Prakash Chander
National University of Singapore
Date: August 1, 2011
Time: 03:30 P.M.
Venue:
NIPFP Auditorium (Ground Floor)
National Institute of Public Finance and Policy,
18/2 Satsang Vihar Marg, Special Institutional Area,
New Delhi-110067(INDIA)
Location:
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Thursday, July 28, 2011
28-29 July 2011: Higher Education: New Trends and Challenges
Organised by:
Centre for Policy Research (CPR), New Delhi and
Centre for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Date: July 28-29, 2011
Venue:
Conference Hall,
Centre for Policy Research,
Dharma Marg, Chanakyapuri,
New Delhi–110021(INDIA)
Location:
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Centre for Policy Research (CPR), New Delhi and
Centre for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Date: July 28-29, 2011
Venue:
Conference Hall,
Centre for Policy Research,
Dharma Marg, Chanakyapuri,
New Delhi–110021(INDIA)
Location:
View Larger Map
29 July 2011: Pre-electoral Coalitions and Post-election Bargaining
Kalyan Chatterjee
The Pennsylvania State University
Abstract:
We study a game-theoretic model where three political parties (left, median and right) can form coalitions both before and after the election. Before the election, coalitions can commit to a seat-sharing arrangement, but not to a policy platform or a division of rents from office; coalition members are free to break up and join other coalitions after the election. Equilibrium pre-electoral coalitions are not necessarily made up of the most ideologically similar parties, and they form under proportional representation as well as plurality rule. They form not only to avoid splitting the vote, but also because seat-sharing arrangements will influence the post-election bargaining and coalition formation. The median party's share of the surplus in a two-party government is large if ideology is not very important, or if its ideological position is not very distant from the third (outside) party, so that it has a credible threat to switch coalition partners. On the other hand, if ideology is very important, and if the right and left parties are ideologically distant from each other so each is willing to give up a lot to prevent the other from joining a governing coalition, then the equilibrium outcome may be that the median party forms a one-party government.
Date: July 29, 2011
Time: 11:30 A.M.
Venue:
Seminar Room 2, New Building
Indian Statistical Institute Delhi Centre,
7, S. J. S. Sansanwal Marg,
New Delhi-110016 (INDIA)
Location:
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The Pennsylvania State University
Abstract:
We study a game-theoretic model where three political parties (left, median and right) can form coalitions both before and after the election. Before the election, coalitions can commit to a seat-sharing arrangement, but not to a policy platform or a division of rents from office; coalition members are free to break up and join other coalitions after the election. Equilibrium pre-electoral coalitions are not necessarily made up of the most ideologically similar parties, and they form under proportional representation as well as plurality rule. They form not only to avoid splitting the vote, but also because seat-sharing arrangements will influence the post-election bargaining and coalition formation. The median party's share of the surplus in a two-party government is large if ideology is not very important, or if its ideological position is not very distant from the third (outside) party, so that it has a credible threat to switch coalition partners. On the other hand, if ideology is very important, and if the right and left parties are ideologically distant from each other so each is willing to give up a lot to prevent the other from joining a governing coalition, then the equilibrium outcome may be that the median party forms a one-party government.
Date: July 29, 2011
Time: 11:30 A.M.
Venue:
Seminar Room 2, New Building
Indian Statistical Institute Delhi Centre,
7, S. J. S. Sansanwal Marg,
New Delhi-110016 (INDIA)
Location:
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Monday, July 25, 2011
28 July 2011: The Challenge of Improving Health in India
Abhijit Banerjee
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract:
There is a lot of talk now about the need to offer comprehensive health coverage for all Indians. However this conversation seems to entirely ignore the large body of accumulated knowledge about the supply and demand for healthcare in India, which makes it very clear that offering comprehensive coverage will be an extraordinarily challenging proposition without major changes in both demand and supply, both requiring major reforms in policy and implementation. Even the more limited and less fraught ambition of offering everyone catastrophic health coverage will be a stretch. It is also not clear, given that there is so much to be done on public health, why so much of the conversation is going in a different direction.
Date: July 28, 2011
Time: 03:30 P.M.
Venue:
NCAER Auditorium
National Council of Applied Economic Research
Parisila Bhawan, 11, Indraprastha Estate
New Delhi-110002(INDIA)
Location:
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract:
There is a lot of talk now about the need to offer comprehensive health coverage for all Indians. However this conversation seems to entirely ignore the large body of accumulated knowledge about the supply and demand for healthcare in India, which makes it very clear that offering comprehensive coverage will be an extraordinarily challenging proposition without major changes in both demand and supply, both requiring major reforms in policy and implementation. Even the more limited and less fraught ambition of offering everyone catastrophic health coverage will be a stretch. It is also not clear, given that there is so much to be done on public health, why so much of the conversation is going in a different direction.
Date: July 28, 2011
Time: 03:30 P.M.
Venue:
NCAER Auditorium
National Council of Applied Economic Research
Parisila Bhawan, 11, Indraprastha Estate
New Delhi-110002(INDIA)
Location:
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28 July 2011: India's Mysterious Manufacturing Miracle
Gunjan Sharma
University of Missouri
Abstract:
Using data on formal manufacturing plants in India, we report a large
but imprecise acceleration in productivity growth starting around the
mid-1990s (e.g. 1993-2004 compared to 1980-1992). We trace the
acceleration to productivity growth within large plants (200 workers
or more), as opposed to reallocation across such plants. As many
economists believe Indian reforms during this era improved resource
allocation, the absence of a growth pickup from reallocation is
surprising. Moreover, when we look across industries we fail to
robustly relate productivity growth to prominent reforms such as
industrial de-licensing, tariff reductions, FDI liberalization, or
lifting of small-scale industry reservations. Even under a generous
reading of their effects, these reforms (at least as we measure them)
seem to account for less than one-quarter of overall productivity
growth.
Date: July 28, 2011
Time: 03:00 P.M.
Venue:
AMEX Conference Room (Second Floor),
Department of Economics,
Delhi School of Economics,
New Delhi-110007(INDIA)
Location:
View Larger Map
University of Missouri
Abstract:
Using data on formal manufacturing plants in India, we report a large
but imprecise acceleration in productivity growth starting around the
mid-1990s (e.g. 1993-2004 compared to 1980-1992). We trace the
acceleration to productivity growth within large plants (200 workers
or more), as opposed to reallocation across such plants. As many
economists believe Indian reforms during this era improved resource
allocation, the absence of a growth pickup from reallocation is
surprising. Moreover, when we look across industries we fail to
robustly relate productivity growth to prominent reforms such as
industrial de-licensing, tariff reductions, FDI liberalization, or
lifting of small-scale industry reservations. Even under a generous
reading of their effects, these reforms (at least as we measure them)
seem to account for less than one-quarter of overall productivity
growth.
Date: July 28, 2011
Time: 03:00 P.M.
Venue:
AMEX Conference Room (Second Floor),
Department of Economics,
Delhi School of Economics,
New Delhi-110007(INDIA)
Location:
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Wednesday, July 20, 2011
22 July 2011: Remittances and Rashomon
Randall Akee
Tufts University and
Devesh Kapur
University of Pennsylvania
Abstract:
The paper examines the massive discrepancies on remittance data among
different data sources. Utilizing a novel data set on remittance data
for India that matches household surveys to administrative bank data,
we investigate the differences in self-reported and actual deposits to
Non-Resident Indian (NRI) accounts. There is a striking difference
between the perceived and actual frequency and amount of deposits to
NRI accounts. Our results indicate the presence of non-classical
measurement error in the reporting of remittances in the form of
deposits to NRI accounts. As a consequence, regression analyses using
remittances as an explanatory variable may contain large upward biases
instead of the usual attenuation of results under classical
measurement error. Instrumental variables estimates are no better; the
estimated coefficients from these regressions are more than three
times the size of the OLS regression results. We also find that
measurement error has macroeconomic consequences as well; estimates of
total aggregate remittances differ by an order of magnitude between
administrative and self-reported remittances. We conclude with some
questions about NSS and BOP data.
Date: July 22, 2011
Time: 11:30 A.M.
Venue:
Seminar Room 2, New Building
Indian Statistical Institute Delhi Centre,
7, S. J. S. Sansanwal Marg,
New Delhi-110016 (INDIA)
Location:
View Larger Map
Tufts University and
Devesh Kapur
University of Pennsylvania
Abstract:
The paper examines the massive discrepancies on remittance data among
different data sources. Utilizing a novel data set on remittance data
for India that matches household surveys to administrative bank data,
we investigate the differences in self-reported and actual deposits to
Non-Resident Indian (NRI) accounts. There is a striking difference
between the perceived and actual frequency and amount of deposits to
NRI accounts. Our results indicate the presence of non-classical
measurement error in the reporting of remittances in the form of
deposits to NRI accounts. As a consequence, regression analyses using
remittances as an explanatory variable may contain large upward biases
instead of the usual attenuation of results under classical
measurement error. Instrumental variables estimates are no better; the
estimated coefficients from these regressions are more than three
times the size of the OLS regression results. We also find that
measurement error has macroeconomic consequences as well; estimates of
total aggregate remittances differ by an order of magnitude between
administrative and self-reported remittances. We conclude with some
questions about NSS and BOP data.
Date: July 22, 2011
Time: 11:30 A.M.
Venue:
Seminar Room 2, New Building
Indian Statistical Institute Delhi Centre,
7, S. J. S. Sansanwal Marg,
New Delhi-110016 (INDIA)
Location:
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Monday, July 18, 2011
21 July 2011: Common Belief Revisited
Romeo Balanquit
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Abstract:
This brief study presents how selection of equilibrium in a game with
many equilibria can be made possible when the common knowledge
assumption (CKA) is replaced by the notion of common belief.
Essentially, this idea of pinning down an equilibrium by weakening the
CKA is the central feature of the global game approach which
introduces a natural perturbation on games with complete information.
We argue that since common belief is another form of departure from
the CKA, it can also obtain the results attained by the global game
framework in terms of selecting an equilibrium. We provide here
necessary and sufficient conditions. Following the program of
weakening the CKA, we weaken the notion of common belief further to
provide a less stringent and a more natural way of believing an event.
We call this belief process as iterated quasi-common p-belief which is
a generalization to many players of a two-person iterated p-belief. It
is shown that this converges with the standard notion of common
p-belief at a sufficiently large number of players. Moreover, the
agreeing to disagree result in the case of beliefs (Monderer & Samet,
1989 and Neeman, 1996) can also be given a generalized form,
parameterized by the number of players.
Date: July 21, 2011
Time: 03:00 P.M.
Venue:
AMEX Conference Room (Second Floor),
Department of Economics,
Delhi School of Economics,
New Delhi-110007(INDIA)
Location:
View Larger Map
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Abstract:
This brief study presents how selection of equilibrium in a game with
many equilibria can be made possible when the common knowledge
assumption (CKA) is replaced by the notion of common belief.
Essentially, this idea of pinning down an equilibrium by weakening the
CKA is the central feature of the global game approach which
introduces a natural perturbation on games with complete information.
We argue that since common belief is another form of departure from
the CKA, it can also obtain the results attained by the global game
framework in terms of selecting an equilibrium. We provide here
necessary and sufficient conditions. Following the program of
weakening the CKA, we weaken the notion of common belief further to
provide a less stringent and a more natural way of believing an event.
We call this belief process as iterated quasi-common p-belief which is
a generalization to many players of a two-person iterated p-belief. It
is shown that this converges with the standard notion of common
p-belief at a sufficiently large number of players. Moreover, the
agreeing to disagree result in the case of beliefs (Monderer & Samet,
1989 and Neeman, 1996) can also be given a generalized form,
parameterized by the number of players.
Date: July 21, 2011
Time: 03:00 P.M.
Venue:
AMEX Conference Room (Second Floor),
Department of Economics,
Delhi School of Economics,
New Delhi-110007(INDIA)
Location:
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19 July 2011: Assessing the Impact of Transparency and Accountability Initiatives in Service Delivery
Anuradha Joshi
Institute of Development Studies, Sussex
Abstract:
In the past decade, strengthening public accountability is
emerging as a key strategy for improving public services.
Increasingly, debates about strengthening accountability have focused
on two types of initiatives: (a) increasing government transparency –
bringing previously opaque information or processes into the public
domain and b) and ‘social accountability’—broadly defined as
citizen-led action for demanding accountability from providers.
The popularity of such initiatives has also raised important questions
about impact. Does increasing transparency or supporting social
accountability initiatives lead to outcomes we desire? What are the
assumed links through which these impacts are expected to occur?
Drawing on a paper commissioned by the Transparency and Accountability
Initiative, Dr. Joshi will outline the available evidence on the
impact of such initiatives in the field of public service delivery.
The main argument is that there is not enough evidence to identify the
conditions under which such initiatives work and have impact. The
reasons for this are several: vagueness about what an initiative
means; the fragmented nature of the evidence, lack of systematic
attention to impact, and few comparative studies that focus on the
identification of key enabling factors.
Date: July 19, 2011
Time: 12:30 P.M.
Venue:
Conference Hall II,
Centre for Policy Research,
Dharma Marg, Chanakyapuri,
New Delhi–110021(INDIA)
Location:
View Larger Map
Institute of Development Studies, Sussex
Abstract:
In the past decade, strengthening public accountability is
emerging as a key strategy for improving public services.
Increasingly, debates about strengthening accountability have focused
on two types of initiatives: (a) increasing government transparency –
bringing previously opaque information or processes into the public
domain and b) and ‘social accountability’—broadly defined as
citizen-led action for demanding accountability from providers.
The popularity of such initiatives has also raised important questions
about impact. Does increasing transparency or supporting social
accountability initiatives lead to outcomes we desire? What are the
assumed links through which these impacts are expected to occur?
Drawing on a paper commissioned by the Transparency and Accountability
Initiative, Dr. Joshi will outline the available evidence on the
impact of such initiatives in the field of public service delivery.
The main argument is that there is not enough evidence to identify the
conditions under which such initiatives work and have impact. The
reasons for this are several: vagueness about what an initiative
means; the fragmented nature of the evidence, lack of systematic
attention to impact, and few comparative studies that focus on the
identification of key enabling factors.
Date: July 19, 2011
Time: 12:30 P.M.
Venue:
Conference Hall II,
Centre for Policy Research,
Dharma Marg, Chanakyapuri,
New Delhi–110021(INDIA)
Location:
View Larger Map
Friday, July 8, 2011
15 July 2011: Land Issues in India Including Issues Relating to Acquisition by the Government
Sanjoy Chakravorty
Temple University
Date: July 15, 2011
Time: 11:00 A.M.
Venue:
Committee Room "B"
Vigyan Bhawan Annexe
Maulana Azad Road
New Delhi- 110 011(INDIA)
Location:
View Vigyan Bhawan Annex in a larger map
Temple University
Date: July 15, 2011
Time: 11:00 A.M.
Venue:
Committee Room "B"
Vigyan Bhawan Annexe
Maulana Azad Road
New Delhi- 110 011(INDIA)
Location:
View Vigyan Bhawan Annex in a larger map
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