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Ranjan Ray
Ranjan Ray is Professor of Economics at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Ranjan joined Monash University in January 2008 as Professor of Economics from the University of Tasmania. He served as Professor of Economics at the University of Tasmania from 1995 till the beginning of 2008. He also served as Head of Economics at the University of Tasmania from 1995-1998. Prior to that, Ranjan held the position of Professor of Public Economics at the Delhi School of Economics, India from 1989-1995. He moved to Delhi after holding a permanent position in the Department of Econometrics at the University of Manchester in the UK from 1979-1989. He has also held visiting positions at several top ranking academic institutions such as the University of British Columbia and Cornell University.
Ranjan did his undergraduate studies in Presidency College, Calcutta and obtained his B.A. in Economics from the Universityof Calcutta, India. He did his post graduate studies at the Delhi School of Economics, securing his M.A. from Delhi University. He then proceeded to undertake his doctoral studies at the London School of Economics and secured his Ph.D. from London University, U.K. Ranjan has a wide range of research interests that include the specification and estimation of demand systems, the design and reform of commodity taxes, gender bias in consumption patterns, intra household resource allocation, child labour, household poverty and dietary patterns in developing countries, multi-dimensional deprivation, corruption and the informal sector. Ranjan has published widely in a number of highly ranked journals in Economics including The Economic Journal, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Economica, Oxford Economic Papers, European Economic Review, Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Development Economics and The Economic Record. He is currently on the Editorial Board of the Economic Record, the official journal of the Economic Society of Australia. He has also been involved in projects funded by the World Bank and the ILO.
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Goods and services tax: Estimating optimal rates
Introduced in India in 2017, a key feature of the goods and services tax (GST) system is that the tax rate for a particular commodity is uniform across the country. Based on a counterfactual framework that incorporates regional diversity in prices and spending to estimate optimal commodity tax rates, this article argues for a departure from this universal GST practice in India.
Why the World Bank's International Comparison Program has limited use for India
Preliminary results from the World Bank’s International Comparison Program, which seeks to compare the economies of 199 countries across the globe, were released recently. In this article, Ranjan Ray, Professor of Economics, Monash University, highlights several features of the exercise that limits its usefulness for a diverse country such as India, and makes recommendations for the next round.
कोयला आधारित बिजली इकाइयों से प्रदूषण और बच्चों एवं महिलाओं की एनीमिक स्थिति
स्वास्थ्य पर वायु प्रदूषण के प्रभाव को व्यापक रूप से शोध-साहित्य में जगह मिली है। जहां अन्य अध्ययनों में मुख्य रूप से सामान्य रुग्णता और मृत्यु दर जैसे परिणामों पर ध्यान केंद्रित किया गया है, यह लेख भारत में छोटे बच्चों और प्रौढ़ उम्र की महिलाओं की एनीमिक स्थिति पर कोयला आधारित बिजली इकाइयों द्वारा पड़ने वाले प्रदूषण के प्रभाव का मूल्यांकन प्रस्तुत करता है। इन अतिरिक्त लागतों के जुड़ जाने से नवीकरणीय ऊर्जा की ओर प्रगतिशील बदलाव और कोयले पर निर्भरता कम करने का मामला मजबूत होता है।
Pollution from coal-based power units and anaemic status of children and women
An extensive literature has considered the impact of air pollution on health. While studies have mainly focussed on outcomes such as general morbidity and mortality, this article evaluates the impact of pollution caused by coal-based power units on the anaemic status of young children and prime-age women in India. Factoring in these additional costs strengthens the case for a progressive shift to renewable energy and reduced reliance on coal.
Child health, fertility, and sex ratio: India vs. Bangladesh
Despite having lower per capita income, Bangladesh has superior performance over India on key welfare indicators. This article compares the experiences of India and Bangladesh on several key indicators during 1990-2015 using two different datasets. It finds better performance of Bangladesh on infant mortality rate with a lower boy-girl sex ratio at birth than India. While both countries record an impressive decline in fertility rates, this was accompanied by a worsening of the sex ratio in India but not in Bangladesh.
Multi-dimensional deprivation in India: Comparisons with China and Vietnam
While several studies have compared India with China on economic measures such as GDP per capita, this column looks at a measure of people’s deprivation across a wide range of indicators. It finds India lagging behind in several dimensions, particularly on children’s health.
Quality of governance and welfare outcomes
As the MDGs gave way to the SDGs, considerable attention has been focussed on movements in key welfare indicators for women and children in the past decade. In this context, this column compares India with Bangladesh, and also looks at the relative performance of Indian states. Further, it provides evidence on the strength of association between the quality of governance and welfare outcomes in India.
Economic growth versus social development: The spatial dimension
In the context of the economic growth versus social development debate sparked off by Bhagwati and Sen, this column argues for a more nuanced approach to assessing progress. Combining nationally representative data on expenditure and social indicators for the different states in India, it explores the spatial dimension of the country’s economic development.
Enhancing nutrition among the poor: UBI vs. welfare programmes
Some proponents of universal basic income (UBI) for India believe that the unconditional cash transfer should replace existing welfare programmes. Based on analysis of National Sample Survey data, this article presents speculative evidence on the potential nutrition-enhancing role of UBI vis-à-vis that of in-kind transfers via the public distribution system and midday meal scheme
Going beyond the Gujarat versus rest of India debate on growth rates
This column attempts to widen the ongoing growth rates-based debate on ‘Gujarat vs. rest of India’ by ranking Indian states on prices, cost of living, household expenditures and inequality, which measure how well states have truly fared in the past two decades. It highlights the spatial differences in terms of these indicators, and finds that prices vary across states at any given point in time. Inequalities have risen significantly in recent years, though there are sharp differences across states. It also shows that Gujarat has always ranked highly in terms of living standards.