National Council of Applied Economic Research
Under the Right to Education Act (2009), the Indian government mandated private schools to reserve 25% of primary school places for socioeconomically disadvantaged children. This study examines the policy’s spillover effect on private schooling costs. Using household survey data and a difference-in-differences approach, it compares private school fees for disadvantaged children across two age cohorts... Read More
We evaluate the earnings and conversion disadvantages that persons with disabilities face in India, which has amongst the highest number of persons with disabilities globally. Our study is unique in that we use two major nationally representative household surveys consisting of over 85 thousand households, alongside a qualitative study to explore the nature and the... Read More
We assess India’s inflation-targeting regime at the eight-year mark. The Reserve Bank of India continues to be a flexible inflation targeter: it responds to both the output gap and inflation when setting policy rates. It has become neither more hawkish nor more reactive with the transition to inflation-targeting. Evidence points to improved outcomes: inflation is... Read More
Geoeconomic fragmentation—the phenomenon of international transactions being increasingly restricted to politically aligned partners—creates risks for individual countries but also opportunities that some hope to seize by becoming “connector” countries. We formalize the concept of connectedness as the property of transacting with international partners drawn from across the ideological spectrum, and explore various policy correlates of... Read More
This paper provides cross-country firm-level evidence on productivity spillovers from foreign direct investment (FDI), separately for greenfield FDI and cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As). The granularity of bilateral sector-level FDI datasets allows for addressing possible endogeneity issues by applying a two-step approach whereby an exogenous FDI measure is constructed from a gravity-type regression of bilateral... Read More
With a growing economy and declining poverty, India faces a curious challenge in providing a social safety net to its citizens. Using data from three rounds of the India Human Development Survey (IHDS), collected in 2004-5, 2011-12, and 2022-24, this paper shows that households face considerable transition in and out of poverty as the economy... Read More
Globally, women’s share in corporate leadership has been steadily rising, including in India. The female director mandate under The Companies Act (2013) in India marked a significant step toward gender-inclusive corporate leadership, requiring listed firms to have at least one woman on their board. Within a year, the percentage of listed firms without women on... Read More
This paper assesses the state of Punjab’s economy, reasons for its current situation, prospects for growth, and policies to enable that growth. Punjab’s economy is characterized by slow growth, societal challenges, and environmental degradation. We identify four interrelated issues that act as constraints on the Punjab economy. First, driven largely by dependence on the central... Read More
India accumulated a sizable stock of foreign reserves over the past two decades, in common with many other emerging economies. Its current reserves comfortably surpass conventional thresholds for adequacy used by the International Monetary Fund and others. An assessment of whether the stock of reserves is appropriate should depend on an evaluation of the benefits... Read More
How can India leverage its potential and implement effective strategies to become a developed nation by 2047? In his 2022 Independence Day speech, the Prime Minister (PM) outlined an ambitious vision for transforming the nation into a developed country by 2047—‘Viksit Bharat (VB)’. It aims to reshape India into a technologically advanced, economically strong and... Read More
