The India Policy Forum 2016

The India Policy Forum, IPF, in its 13th continuous year in 2016, is organized by NCAER in New Delhi in July every year. Its objective is to promote rigorous empirical research on Indian economic policy with commissioned papers, an annual two-day conference leading to a volume, the India Policy Forum Volume published by SAGE, and the annual IPF Lecture. The IPF explores and provides insights on India’s rapidly evolving and often tumultuous economic transition and the underlying policy reforms that are driving it. IPF started in 2004 as a collaborative endeavor between NCAER and the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. It is now sponsored and organized by NCAER.

The India Policy Forum 2016 featured an exciting mix of paper presentations, a policy roundtable and the IPF Lecture. The conference commenced with keynote remarks by Amitabh Kant, CEO, Niti Aayog. Five high quality research paper presentations followed, inviting comments and views of discussants and the conference participants. The Policy Roundtable on “The Challenge of Skilling India for Global competitive”, moderated by Dr Shekhar Shah, Director-General, NCAER had Jayant Krishna from the National Skill Development Corporation, John Blomquist  from the World Bank, Bornali Bhandari, NCAER and Karthik Muralidharan, University of California as the panellists. Please see the detailed IPF 2016 Program.

The IPF 2016 Lecture was delivered by Arvind Subramanian, Chief Economic Advisor, Government of India, on “India and the Global Economy Post-Brexit”. He also released NCAER’s 2015-16 India Policy Forum Volume on this occasion. Shekhar Shah, Subir Gokarn and Karthik Muralidharan are the editors of this latest IPF Volume.

The topics that IPF papers have dealt with over the years cover a broad sweep of macro, international, and sector challenges that the Indian economy has faced and the many successes and failures of policymaking over the past several decade. IPF research papers are invited on the strength of their policy-relevance and represent some of the best empirical research on India being done globally. Papers appear in the annual IPF Volume after revisions based on IPF discussants’ comments, a usually lively floor discussion, and the guidance provided by the IPF editors.

IPF Advisory Panel: Shankar N. Acharya, Isher J. Ahluwalia, Montek S. Ahluwalia, Pranab Bardhan, Jagdish Bhagwati, Barry Bosworth, Willem H. Buiter, Stanley Fischer, Vijay Kelkar, Mohsin Khan, Anne O. Krueger, Ashok Lahiri, Rakesh Mohan, Arvind Panagariya, Raghuram Rajan, Shekhar Shah, T.N. Srinivasan, Nicholas Stern, and Lawrence H. Summers.

IPF Research Panel: Abhijit Banerjee, Kaushik Basu, Surjit S. Bhalla, Mihir Desai, Shantayanan Devarajan, Esther Duflo, Subir Gokarn, Jeffery S. Hammer, Vijay Joshi, Devesh Kapur, Kenneth M. Kletzer, Robert Z. Lawrence, Rajnish Mehra, Dilip Mookherjee, Karthik Muralidharan, Ila Patnaik, Urjit R. Patel, Indira Rajaraman, M. Govinda Rao, Nirvikar Singh, Rohini Somanathan, Tarun Ramadorai, Ajay Shah and Arvind Virmani.