Do value-added taxes benefit firms? Evidence from the adoption of state-specific value-added taxes
Value-added tax (VAT) systems have grown popular in the last 30 years, especially among developing countries looking for ways to raise tax revenue efficiently. Using 2000-2012 data on product, state-s...
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David Agrawal
Laura Zimmermann
25 May, 2022
- Articles
Does going cashless make you tax-rich? Evidence from India’s demonetisation
During 2014-2017, the share of adults using electronic payments in the developing world increased by over a third, and policymakers have expressed optimism regarding the role of this trend in promotin...
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Lucie Gadenne
Tushar Nandi
Ross Warwick
28 March, 2022
- Articles
Fixing incentives for power plants to reduce outages
Consumers in India face frequent power outages despite relatively high-quality infrastructure and ample supply of power plants. This article identifies a novel explanation for India’s blackouts: whe...
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Fiona Burlig
Akshaya Jha
Louis Preonas
08 April, 2022
- Articles
Asking the right question to get the right policy
There is consensus in the development community on the importance of bridging the gap between researchers and practitioners; however, misaligned incentives underlie this gap. In this article, Pande, M...
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Eric Dodge
Charity Troyer Moore
Rohini Pande
04 April, 2016
- Perspectives
Is Bihar the new poster boy for PDS reforms?
Food security is a critical issue and Bihar has made remarkable progress over the years. The aim of this project was to document the supply side reforms in Bihar’s PDS and explain why or why not the...
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Aaditya Dar
Chinmaya Kumar
Pankaj Verma
01 April, 2016
- IGC Research on India
How are India's new states faring?
In the year 2000, three new states – Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand – were carved out of the large states of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh respectively. This column analyses the...
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Amrita Dhillon
Pramila Krishnan
Manasa Patnam
Carlo Perroni
02 March, 2016
- Perspectives
Regulating land markets: The colonial inheritance
State intervention in markets is usually thought of as a post-independence phenomenon. However, this column demonstrates that extensive State intervention in land and credit transactions can be traced...
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Anand Swamy
10 February, 2016
- Articles
A conversation on development - II
Parikshit Ghosh (Member of the I4I Editorial Board & Associate Professor of Economics, Delhi School of Economics) speaks with Kaushik Basu (Chief Economist and Senior Vice President, World Bank and fo...
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Kaushik Basu
Parikshit Ghosh
03 February, 2016
- Perspectives
How a corruption scam brought MNREGA to a standstill in Nanded
Nanded district in Maharashtra demonstrated exemplary performance in MNREGA until 2012-13, when the exposure of a corruption scam brought the programme to a virtual standstill. In this note, researche...
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Sangita Jadhav
Ashwini Kulkarni
Aysha Shamsuddin
28 January, 2016
- Notes from the Field
Unleashing the full potential of India's 'Open Government Data' initiative
In October 2012, India embarked upon its ‘Open Government Data’ journey, by opening up access to government-owned shareable data in machine-readable formats for the use of general public. In this...
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Natasha Agarwal
26 January, 2016
- Perspectives
Access to energy in rural India: A survey of six states
While access to energy is crucial for socioeconomic development, statistically representative surveys on the issue are missing in India. Based on a survey on energy access in six energy-poor states i...
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Chao-yo Cheng
Abhishek Jain
Johannes Urpelainen
18 January, 2016
- Articles
Criminally accused politicians and economic outcomes
Despite a history of widely contested and transparent elections, and presence of vibrant and open media, an increasing number of criminally accused politicians are being elected in India. Based on an...
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Tasneem Ahmed
Nishith Prakash
Marc Rockmore
Yogesh Uppal
15 January, 2016
- Articles
Bihar's alcohol ban: Prudent policy or tail-chasing?
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s decision to implement prohibition in the state from 1 April 2016 is based on the rationale that alcohol consumption is the primary reason for violence against wo...
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Sanjeev Kumar
Nishith Prakash
21 December, 2015
- Perspectives
Intimidation, imitation, economics: Why youth are taking to terror
Men between the ages of 18 and 35 become terrorists, and it is the same demographic that supplies drug dealers, violent criminals, and foot soldiers of political parties. Abhijit Banerjee, Professor ...
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Abhijit Banerjee
15 December, 2015
- Perspectives
Democracy, inclusion, and prosperity
In his speech at the D.D. Kosambi Ideas Festival in February 2015 in Goa, RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan put on his hat as a professor of political economy and spoke about the development of a liberal m...
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Raghuram Rajan
17 November, 2015
- Perspectives
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Tweets by Ideas4IndiaMost Popular Governance Posts
Unique Health Identification and Aadhaar: A case for mandatory linkage
As part of the Digital India initiative, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) issues a Unique Health Identification (UHID) number to each patient, which documents their entire journey in th...
Mudit Kapoor
23 December, 2016
- Perspectives
Caste dominance in rural India: Cause and effect
Rural India remains a caste-based society. This column explores why caste continues to play such an important role and what the effects are. It argues that trade and agricultural productivity suffer, ...
Siwan Anderson
16 August, 2012
- Articles
Rethinking cadre allocation procedures in civil services
The allocation procedure of All-India Services’ officers to states is an important aspect of personnel administration in the public sector. This article shows that a change in allocation policy in 2...
Ashutosh Thakur
18 March, 2019
- Articles