An autonomous research institute under the Ministry of Finance

 

Events

Seminar

Do Electronic Health Records systems inflate insurance costs?: A study of Medicare Reimbursements

  • Speaker Kartik Ganju
  • Speaker profile

    Prof. Kartik Ganju received his doctorate in Business Administration from the Fox School of Business at Temple University. He has a Masters degree in Operational Research from the London School of Economics and a Bachelor's degree in Statistics from Delhi University. His research examines the impact of IT on healthcare and societal issues. Specifically, the impact of IT on billing practices of hospitals, the propensity of physicians to leave hospitals (and even the practice of medicine) once IT systems are adopted in hospitals and the effect that the adoption of these systems by a hospital has on neighbouring hospitals and impacts on racial disparities in the delivery of healthcare. His research has also examined the effect that IT has beyond effects on GDP and productivity and the effect that the adoption of IT systems have on the well-being of citizens.

  • Date Fri, 13 December, 2019
  • Time 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
  • Venue Auditorium, NIPFP
  • Abstract
    Electronic health record (EHR) systems allow physicians to automate the process of entering patient data relative to manual entry in traditional paper-based records. However, such automated data entry may be exploited by hospitals to inflate reimbursement requests from Medicare by overstating the true complexity of patients’ diagnoses (termed “upcoding”). The primary EHR module that has been alleged to facilitate upcoding is the computerized physician order entry (CPOE) system, which populates patient charts with default templates and allows physicians to copy and paste data from other patients’ records. To combat upcoding, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services implemented the Recovery Audit Program, first as a pilot program in six states between 2005 and 2009, and then nationwide in the entire United States in 2010. We examine whether the adoption of CPOE systems by hospitals is associated with a proliferation in reported patient complexity to Medicare, and if the Recovery Audit Program helped to attenuate this relationship. We find that the adoption of CPOE systems significantly increased patient complexity reported by hospitals, corresponding to an estimate of $2 Billion inflation in Medicare reimbursements per year, until they were regulated by the Recovery Audit Program that helped to mitigate upcoding. Notably, those auditors who developed the ability to identify the use of default templates, copied-and-pasted data, and cloned records were the most effective in reducing upcoding. This implies that these IT auditors likely use the same data created by the CPOE systems to identify and combat upcoding. These findings have implications how to combat inflated Medicare reimbursements paid by taxpayer dollars with the Recovery Audit Program and how IT audit can prevent the misuse of information systems to create artificial business value from IT. Contributions to Information Systems and Healthcare research, practice, and public policy are discussed.
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Corporate Social Responsibility: Perspectives and Field Experiences

  • Speaker Priyanka Chhaparia
  • Speaker profile

    Priyanka is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Responsible Business. In her current role, she works in collaboration with Aston Business School, UK, and Kedge Business School, France, on sustainability which involves understanding the mental frames of practitioners to determine various aspects of sustainability. She completed her PhD in Sociology from IIT Kanpur, with specialisation in CSR activities. As a part of her doctoral work, she undertook extensive fieldwork to get an insight into various perspectives of CSR interventions. She holds a bachelor’s in Economics from the Delhi University and masters in Development Studies from Gautam Buddha University.

  • Date Fri, 13 December, 2019
  • Time 02:00 PM - 03:15 PM
  • Venue Conference Room, Ground Floor, R&T Building, NIPFP
  • Abstract

    Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has evolved as an interdisciplinary concept, cross-cutting into fields of management, economics, law, sociology, and also social work. In India, with the introduction of Section 135 of the Companies Act 2013, expenditure on socially responsible activities has been made mandatory. This evolution and journey of CSR from a philanthropic activity to a mandatory multi-stakeholder concept is one full of debates and conflict.  The talk aims to give an overview of the CSR landscape in India and present field experiences of some of the CSR activities that are undertaken by foundations managed by corporate entities. 

  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

The Case for Tax in Democracies

  • Speaker Dr. Ranjana Gupta
  • Speaker profile

    Dr. Ranjana Gupta is a senior lecturer in taxation at Auckland University of Technology (AUT), and her experience includes research and tax consulting to an accounting firm in Auckland besides teaching a range of taxation courses to undergraduate and postgraduate students. Ranjana holds a Ph.D. in Commerce and a Master’s degree majoring in taxation. She regularly presents research papers at national and international tax and accounting conferences and publishes refereed journal articles both in New Zealand and internationally. She regularly reviews papers for various leading tax journals, including the publication, “Managing Your Business, Taxation, and Legal Compliance,” published by Financial and Business Advisor. Since 2007, she has authored chapters in taxation publications by Thomson Reuters (Income, Income of Individuals, Other Income, Deductions, and Companies) and CCH Wolters Kluwer NZ CCH (income from personal services: employees and the self-employed). She confidently accepts higher challenges in her academic and professional career and is passionate about sharing her knowledge.

  • Date Tue, 10 December, 2019
  • Time 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
  • Venue Conference Room, Ground Floor, R&T Building, NIPFP
  • Abstract
    The power to tax is one of the most basic power to assure state revenues. This article attempts to investigate the interaction between tax and democracy, asserting that the two form an important basis for a fiscal social contract between the state and its subjects. The hypothesis is that taxation is the mechanism for legally taking a part of one’s wealth in return for freedoms/services and that compliance with taxation works best with representation. The article outlines the earliest emergence of democracy and taxation, specifically within New Zealand’s historical landscape. It explores what drives tolerances towards taxation and an overview of taxation in undemocratic states. The article concludes by considering whether, at this time in history, democracy would seem to have a significant bearing, positive or otherwise, on taxation. The author’s ambition is that this analytical paper will serve as a guide for policymakers.
     
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Global Economic Outlook

  • Speaker Dr. Luis Bruer, IMF Senior Resident Representative, India
  • Speaker profile

    Dr. Breuer is the Senior Resident Representative for India, Nepal and Bhutan. Before this assignment, he was division chief of the ASEAN 4 division at the Asia and Pacific Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which includes Indonesia and Philippines, and the IMF mission chief to both countries. In the IMF, Mr. Breuer has worked on a number of other countries, including Colombia, Korea, Thailand, led program negotiating missions to Honduras, Nicaragua, Peru, and Bolivia, and was central banking advisor in Bolivia. Before joining the IMF, Mr. Breuer held a number of policy and academic positions, including Member of the Board of Directors at the Central Bank of Paraguay, where his responsibilities included supervising monetary operations and international reserve management, advisor to the Ministers of Finance of Bolivia and Paraguay, visiting assistant professor of economics at the University of Illinois, and advisor to Executive Director of the IMF. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of Illinois at Urban-Champaign.

  • Date Mon, 09 December, 2019
  • Time 02:00 PM - 03:15 PM
  • Venue Classroom, Ground Floor, R&T Building, NIPFP
  • Abstract
    After slowing sharply in the last three quarters of 2018, the pace of global economic activity remains weak. Rising trade and geopolitical tensions have increased uncertainty about the future of the global trading system and international cooperation more generally, taking a toll on business confidence, investment decisions, and global trade. The talk shall provide an overview of the latest release of World Economic Outlook in October 2019 by the IMF which analysis the world economy and issues affecting industrial countries, developing countries, and economies in transition to market; and address topics of pressing current interest and implications for India.
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Dealing with Natural Disasters - Shrinking role of the community and the market, and the expansion of the state

  • Speaker Barun Mitra, Founder and Director, Liberty Institute
  • Speaker profile
    Barun Mitra is an engineer by training, engaged in exploring ways to translate ideas into actions. His key interest is to explore the possibility of generating political capital from the ideals of liberty, peace and prosperity, in order to make these ideals socially and politically viable.
     
    He has worked with grassroots organisations like the ARCH Vahini, to secure land and property rights for the marginal communities, particularly in some of the tribal areas. Earlier this year, he initiated a Farmers Manifesto for Freedom, and is currently involved with the Shetkari Sanghatana, a farmers network in Maharashtra, who have undertaken a Kisan Satyagraha to demand access to modern science and technologies, including genetically modified crops.
     
    He was the founder and director of Liberty Institute, an independent think tank, from 1996 to 2016. Liberty Institute received the Templeton Prize for social entrepreneurship in 2003, and the Manthan Prize for innovative use of ICT in 2011.
     
    He has written articles for publications across the world on a wide range of issues from economics to environment, trade and technology, land and property rights to intellectual property. He received the Sir Anthony Fisher Award in 2001, the Liberty Torch in 2001, and the Julian Simon Award in 2005, for his advocacy of freedom.
  • Date Fri, 15 November, 2019
  • Time 04:00 PM - 05:30 PM
  • Venue Conference Room, Ground Floor, R&T Building, NIPFP
  • Abstract
    Throughout much of history mankind has relied on its own ingenuity and imagination in the face of many natural disasters. Many cultures across the world recognise in their epics the enormous disruption a natural disaster caused, in the form of a great flood or lost continents. These shared experiences not only disrupted the communities, but also often reshaped the relationships within it.
     
    With the rapid progress of science and technology in the last few centuries, many secrets of nature have been unraveled. With economic development man’s capacity to reduce his vulnerability to the natural hazards have greatly increased.
     
    However, with the rise of the nation state, particularly in the last two centuries, the onus of dealing with disasters, natural or man-made, have been increasingly claimed by the state. This is also a phase when citizens and the community have slowly surrendered their own responsibilities and capacities.
     
    Disasters, man-made ones such as wars or social and economic turmoil, or natural ones, like a flood or an earthquake, have increasingly opened the space for unbridled expansion of the State, at the cost of freedom of the citizens and integrity and autonomy of the community.
     
    The threat posed by natural disasters is now being superseded by the threat that is emerging to human civilisation itself from the agency of the state that is threatening to play God, in the name of protecting her people from the wrath of nature. This is threatening to turn the clock back towards the dark days of the divine rights of the rulers who wielded absolute power over the people by claiming absolute knowledge and complete command over resources. In contrast, citizens in a community and in their interactions in the marketplace acknowledge the limited knowledge and the scarcity of resources.
     
    Two contemporary episodes, the never ending war on terror, and the endless horse trading over climate change, illustrate how the misguided state policies have fuelled the sense of crisis. Then the same sense of fear have enabled the state to continuously claim more authority and power to deal with the challenges that it has singularly contributed to create. A perverse incentive has developed to fuel and perpetuate the sense of crisis and fear, and leverage that to ensure the expansion of the state power.
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Conference

Financing Transitions with Justice (BY INVITE)

  • Date Fri, 08 November, 2019
  • Time 01:00 PM - 07:00 PM
  • Venue Roundtable Conference Room, NIPFP
  • Details

    (in collaboration with LSE's Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and Environment). 

    The purpose of the event was to identify the key elements for policy and research collaboration on the role of finance in managing the climate transition with justice. It seeks to move beyond the current agenda of ‘green finance’ to identify financial policies, mechanisms and practices that can build an inclusive, net zero and resilient economy. 

  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

How to Mitigate Climate Change

  • Speaker Ian parry, IMF
  • Speaker profile
    Ian Parry is the Principal Environmental Fiscal Policy Expert in the Fiscal Affairs Department of the IMF. Prior to joining the IMF in 2010, Parry held the Allen V. Kneese Chair in Environmental Economics at Resources for the Future where he worked for 15 years. He has a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago. Parry’s research quantifies for different countries the economic impacts and efficient levels of a wide range of environmental, energy, and transportation policies. In recent work he has analyzed fiscal and other policy options for implementing countries’ climate strategies submitted for the Paris Agreement.
  • Date Fri, 25 October, 2019
  • Time 03:00 PM - 05:00 PM
  • Venue Conference Hall, R&T Building, NIPFP
  • Abstract

    The IMF’s Fiscal Monitor provides a toolkit for climate mitigation policies. It discusses the pros and cons of alterative mitigation instruments including carbon taxes, trading systems, regulations, and tax-subsidy schemes. A quantitative analysis is provided for G20 countries illustrating the impacts of carbon pricing, what prices are consistent with countries’ Paris mitigation pledges, and the trade-offs with other policy instruments. The design and impacts of a carbon price floor arrangement among large emitters that could complement the Paris Agreement are considered. The report also discusses strategies for enhancing the acceptability of mitigation policies and supporting measures needed to ensure adequate investment in low-emission technologies. 

  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Evidence/Proof: Science and Social Response to Air Pollution

  • Speaker Jessica Seddon, World Resources Institute (WRI), Washington D.C.
  • Speaker profile
    Dr. Jessica Seddon is the Director of integrated Urban Strategy at WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities. She earned her Ph.D. in Political Economy from Stanford University Graduate School of Business and her B.A. in Government and Latin American Studies from Harvard University. Her work focuses on the way the new sources of information and environmental awareness can be leveraged to motivate and guide investments and action that improves air quality, resource efficiency, and access to shared, green spaces.
     
    Jessica co-founded and led Okapi, an India-based strategy group incubated at IIT Madras that focuses on institutional design for social innovation. Her earlier career spans academic and strategic advisory roles focused on institutional design for integrating science into policy and social initiatives. Jessica has worked with a number of institutions in India, including as Visiting Fellow at IDFC Institute (Mumbai); Senior Fellow at the Center for Technology and Policy, IIT Madras; Head of Research at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (Bangalore); and Director of the Centre for Development Finance at the Institute for Financial Management and Research (Chennai). She has served as Strategic Advisor for the California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology (CALIT2) and Assistant Professor, University of California, San Diego. She was also a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow with the United States Environmental Protection Agency, working on institutional design for global air quality management.
  • Date Wed, 23 October, 2019
  • Time 04:30 AM - 06:00 PM
  • Venue Conference Room, Ground Floor, R&T Building, NIPFP
  • Abstract

    This talk will discuss the way that the chemistry of air pollution shapes the policy and political challenges of improving air quality. It will lay out a general framework for the intersection of science and social dynamics and offer some specific proposals for air quality governance in India.

  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

India’s Relations with the International Monetary Fund: 25 Years in Perspective 1991-2016

  • Speaker V. Srinivas, IAS
  • Speaker profile
    V.SRINIVAS is the Additional Secretary to Government of India in the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions. He was the Advisor to Executive Director (India) in the International Monetary Fund 2003 to 2006. He served as Private Secretary to the Finance Minister of India from 2002 to 2003 and Private Secretary to the External Affairs Minister of India 2001 to 2002. He was a member of India’s delegations to the Fund-Bank Annual Meetings from 2002 to 2006. As Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Textiles he headed India’s delegations to the Plenary Meetings of the International Cotton Advisory Committee from 2010 to 2012, and as Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Culture he headed India’s delegation to the Asia-Europe Culture Ministers Meeting 2014. He served as Deputy Director (Administration) AIIMS from 2014-2017.
     
    V.Srinivas was the Chairman of the Board of Revenue for Rajasthan and Chairman of the Rajasthan Tax Board from 2017 to 2018. In 2017 he was awarded the Indian Council of World Affairs Book Research Fellowship for “India’s Relations with International Monetary Fund 1991-2016 – 25 years in Perspective. He is a senior administrator, a respected academician and an institution builder par excellence.
  • Date Thu, 03 October, 2019
  • Time 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
  • Venue Auditorium, NIPFP
  • Abstract
    The word International Monetary Fund (IMF) evokes strong reaction among many people in India. It is viewed as an Institution that interferes with the conduct of public policy in India. It is sometimes viewed as an Institution that propagates the capitalist ideology and globalization to the benefit of advanced economies and the detriment of developing countries like India. Further, there have been several controversies in regard to the IMF. The IMF was failed to anticipate the global financial crisis of 2008, the impression that it was soft in its conditionality to Latin America and making resources available to Euro Area countries with political overtones. The reality is India is an important founder member since 1944, and has contributed in a significant way to multilateralism and democracy in IMF. The synergy in views between India’s top policy makers and IMF’s senior management ensured that each of India’s 3 standby arrangements was successfully concluded and repayments were always made on schedule. One of the most convincing illustrations of India’s support to the IMF is India buying IMF gold in 2008. The IMF is a very credible global institution whose voice is heard and heeded. For India to benefit from globalization, a global regime of trade and financial flows that is free, fair and equitable is required and it is the responsibility of the IMF to do that. The IMF remains the only global institution that maintains economic data bases across countries over long periods and is a repository of valuable information for understanding the political economy and global economic governance.
     
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Issues in State Finances – Analysis of State Budgets 2018-19 (BY INVITE Only)


Seminar

What drives literacy in villages without schools?: A study of Indian Villages

  • Speaker Sanjukta Das and Sandhya Garg
  • Speaker profile
    Sanjukta Das
     
    Sanjukta Das is an Associate Fellow at National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), New Delhi. She is an applied micro-economist with interests also in macroeconomics and economic growth issues. In her doctoral research on “Rethinking Approaches to Food Security and Poverty in Developing Economies,” Sanjukta worked on identifying the optimal design of food security policies for poverty alleviation. Sanjukta received her PhD in economics from the University of Georgia, USA and a M.A. in economics from the Delhi School of Economics.
     
    Sandhya Garg
     
    Sandhya Garg is an Associate Fellow at National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), New Delhi. Her primary areas of research are Public Finance, Public Economics, and Applied Economic Analysis. Her current research focuses on Study of Public Finance of Indian States, where she studied the relative tax performance of Indian states. She has also worked on estimating the implication of federal transfers on fiscal equalization using tools of spatial econometrics. She holds an M. Phil. Degree in development studies and Ph.D. degree from the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), Mumbai.
     
  • Date Fri, 09 August, 2019
  • Time 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
  • Venue Conference Room, Ground Floor, R&T Building, NIPFP
  • Abstract
    A rise in the share of villages with primary school from 72% in 1991 to 83% in 2011 indicates improvement in access to schools in rural India. Using village-level geocoded data and panel data of 2001 and 2011 census rounds, we study that how the literacy rate of villages (without school) is effected by the presence of primary schools in their neighbourhood under the anticipation that people would be accessing neighbouring schools. We find that the presence of schools in the nearer neighbourhood has positive impact on overall, male and female literacy of villages without schools. Impact is higher for female literacy. The road connectivity of primary schools matters even more. It has important policy implications for countries with larger gap in access to primary schools. Our results indicate that one of the primary challenges facing the governments is to establish facilities that complement the functioning of schools, like roads.
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Routing Money, Not Packets

  • Speaker Dr. Vishal Misra
  • Speaker profile

    Vishal Misra is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Columbia University, with a joint appointment in the Electrical Engineering Department and also a visiting scientist at Google. He is an ACM and IEEE Fellow and his research emphasis is on mathematical modeling of systems,  bridging the gap between practice and analysis. He is also credited with inventing live-microblogging at CricInfo, a company he co-founded  while a graduate student at UMass Amherst, predating Twitter by 10 years. He also played an active part in the Net Neutrality regulation process in India, where his definition of Net Neutrality was both adopted both by the citizen's movement as well is consistent with the regulations eventually passed. He has been awarded a Distinguished Alumnus Award by IIT Bombay (2019) and a  Distinguished Young Alumnus Award by UMass Amherst College of Engineering (2014).

  • Date Tue, 06 August, 2019
  • Time 03:30 PM - 05:30 PM
  • Venue Conference Room, Ground Floor, R&T Building, NIPFP
  • Abstract

    The issue of Network Neutrality has ignited considerable public debatein the recent past. While the term and much of the discussion originated in the legal community, we started looking at it from an engineering and networking perspective a few years ago. We employed the lens of cooperative game theory and careful modeling of the Internet including the topology, peering relationships, and protocols used on the Internet. Our primary conclusion is that Network Neutrality should be expressed in terms of how you treat competition, not in how you treat packets and we proposed a definition of Network Neutrality that expresses that.  We present some of our results including our prediction back in 2008 of a rise in paid peering (last year Netflix signed paid peering arrangements with all 4 of the top broadband providers in the US), the negative impact of differential pricing on competition, the inadequacies of the Network Neutrality regulation in the US and the recent regulations in India and Canada, where they are consistent with our definition of Network Neutrality.

  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Formal Finance, Poverty and Mental Health: Experimental Evidence from India

  • Speaker Rohini Pande and Giorgia Barboni
  • Speaker profile

    Rohini Pande, the Henry J. Heinz II Professor of Economics at Yale and Director of Yale’s Economic Growth Center, is an economist whose research examines the economic costs and benefits of informal and formal institutions in the developing world and the role of public policy in effecting change.

    Giorgia Barboni is an Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of Warwick, Warwick Business School. Her research interests are in Development Finance, Behavioral Economics and Household Finance. Giorgia's work focuses on innovations in financial contracts and their impact on business growth and households’ financial decisions.

     

  • Date Fri, 26 July, 2019
  • Time 04:30 PM - 06:00 PM
  • Venue Conference Room, Ground Floor, R&T Building, NIPFP
  • Abstract

    Formal Finance, Poverty and Mental Health: Experimental Evidence from India

    We report on a nine-year long-run large-scale randomized controlled trial that evaluates the impact of Kshetriya Grameen Financial Services (KGFS), an Indian financial institution that offers rural poor a suite of financial products -- micro-credit, micro-savings and micro-insurance -- paired with financial advising. In three rural districts of Tamil Nadu, KGFS randomized choice of service area, creating 50 treatment and 50 control areas. Together, this covered 876 villages. This paper provides a set of core results based on household surveys covering a sample of 4,160 households.

    Our paper shows that the arrival of a formal financial institution like KGFS in rural Tamil Nadu leads to a significant impact on poverty reduction, with income consistently improving across the entire household distribution in treated service areas. Moreover, the gains deriving from increased formal indebtedness do not come at the cost of additional mental pressure: treated women report improved decision-making as well as subjective well-being, while also showing a significant reduction in their levels of stress.

     

  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Corruption and Stock Price Volatility: Firm-Level Evidence

  • Speaker Chandan Jha
  • Speaker profile

    Dr. Chandan Jha is an Assistant Professor in the Madden School of Business at Le Moyne College. His research interests lie in the areas of development economics, political economy, and finance and development. His current research focuses primarily on the issues of gender inequality and corruption, and he has published several articles on these issues in several reputed journals such as the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, the Journal of Population Economics, and International Review of Economics and Finance. He holds a Ph.D. from Louisiana State University and an M.A. in economics from Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics.

  • Date Thu, 27 June, 2019
  • Time 03:30 PM - 05:30 PM
  • Venue Conference Room, Ground Floor, R&T Building, NIPFP
  • Abstract

    Corruption and Stock Price Volatility: Firm-Level Evidence

    This paper assesses the effects of corruption on firm-level equity price volatility using a sample of over 3,000 firms from 31 countries around the world over the period of 2003–2014. We find that corruption, constructed using the responses from the World Bank Enterprise Survey to match the firm’s size, industry, location, and country, is positively associated with equity price volatility. We further find that equity price volatility decreases with the asset size in the presence of corruption, indicating that smaller firms are disproportionately affected by corruption. We also find evidence of a positive association between corruption measured at the country level and stock price volatility, however, the effect of country-level corruption is found to be worse for firms with larger asset sizes.

  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Supply-side and Demand-led Growth Theories: A History of Economic Thought Approach

  • Speaker Alex M. Thomas
  • Speaker profile

    Alex M. Thomas teaches economics at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, India. He received his economics education from the universities of Madras, Hyderabad, and Sydney. He has published in both national and international journals such as Artha Vijnana, Economic & Political Weekly, History of Economic Ideas, History of Economics Review, and Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics. His co-edited book with Ajit Sinha, Pluralistic Economics and its History (Routledge India, 2019), has just been published. He is currently writing an introductory macroeconomics textbook. 

  • Date Fri, 21 June, 2019
  • Time 03:30 PM - 05:30 PM
  • Venue Conference Room, Ground Floor, R&T Building, NIPFP
  • Abstract
    Supply-side and Demand-led Growth Theories: A History of Economic Thought Approach
     
    I first provide a brief outline of the contents of my co-edited volume with Ajit Sinha, Pluralistic Economics and its History (Routledge India, 2019). Subsequently, the sub-field of the history of economic thought (HET) is introduced. I then present the results of a textual analysis of the key political economy texts before Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. While all of them emphasise the role of capital accumulation in economic growth, it is striking that they possess the idea that demand should validate supply and that it is labour demand which determines labour supply, chains of causation opposite to that found in the supply-side growth theories. Some policy implications are then outlined. I conclude by underscoring the relevance of HET in promoting pluralism in both research and teaching. 
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@seminar.org.in

Seminar

Price Stickiness in a Cash Dominant Economy: Evidence from Food Prices in India

  • Speaker Nadhanael GV
  • Speaker profile

    G V Nadhanael is an Assistant Adviser in RBI and currently on deputation with University of British Columbia (UBC) under the Golden Jubilee Fellowship for Higher Studies Abroad (First recipient in RBI for Ph.D). At the RBI, he was a member of the core team which developed the macroeconomic framework for inflation targeting. He was also a member of other technical committees including Technical Group for Working Group on Savings during the Twelfth Five-Year Plan and for the Urjit Patel Committee on Monetary Policy Framework. He has won number of prestigious awards including Governor’s gold medal at the RBI and David Dodge Fellowship for academic excellence at UBC. He has published works on growth-inflation trade-off, wage-price dynamics, financial inclusion and monetary policy. His current research interest is on understanding inflation process in India; both micro-foundations and policy implications.

  • Date Fri, 14 June, 2019
  • Time 03:00 PM - 05:00 PM
  • Venue Conference Room, Ground Floor, R&T Building, NIPFP
  • Abstract
    Price Stickiness in a Cash Dominant Economy: Evidence from Food Prices in India
    Can prices be sticky in informal price setting environments where the menu costs are expected to be low? This paper looks at food prices by compiling a novel dataset for India where food constitutes almost half of total CPI. Our results show that there is large heterogeneity across product groups with duration ranging from half a month for vegetables to 5 months for milk, defying the notion of food being a flexible price sector. The degree of price stickiness also goes up substantially if we exclude temporary price changes. Using a set of stylised facts and reduced form evidence, we then show that price setting behaviour broadly matches predictions of sticky price models with menu cost. Using this data, we then structurally estimate a menu cost model by way of Simulated Methods of Moments (SMM) to show that differences in productivity processes, market power and menu costs could account for the differences in price stickiness across product groups. Further, we document evidence of frictions induced by a cash economy which act as a form of menu cost at the micro level. Half of all prices are set at denominations with digits ending at 0 or 5 to ease transactions. A price set at digit ending at 0 is twice more likely to remain constant than a price set at digit ending at an odd digit. Markov Chain transition probabilities indicate that prices are most likely to move from one round digit to another creating a step like adjustments. Using scrapped data from online grocery shop in India, we then show that such bunching of prices is absent in online market validating the hypothesis of cash friction. In terms of policy implications, we show that inflation based on a stickiness re-weighted food price index does not perfectly align with conventional core inflation (excluding food and fuel). This poses the risk of policy error when food prices are altogether neglected in inflation metric for monetary policy.
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

"Global value chains and effective exchange rates" (joint with Zhi Wang and Shang-Jin Wei)

  • Speaker Mr. Nikhil Patel, Bank for International Settlements
  • Speaker profile

    Nikhil Patel is an economist at the Bank for International Settlements. His main areas of interest are macroeconomics, international economics and monetary policy. He holds a PhD in economics from Columbia University, an Ms in Quantitative Economics from the Indian Statistical Institute, and a BSc. in Physics from Delhi University.

  • Date Fri, 10 May, 2019
  • Time 04:00 PM - 05:30 PM
  • Venue Conference Room, Ground Floor, R&T Building, NIPFP
  • Abstract

    The real effective exchange rate (REER) is one of the most cited statistical constructs in open-economy macroeconomics. We show that the models used to compute these numbers are not rich enough to allow for the rising importance of global value chains. Moreover, because different sectors within a country participate in international production sharing at different stages, sector level variations are also important for determining competitiveness. Incorporating these features, we develop a framework to compute REER at both the sector and country level and apply it on inter-country input-output tables to study the properties of the new measures of REER.

  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Workshop

Policy Dialogue on the Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific 2019: Ambitions beyond Growth (BY INVITE)


Seminar

Exploring the Domains of Identity and Emerging Open standards for Decentralized Identity

  • Speaker Ms. Kaliya Young, India-U.S. Fellow at New America
  • Speaker profile

    Kaliya Young is a 2019 India-U.S. Fellow at New America. Young is one of the world’s leading experts on decentralized or self-sovereign identity technology. She is the author of A Comprehensive Guide to Self-Sovereign Identity and currently holds the position of adjunct professor at Merritt College where she is developing a curriculum about identity. For the last 15 years, she has worked within the industry to catalyze the formation of a new layer of the internet designed to serve individuals. She began sketching out distributed social networks in 2003 and co-founded the Internet Identity Workshop in 2005 with Doc Searls and Phil Windley. More details can be found here: https://www.newamerica.org/our-people/kaliya-young/ She is also known as Identity Woman: https://www.identitywoman.net 

  • Date Thu, 07 March, 2019
  • Time 04:30 PM - 06:00 PM
  • Venue Conference Room, Ground Floor, R&T Building, NIPFP
  • Abstract

    In this seminar Kaliya Young will share two significant pieces of her work firstly the Domains of Identity that provides a clear picture of all the different domains individual's data ends up in databases. This can serve as the basis of a dialogue about the proper relationship between different domains. Secondly she has been at the heart of a community developing new Decentralized Identity Technology standards and will share more about them and how they can enable a many-to-many exchange of verifiable credentials between individuals and the institutions they interact with.

  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Monetary policy in a low-interest rate environment

  • Speaker Thomas Laubach
  • Speaker profile
    Thomas Laubach is the director of the Division of Monetary Affairs at the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, DC. He advises the Board and the FOMC on the conduct of monetary policy, including open market operations and the discount window. His main areas of interests are monetary economics and fiscal policy. Over the past couple of years, he has played a central role in supporting the FOMC’s monetary policy process. He did his Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University in 1997.
  • Date Thu, 07 February, 2019
  • Time 04:30 PM - 06:00 PM
  • Venue Conference Room, Ground Floor, R&T Building, NIPFP
  • Abstract
    Thomas Laubach will be giving an overview of the current framework of the FOMC with emphasis on the conduct of monetary policy in a low-rate environment. Using his recent work, Thomas will talk about the prevalence of low interest rates across many economies. He will also talk about the tools used by the Federal Reserve in a low interest rate scenario.
     
    India has recently adopted an inflation targeting framework. This is a great opportunity for intellectuals in India to get together and discuss the burning issues in monetary policy with some of the best minds in the field of Monetary Economics.
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in

Seminar

Critique of and Alternatives to the Extractive Imagination of AI

  • Speaker Dr. Anupam Guha
  • Speaker profile
    Anupam Guha is a computer scientist, working on Artificial Intelligence and Computational Linguistics based in the US east coast with a PhD from the University of Maryland (batch of 2017) and a MS from Georgia Tech (batch of 2010).
     
    He is deeply interested in and does outreach on the future Social, Political, and Economic implications of AI, especially both its oppressive and emancipatory potentials for labour. Dr. Guha advocates a better understanding of the political-economy of the fully automated future. He sees the question of AI intricately woven with the question of future labour, i.e. the student community. Thus, he engages in critical solidarity with progressive Indian student politics. Dr. Guha does advocacy for an increased communication between silos of academia, science informed policy, politics informed science, and supports free, universal, and quality higher education. As parts of his outreach efforts he has written non-academic pieces in Hindustan Times, Indian Express, and TheWire.in on the issues of AI, Labour, and the Politics of Science.
  • Date Tue, 15 January, 2019
  • Time 04:30 PM - 06:00 PM
  • Venue Conference Room, Ground Floor, R&T Building, NIPFP
  • Abstract
    The imminence of artificial intelligence has been accompanied by a narrative of inevitability in social relations based on premises which have not been critically interrogated. Companies are selling “AI solutions” to problems where neither what constitutes AI nor whether these problems are technological in nature is debated as fiercely as it should, if only to prevent unforeseen consequences. These premises do not question the extractive nature of current social relations and thus imagine AI in the role of accelerant and property and not much else. This lack of political imagination has potentially dire consequences of furthering inequity, baking in precarity, and freezing structural oppression, perhaps even causing regression. Even the critique of AI policy in a sense accepts these premises and focuses on bias and transparency of systems as they are used now, rather than power and ownership, both legitimising solutionism and diverting the blame for what are sociological problems onto technology. 
     
    Considering the oppressive and the emancipatory potential of AI systems it becomes our task to critique both the social relations it is premised on and provide an alternative imagination for AI which explores the nature of work and property in the era of automation. My talk will go into (in the Indian context) the limitations of current policy thought when it comes to AI, a critique of band aid measures being presented like UBI and robot taxes, and an exploration of the premises, especially the nature of data as property, current policy is being written on. My talk will then present an alternative imagination for labour in relation to AI, of work, wage, and public prosperity, and thus a framework for what is to be done.
  • Contact email nipfp.seminar@nipfp.org.in