Researchers Publication

The IHDS Forum is a monthly update of socio-economic developments in India by the IHDS research community, based on the India Human Development Survey, jointly conducted by NCAER and the University of Maryland. While two earlier rounds of the survey were completed in 2004-05 and 2011-12, respectively, the third round has also been launched and...   Read More

The book The Allure of Battle (2017) by Cathal Nolan argues that while most military history explains winners and losers through decisive battles and strategic genius, what matters is endurance and technology. India’s first National Security Strategy document is being written and will propose accelerating domestic defence production. However, the ongoing Ukraine and Israel conflicts...   Read More

Recently, considerable research has been undertaken in India in policy circles to identify the pathway for achieving Net Zero Emission by the 2070s. However, as most of the studies focus on the overall national perspective, they do not take into account inter-State differences with respect to availability of the primary resources of land, mineral resources,...   Read More

The National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), one of India’s premier economic policy research think tanks, carried out the 127th Round of its Business Expectations Survey (BES) in December 2023, with support from the National Stock Exchange of India Limited (NSE). NCAER has been carrying out the BES every quarter since 1992, covering 500 firms...   Read More

A five-point agenda to fix the country’s PF scheme could shift 50 million people from informal to formal work. Let’s blend idealism with pragmatism. The excellent book Making Social Spending Work by Peter Lindert suggests societies need safety nets to catch those in need because of unlucky opening balances, past mistakes or hard times. A...   Read More

This paper addresses one of the most critical yet overlooked problems of excessive absence of students in primary grades in India. Considering the intuitive link between students’ attendance and achievements, this paper empirically investigates the incidence and causes of chronic absenteeism while examining the variations in the attainment of foundational skills of primary students. Using...   Read More

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the consequent nationwide lockdown in India that began on March 25, 2020, caused a major disruption in the labour market, leading to the widespread loss of livelihoods and food insecurity. The findings from a telephonic survey of a representative sample of more than 3,000 households in the National Capital Region (NCR)...   Read More

The COVID-19 pandemic had a severe impact on the tourism industry across the world. Be it aviation or hospitality, transportation, tour operators or eateries, every activity related to tourism was adversely affected by the pandemic in an unprecedented manner. India saw the first severe impact during the first quarter of 2020-21 when the tourism industry...   Read More

Do temporary labor supply programs cause physicians to move to and stay in undesirable areas? To what extent do these programs improve the health of the elderly and non-elderly population in those areas? I investigate these questions by studying state and local loan repayment programs for new eligible physicians which were rolled out over the...   Read More

I investigate how allowing lower tuition for undocumented students at public colleges improves education outcomes, and changes institutional pricing patterns. I use administrative data and a residual method to quantify the actual number of undocumented students at school level in the pre-reform period. Exploiting the reforms staggered adoption across states and time, as well as...   Read More

This paper examines strategic trade policy for differentiated network-goods oligopolies under alternative scenarios when there is export-rivalry between two countries. We demonstrate that, in the absence of managerial delegation, the optimal trade policy entails an export tax (subsidy) if network externalities are weak (strong). However, when price competition is combined with managerial delegation, the opposite...   Read More

This article discusses son preference in India, encompassing both differential investment in sons and a fertility preference to have sons. Regarding differential investment, I focus on child health, where the evidence shows that gender gaps in inputs and outcomes have narrowed in recent years. Nonetheless, girls remain disadvantaged in important ways, and making health services...   Read More