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Radhika Pandey
Radhika Pandey holds a Ph.D. in economics. She is an associate professor at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), New Delhi. Her core areas of work are macroeconomics, business cycles, financial sector legislative reforms, and capital controls. One of the key areas of her work has been to improve measurement of the economy through a research programme on empirical macroeconomics which includes identifying well-measured data; seasonal adjustment; and identifying and dating business cycle conditions.
She was part of research teams for a number of Ministry of Finance instituted expert committees such as Financial Legislative Reforms Commission (FSLRC), Panel on External Commercial Borrowings and Report of the Working Group on Foreign Investments in India.
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Fiscal rules during the Covid-19 pandemic
Several countries have amended their fiscal rules to provide for additional public spending, in order to revive their economies that have been adversely hit by the pandemic. This post examines the fiscal strategies to deal with the Covid-19 shock of a set of countries that belong to the G20 group or the middle-income EMEs, and are broadly similarly placed as India.
Covid-19: Assessing fiscal position of government in first quarter of 2020-21
In this post, Pandey and Raju analyse the trends in the revenue, expenditure, and borrowings of the Government of India in the first quarter of 2020-21, based on data released by the Controller General of Accounts. They argue that the contraction in revenues in the Covid-struck economy has constrained the government’s capacity to effectively address the operational needs arising from the pandemic, and that greater borrowing by the government may be required in the coming months to offset a rise in expenditure.
कोविड-19 और एमएसएमई क्षेत्र: समस्या 'पहचान' की
हाल ही में 5,000 सूक्ष्म, लघु और मध्यम उद्यमों (एमएसएमई) के एक सर्वेक्षण में पाया गया कि उनमें से 71 प्रतिशत उद्यम मार्च 2020 में भारत में कोविड-19 लॉकडाउन के कारण अपने कर्मचारियों के वेतन का भुगतान नहीं कर पाए। सरकार ने एमएसएमई पर केंद्रित एक प्रोत्साहन पैकेज की घोषणा की है जो शीघ्र आने वाला है। इस पोस्ट में, राधिका पांडे और अमृता पिल्लई ने एमएसएमई की एक व्यापक डेटासेट की अनुपलब्धता के कारण लाभार्थियों की पहचान के मुद्दे और लक्षित राहत वितरण के लिए उपयोग करने हेतु संभावित तंत्र का वर्णन किया है।
Covid-19 and MSMEs: The ‘identification’ problem
A recent survey of 5,000 micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) found that 71% of them could not pay salaries to their workers in March 2020 due to the Covid-19 lockdown in India. The government has announced that a stimulus package focused on the MSME sector is in the offing. In this post, Pandey and Pillai explain the issue of identification of beneficiaries in the absence of a comprehensive dataset on MSME units, and suggest potential mechanisms for targeted relief delivery.
How tax incentives influence household financial saving
Indian households tend to hold a high fraction of their wealth in non-financial assets such as real estate and gold. Tax policy has been used to incentivise saving in financial assets and encouraging long-term saving. Analysing aggregate national accounts data, this article finds that while aggregate financial saving has remained stable, tax breaks have been influential in driving saving into specific products, like insurance and pensions.
The challenge of identifying economic activities of firms
The reliability of India’s GDP estimates has been debated extensively. A key challenge in the construction of macro-aggregates lies in the proper identification of firms’ economic activities as firms can have multiple activities across industries. In this post, Radhika Pandey, Amey Sapre, and Pramod Sinha demonstrate the extent of the identification problem, which is a major challenge in the estimation of value addition in the manufacturing sector.
What does the new IIP series tell us about the state of manufacturing in India?
In May 2017, the Central Statistics Office released the new series of the Index of Industrial Production with 2011-12 as the base year, after a comprehensive revision of computation methods. The series almost entirely reverses the performance picture of Indian manufacturing, showing sharp upward revisions in the growth of activity. This column finds that the new index is likely to show inflated growth during times of falling inflation. Thus, deciphering the actual change in production continues to be difficult.
How the Bangladesh unrest may impact India’s trade
Bangladesh has been a major export market for India, with India traditionally enjoying a strong trade surplus with its neighbour. In this post, Pandey and Sharma provide an overview of recent trends in India-Bangladesh trade, and consider how Bangladesh’s ongoing political turmoil may impact its import demand, prospects of an India-Bangladesh free trade agreement, and India’s role in global textile trade.
Explainer: Conceptual foundations of cryptocurrencies
In recent times, cryptocurrencies have become a subject of intense deliberations among policymakers, market participants, investors, and other stakeholders. Whether cryptocurrencies will revolutionise banking and payment systems or is the euphoria surrounding cryptocurrencies like a bubble waiting to burst ̶ only time will tell. In this explainer, Pandey and Sharma attempt to decode the mechanics of cryptocurrencies and simplify the jargon used in the discussion on cryptocurrencies.
Facilitating foreign investment in rupee-denominated debt
On 22 September 2017, the RBI notified that rupee-denominated offshore bonds – popularly known as ‘masala bonds’ – will no longer form part of the limit for investment in corporate bonds by foreign portfolio investors. In this article, Radhika Pandey contends that while this is a step in the right direction, more needs to be done to complete the reform to simplify and rationalise the current regulatory framework.
Will demonetisation lead to a protracted economic slowdown?
In this article, Pandey and Sengupta argue that the impact of the contractionary demand shock triggered by the note ban will gradually radiate from cash-intensive activities to virtually every sector of the economy.