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Governance

Private returns to bureaucratic appointments: Evidence from financial disclosures in India

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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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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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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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Connecting India's youth with development in red bastions

The Prime Minister’s Rural Development Fellowship is an initiative of the Ministry of Rural Development that recruits young professionals to work with local governments for grassroots development in...

  • Notes from the Field

Doing a number on the Food Security Bill

In a recent article, Kotwal, Murugkar and Ramaswami pointed out errors in estimation by Surjit Bhalla that led him to assert that the Food Security Bill will increase cost of food subsidy by 336%, an...

  • Perspectives

How can Indians be happier?

The recently released World Happiness Report 2013 seeks to go beyond Gross Domestic Product and the Human Development Index to understand what really matters to people for their well-being. It is fou...

  • Perspectives

Why did the Indian economy stagnate under the colonial rule?

How did the Indian economy fare under the colonial rule? Is the average Indian significantly better off after Independence? This column examines trends in GDP per capita in order to determine the stan...

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Economists on the wrong foot

This article asserts that the Sen-Bhagwati debate misses out two crucial elements – communities as agents of development, and ecological sustainability. It emphasises the importance of community em...

  • Perspectives

Litigation over Eminent Domain Compensation

In the recent past, use of Eminent Domain to acquire land for developmental purposes has become highly controversial. Several parts of India have experienced violent protests against the compulsory ac...

  • IGC Research on India

Correct costs of the Food Security Bill

In a recent article, Surjit Bhalla has asserted that the Food Security Bill will increase costs of food grain subsidy by 336%. Correcting errors in his calculation brings this figure down to 18%. In t...

  • Perspectives

Assessment of MGNREGA Divas

The project was carried out at the request of Rural Development Department (RDD) in Bihar to better understand whether MNREGA Divas (MD) visits are happening as frequently as prescribed and aslo asses...

  • IGC Research on India

Getting India wrong

In this article, Partha Dasgupta argues that deliberations on economic development, as in the recently published books by Bhagwati-Panagariya and Dreze-Sen respectively, are of little instrumental use...

  • Perspectives

The National Food Security Ordinance: Five misconceptions

The National Food Security Ordinance was promulgated in July 2013. The public debate that ensued, especially the criticism in the business media, has tended to be either devoid of facts or factually ...

  • Perspectives

I4I turns 1!

It has been a year since the voice of ‘Ideas for India’ was first heard. Our mission was to be an outlet for evidence-based arguments on a wide set of issues relevant to Indian growth and developm...

  • Perspectives

Star Wars

Debraj Ray gets to the heart of the growth versus redistribution debate and argues that a sectoral imbalance in growth is inevitable. While occupational choice is an important way to deal with this, ...

  • Perspectives

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Deepak Malghan

Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

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Jothsna Rajan

Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur

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Laura Zimmermann

University of Georgia

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David Agrawal

University of Kentucky

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Song Yuan

University of Warwick

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Amit Chaudhary

Polygon Technology

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Fiona Burlig

University of Chicago

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Akshaya Jha

Carnegie Mellon University

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Most 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...

  • 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, ...

  • 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...

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