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. Dr. Gupta holds a PhD in Commerce and a Master’s degree majoring in taxation. 

This article investigates the complex group structures and intangible/intellectual property risk allocation techniques and arrangements used by Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) to adjust or defer their tax liability. MNEs tax planning in relation to cross-border transactions and risk allocation practices have been evaluated in light of the OECD’s (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) recent development and implementation of the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) 15-point Action Plan (hereafter referred to as BEPS Action Plan). Specifically, Actions 8-10 which focus on Aligning Transfer Pricing Outcomes with Value Creation.

The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 is a watershed legislation in the economic history of the country. Coming, as it did, when the economy was struggling with mounting cases of unresolved non-performing assets, it strove to better the legal and institutional machinery dealing with debt default. Almost a year and half later, in late November 2017, an ordinance has been promulgated addressing concerns of non-compliance and misuse of the law. In this context, a stock taking of the law and its implications becomes imperative.

Ms. Lim May-Ann has over a decade of experience in technology and development public policy across the Asia Pacific. She was appointed to the World Economic Forum (WEF)'s Global Future Council 2016-2017, in light of her extensive work on technology-focused public policy in multiple, regional and global institutions, including the World Bank, the Singapore Institute of International Affairs (SIIA), and the Singapore Internet Project. May-Ann also lectures on Internet and ICT Policy in the National University of Singapore (NUS). Her research interests include telecommunication networks and ICT policy, new media and communications, technology developments and applications, mobile platforms, disaster relief and development work in universal education, and access to finance.

Discussant's profile: Mr. Sankarson Banerjee is the Chief Technology Officer (Projects) of the National Stock Exchange of India, the primary stock exchange in the country and one of the world's largest. He was earlier a Managing Director with Accenture in India, where he led Cloud and Mobility practices. He has twenty years of experience, over half of them in CxO level positions, and has worked extensively with startups and established companies in India and the USA, specializing in the financial sector, retail and the Internet.

Many industries are ready to embrace cloud computing to reap the benefits of this new technology. However, perceived regulatory challenges often stymie adoption efforts, such as in the case of highly regulated sectors like the financial services industry (FSI). This seminar will present the work done by the Asia Cloud Computing Association, an industry association that represents the voice of the tech and cloud computing businesses in the Asia Pacific region, reviewing the current regulatory landscape and key regulatory challenges to the adoption of cloud services by FSIs in 14 economies in this region.

Sourajit Aiyer has written for 38 publications of 14 countries, as well as 2 books with UK & German publishers. He has presented his research in forums across 6 Asian countries. He has worked as AVP - Investor Relations & Corporate Strategy with Motilal Oswal Financial Services Ltd., Mumbai, and previously with UBS Investment Bank, London, Evalueserve Investment Research, Gurgaon & Grameen Bank, Bangladesh. He has received an Honorary Doctorate (D. Litt.) from International Economics University, Madurai. Since August 2017, he has started his own business publication start-up named "South Asia Fast Track".

BRICS evolved as an economic asset class, despite being a disparate geographical group. Is BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal group) at a similar juncture now, where BRICS was a few years ago? Can BIMSTEC really do what SAARC could not, as it essentially replaces Pakistan with Thailand? How does it stack as an opportunity for consumption, investment & production? What if emerging markets of South East Asia like Indonesia & Vietnam were added to make it BIMSTEC + I + V? This presentation would look at these aspects, to see if BIMSTEC stands out?

Discussant: Sumant Prashant

Adam Feibelman is Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Sumter Davis Marks Professor of Law at Tulane University Law School. His teaching and research focus on bankruptcy law, regulation of financial institutions, legal issues related to sovereign debt and international monetary law. His recent scholarship includes "Europe and the Future of International Monetary Law" (Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems, 2013), "Involuntary Bankruptcy for States" (Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy) and "American States and Sovereign Debt Restructuring" (in Skeel & Conti-Brown, eds., When States Go Broke). His current work explores the IMF's role in international financial regulation. He joined the Tulane faculty in 2009. Prior to that, he was a faculty member at the University of North Carolina School of Law and University of Cincinnati School of Law and taught as a Bigelow Fellow at the University of Chicago. He clerked for Judge Gilbert S. Merritt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. 

Detailed profile here.

The global financial crisis of 2008-09 represented, among other things, a massive and broad-ranging regulatory failure in the United States. Regulatory regimes responsible for the safety and soundness of consumer financial transactions, the banking system, and capital markets all failed to avoid the financial collapse that occurred during that time and proved insufficient to resolve it quickly to avoid follow-on effects in the real economy and across the globe. Not surprisingly, the years immediately following the collapse and crisis brought significant reforms of financial regulation in the U.S. and elsewhere.  This talk will describe and assess these reforms as well as current proposals to revisit and reverse some of them.

Discussant: Shri. Govind Mohan, JS (IER and Investment) (TBC).

Adam Feibelman is Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Sumter Davis Marks Professor of Law at Tulane  University Law School. His teaching and research focus on bankruptcy law, regulation of financial institutions, legal issues related to sovereign debt and international monetary law. His recent scholarship includes "Europe and the Future of International Monetary Law" (Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems, 2013), "Involuntary Bankruptcy for States" (Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy) and "American States and Sovereign Debt Restructuring" (in Skeel & Conti-Brown, eds., When States Go Broke). His current work explores the IMF's role in international financial regulation. He joined the Tulane faculty in 2009. Prior to that, he was a faculty member at the University of North Carolina School of Law and University of Cincinnati School of Law and taught as a Bigelow Fellow at the University of Chicago. He clerked for Judge Gilbert S. Merritt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

In May of last year, India adopted a new regime for personal insolvencies and bankruptcies as part of a comprehensive Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code.  The regime for individuals has not yet gone into force, and many fundamental questions about its purpose and likely impact remain largely unaddressed. This talk will describe the new personal insolvency and bankruptcy regime and the likely goals of policymakers who drafted and enacted it. It will also assess the design of the regime in light of those goals and anticipate the impact of the law on private parties who might utilize it and on the broader economy.

Discussant: Ajay Shah, Professor, NIPFP

Andreas Bauer is the International Monetary Fund’s senior resident representative for India, Nepal, and Bhutan. During his 15+ year career at the IMF, he has worked as a mission chief and senior economist on a range of countries, mainly in Latin America and the Middle East. Before taking up his current position in New Delhi, he headed a unit in charge of international monetary and financial issues, and institutional strategy at the IMF’s Washington headquarters. Earlier in his career, Mr. Bauer was an emerging markets analyst for Credit Suisse and held senior positions in the Ministry of Finance of Chile, including chief of staff to the minister. He holds an economics degree from University of St.Gallen (Switzerland) and an M.A. in Applied Macroeconomics from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

The presentation will provide an overview of the findings of the IMF’s World Economic Outlook, Global Financial Stability Report, and Fiscal Monitor, including the latest round of macroeconomic forecasts for the global economy. The implications of the external outlook for India’s economy will also be discussed.

The National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), New Delhi in collaboration with the Stanford Center on Global Poverty and Development (SCGPD) is organising the 'New Thinking in Health Policy' conference.

Avanti Durani is an Associate at IDFC Institute, a Mumbai based think/do tank, working on criminal justice systems and special governance zones. Prior to this, she worked as an Articled Clerk for M/s. Wadia Ghandy & Co., Mumbai, in several fields including Funds and Investments, Mergers & Acquisitions, Conveyancing and Civil Litigation in relation to property matters. Avanti holds a Bachelor of Laws degree from Government Law College, University of Mumbai, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Relations, with a thematic concentration in the regional and comparative analysis of the Middle East and South Asia, from Tufts University, USA.

Public safety and security are critical for good quality of life. While there seems to be an agreement on the weak performance of both the police and the courts, this has not yet translated into a large-scale attempt at reform. The official records on crime and response by the police are hugely insufficient in gauging the scale of the problem due to widespread under-reporting, among other deficiencies. Safety Trends and Reporting of Crime (SATARC), IDFC Institute’s flagship survey, is an attempt to marshal evidence, in a systematic way, about the extent and nature of crime, satisfaction with police, and perceptions of safety. The SATARC survey aims to bridge this gap in public data on safety and crime.

Discussant: Anirudh Burman

Harvard Law School’s Program on International Financial Systems (HLS-PIFS), in partnership with NITI Aayog and National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), is organizing the India-US Symposium on “Building the Financial System of the 21st Century” in New Delhi on 27th- 29th September at the Taj Palace Hotel.

Deep Narayan Mukherjee is a visiting faculty in finance with IIM Calcutta. He is also the Chief Product Officer, handling product design and analytics in an Indian credit bureau. He has over 14 years of experience in Risk Management and Credit Assessment. Prior to his current role, he was in structured finance team in Fitch. Prior to Fitch, he was with the American Express where he headed the Institutional Risk Management Team focusing on quantitative risk management. He also writes columns for several media houses. He graduated in engineering from IIT, Kharagpur (B.Tech., 1999) and obtained his management degree from IIM Lucknow (PGDM 2002).

Studies on earnings management of Indian companies may not be frequently conducted, but there are quite a few substantial works on this topic in the literature. Most of them conclude that the problem of earnings management is quite rampant. However, earnings management related studies and their results are not mainstream among investors or regulators. That is despite the observation that in cases of big ticket NPA, banks often request for a forensic analysis of the defaulter's financial statement. In an effort to enable identification of companies with potential accounting issues, and thus requiring further in-depth analysis of those companies, our team has developed a score, the premise of the work being that earnings management is the start of financial manipulations. The team has made certain analytical enhancements to address shortcomings of existing approaches of accounting pertinent to growth economies such as India.

Dr. Gaurav S. Ghosh is an economist with EY’s Economic and Policy Advisory Group. He’s currently based in Bangalore. He joined EY in 2012 in Düsseldorf, Germany, after spending two years as a post-doctoral researcher in energy economics and policy at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. Gaurav provides transfer pricing and economic advisory services in diverse areas, including public policy, competition economics, inter-company financing, IP valuation, business restructuring, M&A and demand estimation. Gaurav has worked with clients in the automotive, steel, power, leasing and alcohol industries. Gaurav received his PhD in Environmental Economics from the Pennsylvania State University, USA. He also holds a Masters in Economics from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. Gaurav has spoken often at international research conferences and published papers in academic journals.  He used to write an economics column for The Economic Times.

Karan Nagpal is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Economics, University of Oxford.

Rural economic outcomes deteriorate with distance from cities and towns. We use a spatial regression discontinuity design to provide causal evidence for one channel through which this effect operates: the geography of public administration. Using a rich spatial dataset on Indian villages and their local administrative capitals, we show that a greater distance from capitals reduces the provision of public goods. More distant villages also have lower literacy rates and reduced participation in non-farm activities. To estimate these effects causally, we exploit administrative boundaries that generate sharp jumps in distance to local administration capitals, but not in conventional measures of market access such as distance to towns and highways and population density. We discuss a number of mechanisms that explain these results, including monitoring and provision costs, information asymmetries and citizen voice.

Dr. Bhuvanesh Awasthi is a scientist of human consciousness, thought and emotions. His research focuses on the Cognitive Neuroscience of consciousness, perception, emotion and decision-making. As a scientist, he has worked in the United Kingdom, United States of America, Russia and Australia. His early training was from the University of Pune, a Consciousness Studies Masters from BITS Pilani and a PhD from Sydney, Australia. He has been invited to present his research to a variety of audience across United States (Harvard, San Diego), UK (Royal Society, London), Europe (Paris, Stockholm, Oslo, Moscow), Middle East (Dubai, Beirut), India (IIT Bombay, Gandhinagar; IISER Pune) and Australia (Melbourne, Sydney).

Dr. Bhuvanesh Awasthi is a scientist of human consciousness, thought and emotions. His research focuses on the Cognitive Neuroscience of consciousness, perception, emotion and decision-making. As a scientist, he has worked in the United Kingdom, United States of America, Russia and Australia. His early training was from the University of Pune, a Consciousness Studies Masters from BITS Pilani and a PhD from Sydney, Australia. He has been invited to present his research to a variety of audience across United States (Harvard, San Diego), UK (Royal Society, London), Europe (Paris, Stockholm, Oslo, Moscow), Middle East (Dubai, Beirut), India (IIT Bombay, Gandhinagar; IISER Pune) and Australia (Melbourne, Sydney).

How do humans make choices? What are the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying risky decision making? What can public policy and administration learn from research on neuroscience of cognition and behaviour? Here, we shall explore insights from cognitive science of social perception, social conformity, empathy training and ethical behaviour with implications for public policy.

Mandira is Head of Research at PRS Legislative Research. She leads PRS' engagement with MPs, to provide them legislative and policy analysis on a range of sectors. Mandira has a Ph.D. in Public Policy from the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Previously, she has worked in the research team of Azim Premji Foundation, Bangalore and Centre for Social Policy, Boston, USA. Mandira was awarded the UNDP Asia- Pacific Human Development Academic Fellowship in 2008.  She was selected as an Emerging Leaders Fellow 2011-12 by the Australia India Institute at the University of Melbourne. 

Anviti is a senior analyst with PRS Legislative Research. Her focus areas are security and strategic affairs, and environment. Anviti has published analysis on Bills related to compensatory afforestation, amendments to the Citizenship Act, and the Union Budget expenditure proposals with regard to the defence sector.  Anviti has a B.A. LL.B. from The West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata.

Policing and law order issues come primarily under the states.  However, the centre also maintains its police forces to provide states with assistance for matters that have wider internal security implications. This talk will address expenditure on police, and compare spending by various states and centre. It will provide an overview of how police is organised, and discuss issues faced by the police personnel. This will include an analysis of vacancies across centre and states, working conditions of police, and issues with crime investigation. We will also discuss findings of CAG audits and Bureau of Police Research and Development, with regard to availability of weaponry, vehicles, communication equipment, and funds for infrastructure modernisation. Lastly, the session will analyse the efforts being made by states to set up institutions for police accountability, and institution to protect police from political interference, in light of directions of the Supreme Court. The talk will be based on the findings mentioned in the PRS Analytical Report on Police Reforms.

Olivier Telle, senior visiting fellow at the CPR, is an urban health geographer at Centre National de la Recherche Française (CNRS), UMR Géographie-cite (Paris-Sorbonne). He is currently associated with Sci Fi 2 project in which he is developing a research on diseases geography in Delhi (Dengue, Chikungunya and Diarrheal diseases). Before joining CNRS, Olivier conducted a 3 year postdoc at Institut Pasteur Paris at Functionnal Genetic of Infectious Diseases.

This presentation will focus on the dengue and chikungunya viruses, which are two of the most common vector borne diseases affecting urban areas around the world. In India and Delhi, these two viruses are spreading rapidly, infecting lakhs of individuals every year. The aim of this study is to underline 1) the geography of these diseases over several years in Delhi 2) the factors that lead to continuous spread within endemic cities –from urban complexity to political organization of urban/epidemic responses. After presenting some short term solutions that can help in controlling disease diffusion, this presentation will be an opportunity to re-evaluate the links between evolution of cities, intra-urban environmental disparities and the issue of sanitation within urban areas.

Dr. Sajjid Chinoy is J.P. Morgan’s Chief India Economist. Prior to that, he worked at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington D.C. and was a Senior Associate at McKinsey & Company in New York. He served as a member of RBI's Expert Committee to Revise and Strengthen the Monetary Policy Framework, that proposed inflation targeting in India, and serves as a member of the Indian Banks Association (IBA) Monetary Policy Group. From 2014 to 2016, he was ranked as one of the “Best Individuals in Research in India” by Asset Magazine, and was awarded the Consensus Economics’ Forecaster Accuracy Award for 2013. He has authored several publications on the Indian economy including co-editing a book on Indian economic reforms titled, Reforming India's External, Fiscal and Financial Policies, with Dr. Anne O. Krueger. He received his Ph.D. in economics at Stanford University in 2001.

After becoming the epitome of fiscal discipline in the mid-2000s, India’s state finances have markedly worsened in recent years and risks have increased going forward. What has driven the deterioration? How pervasive is it? More importantly what are the implications? While there has been much analysis of how worsening state finances impact the consolidated deficit and debt dynamics, we focus on how worsening state finances have caused state bond spreads to spike and show how these higher borrowing costs spill-over onto corporate bond spreads. This, in turn, pushes up borrowing costs for the private sector, and risks crowding out of the corporate bond market, precisely when the banking sector is under stress. We discuss these developments in the larger macroeconomic context at the moment, and suggest policy and market measures to rein in state fiscal deficits.

Rahul Basu is an activist and a member of Goa Foundation, Goenchi Mati Movement (GMM), and The Future We Need (TFWN).

Mining drives corruption, mis-governance, crony capitalism, environment & human rights damage and conflict. Iron ore mining in Goa has become a contentious issue between civil society and the government. The Goenchi Mati Movement uses the Public Trust Doctrine and the Intergenerational Equity Principle to propose a ethical, fair & just resolution to the issue. The ramifications of the proposal are far reaching, including many aspects of public finance, capital markets and national income statistics.

Nov 8th, 2016 will go down in the Indian Economy as a red letter day, when literally overnight the Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 banknotes were demonetised. The first two weeks, and then the prolonged aftermath affected us at an individual, industry, sectoral and economic level. As India’s largest ATM cash management company, handling more than 50% of all ATM cash replenishment, and the largest retail cash collection service, with a presence across 95% of all the districts in India, CMS was at the frontline of managing this exercise in evacuation, recalibration and replenishment of ATMs. This presentation delves into the company's singular experience in handling and surviving Demonetisation, leadership lessons in coping with an increasingly chaotic ecosystem, while giving some insights into the cash cycle of our country, how the multiple entities that affect it moved in cohesion or otherwise.

Margaret Faux is a lawyer, registered nurse and Ph.D. candidate who has worked in the health sector for over 35 years. The subject of her Ph.D. integrates a 20-year career in medical claiming, compliance and administration. A regular contributor to peer review journals, public health blogs and radio forums, Margaret is considered as one of Australia’s leading experts on the legal and administrative structure and operation of Australia’s health care system, Medicare. In addition, Margaret has vast clinical and corporate experience in both hospitals and community based settings and draws on this experience to teach, inspire and foster future leaders in health system financing and public health administration.

With a hundred years of health systems behind us we know a great deal about what works and what doesn’t work in the health market. Countries such as India are perfectly positioned to benefit from this vast body of knowledge, but it’s complex! In this seminar we will consider key questions such as who should pay for health? Why is the health market unique and why are countries, with very different health systems, facing the same challenges controlling health expenditure? What is universal healthcare and why is the USA the only developed country that has been unable to achieve it? We will look at important health system drivers including information asymmetry, the operation of the moral hazard, the social determinants of health, the codification of health services and the ways in which doctors around the world are paid. We will also compare and contrast some successful but very different health care systems, before concluding by considering the core legal infrastructure required for a health system to succeed.

The National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) has initiated a lecture series and an annual conference on Papers in Public Economics and Policy, in honour of Dr. Raja J. Chelliah. The sixth event in this series is being organized on 23-24th March 2017 at New Delhi. 

The Sixth Dr. Raja Chelliah Lecture will be held on 24th March, 2017 at 04.30 pm at India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi. Dr Y.V. Reddy, Former Governor, RBI and Chairman, 14th Finance Commission, has kindly agreed to give the lecture.

The papers should be sent in soft copy to: ppep@nipfp.org.in. Any other communication regarding the Conference can also be addressed to arunoday.kumar@nipfp.org.in or alka.matta@nipfp.org.in

Click here for full video of the lecture.

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D. Manjunath is a Professor at the Electrical Engineering Department of IIT Bombay.

Detailed bio

Zero rating platforms allow a content provider to pay the ISP for the consumption of its data by a user; the user gets to consume for free. This is differential pricing and hence violates neutrality. The talk will analyze the market structures that can emerge when zero rating is permitted.

We are pleased to invite you to participate in the Symposium on Old-Age Income Security and Universal Basic Income in South Asia on 27 February, 2017 at NIPFP Auditorium, New Delhi. This day-long symposium is organized by the Social Development Division of UNESCAP in collaboration with the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), with the support of the ESCAP South and South-West Asia Office, New Delhi.

Pranesh Prakash is a Policy Director at, and was part of the founding team of, the Centre for Internet and Society, a non-profit organisation that engages in research and policy advocacy.

The speaker proposes to present a narrative of the current state of surveillance law, our knowledge of current surveillance practices (including noting where programmes like Natgrid, CMS, etc. fit in), and then to chart a rough map of reforms needed and outstanding policy research questions.

Dr. Anuj Bhuwania is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at South Asian University, New Delhi.  He is the author of 'Courting the People: Public Interest Litigation in Post-Emergency India,' published in December 2016 by Cambridge University Press.

The Indian higher judiciary has acquired an increasingly important role in India’s public discourse in the last few decades. The Supreme Court and the state High Courts have emerged as enormously powerful judicial institutions in the aftermath of the Internal Emergency of 1975-77. The principal means through which these judicial powers have been mobilized and enacted is the jurisdiction of Public Interest Litigation (PIL). This lecture will talk about the political role that PIL has come to play in contemporary India. It revisits the circumstances and manoeuvres that led to the rise of PIL and traces its political journey since then, arguing that the enormous powers that PIL confers upon the appellate judiciary stems from its populist character.

U.S. estimates of the natural rate of interest – the real short-term interest rate that would prevail absent transitory disturbances – have declined dramatically since the start of the global financial crisis. For example, estimates using the Laubach-Williams (2003) model indicate the natural rate in the United States fell close to zero during the crisis and has remained there through the end of 2015. Explanations for this decline include shifts in demographics, a slowdown in trend productivity growth, and global factors affecting real interest rates. This paper applies the Laubach-Williams methodology to the United States and three other advanced economies – Canada, the Euro Area, and the United Kingdom. We find that large declines in trend GDP growth and natural rates of interest have occurred over the past 25 years in all four economies. These country-by-country estimates are found to display a substantial amount of comovement over time, suggesting an important role for global factors in shaping trend growth and natural rates of interest.

Dr. Piyali Das is currently an Assistant Professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad. She has a Ph.D in Economics from Indiana University, Bloomington, USA. Her research areas include monetary macroeconomics, applied econometrics and development. 

Most advanced nations today are witnessing a peacetime public debt surge that match post World War levels. This raises concerns about fiscal financing and liquidation of the stock of debt especially in the face of changing demographics. United Kingdom being one of the advanced nations with a high level of public debt and an aging population is facing similar issues of fiscal financing. This paper attempts to decompose the evolution in the debt-to-GDP ratio of UK between 1984-2009 into nominal returns, inflation, GDP growth rate, primary deficit and the maturity structure of the debt. The results of the decomposition show that the government of UK inflated away part of the debt but most of the adjustments were due to low interest rates and changes in the primary deficit.