that subjects who perform better on the real effort tasks cheat more - simply performing better, in our experiments, results in greedier behaviour. Experimental treatments were implemented in order to explore alternative causal mechanism. Clearly the price of compliance to redistributive taxation also matters - as the cost of compliance rises we see an increase in cheating. But the higher levels of cheating by able versus less able types persists in high and low tax regimes. There is no experimental evidence that when earnings are associated with luck or status that this correlation between performance or ability and cheating moderates. And finally efforts to make the experimental treatment regimes much more redistributive had little affect on the intrinsic motivations of those with high ability - the correlation between ability and cheating was similar to the baseline treatments. Intrinsic motivation for complying with taxation is very asymmetric. Those who exhibit high ability, and hence are more likely to be rich, realise much less intrinsic benefits from complying with taxation than is the case for those with lower ability who are more likely to be poor.
     
     
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Private versus Public Government Goods:Targeted Spending, Swing Voters and Electoral Competition across India’s States

  • Speaker Dr. Stanley L. Winer
  • Speaker profile

    Professor in Public Policy, School of Public Policy and Administration and Department of Economics, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.

  • Date गुरू, 07 जनवरी, 2016
  • Time 03:30 बजे - 05:00 बजे
  • Venue Ground floor Conference Hall, R&T building, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, New Delhi
  • Abstract

    In this paper we argue that the composition of Indian state government expenditures, particularly the ratio of private goods publicly provided used to target swing voters and special interest as a proportion of total state expenditures, is a decreasing function of real per capita income and the level of political competition (holding constant other demographic and cultural influences). These hypotheses are then tested on a panel of 14 Indian states over the fiscal years 1987/88 to 2011/12. The long run results of three alternative ARDL models are broadly consistent with the proposed hypotheses, particularly the relationship between the private good share of state expenditures and real per capita incomes. They suggest that rising incomes and more effective political competition work together to improve a state’s policy mix and to the extent that general welfare enhancing policies prove effective, economic growth and development becomes at least partially endogenous.

  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in