Below is given the Table of Contents of the
Issues listed above:
Volume 55 Number 1, April - June, 2007
ARTICLES / 1
On Reforming and Re-positioning
the
Higher Education Sector
K.C. Reddy
This Presidential address delivered
at the 89th annual conference of the
Indian Economic
Association, held in Kurukshetra,
during December 27, 2006, deals with
the important
contemporary issue of the challenges
of reforms in the Higher Education
Sector. Having
recognised the positive effects of
the market-driven paradigm of
development, in terms of
higher growth and enhanced
competitiveness, the author asserts
that high growth may not
necessarily ensure 'inclusiveness'
and 'equity '. The address
underscores the strategic
importance of 'higher education' in
the development process and makes a
number of useful suggestions of
policy relevance, in the context of
'reforms' in this sector. The
address also gives a profile of the
recent initiatives taken in Andhra
Pradesh (AP) for reforms in the
institutional framework of and the
policies towards higher education.
The author is President, Indian
Economic Association. E-mail:
kalluri_c@yahoo.com
ARTICLES / 2
India's Rising Role in Asia
Mukul G. Asher
In this lecture, the author brings
out the multiple dimensions of the
rising role of India in
Asia. He argues that India has been
integrated in the Asian region to a
much greater extent than what is
normally perceived. He advocates
that India has many opportunities
forcooperation and further
integration, despite the fact there
are many areas in which Asian
countries compete with each other.
He endorses the proposal made by
Japan, for strengthening the
"Comprehensive Economic Partnership
in East Asia (CEPEA)", with the
participation of ASEAN plus Six,
viz. India, China, Japan, Korea,
Australia, and New Zealand. He urges
the Indian policy maker, the private
sector, the intelligentsia and the
media to play a proactive role in
promoting the process of India's
integration in Asia.
The author is Professor of Public
Policy, National University of
Singapore and Adjunct Senior Fellow,
RIS, New Delhi. Email:
sppasher@nus.edu.sg
ARTICLES / 3
Creating Rural Wealth Using ICT
and Wireless A Franchising Model Using
Micro-equity
Raj Reddy
In this lecture, Dr. Raj Reddy gives
a blueprint of an innovative scheme
for eradicating rural poverty.
Recognising the fact that India is
essentially a country dominated by
the rural sector, he advocates that
priority attention needs to be given
to the task of capability building
in the rural sector. Invoking the
Chinese Philosopher's saying that
"it is better to teach as to how to
do fishing rather than giving a fish
a day", the author argues that the
most modern technologies of ICT and
wireless systems could be fruitfully
utilised to empower the rural youth
to create additional quality jobs
and wealth for their own welfare. He
advocates a total 'systems approach'
for disseminating knowledge and new
skills among the rural youth, by the
use of ICT and for encouraging new
rural entrepreneurship through the
provision of 'microequity', among
others.
The author is University Professor,
Carnegie Mellon University,
Pittsburg, USA.
Email:
dattruddar@rediffmail.com
ARTICLES / 4
Measuring Human Poverty by
Population and
Factor Decomposable Indices
Satya R. Chakravarty and Amita
Majumder*
The human poverty index concentrates
on deprivations in the living
standard of a population in terms of
failures in three basic dimensions
of life, namely, decent living
standard, educational attainment
rate and life expectancy at birth.
This paper considers a global
deprivation index using an arbitrary
number of dimensions of human life.
If we consider only the three basic
dimensions of well-being, a member
of this family becomes increasingly
related to the human poverty index.
For any partitioning of the
population into two or more groups,
with respect to characteristics like
age, sex, race, region etc., we can
calculate the percentage
contributions of deprivations in
different groups and hence identify
the groups which are more affected
by deprivation. This becomes
extremely important from a policy
perspective. Using a factor
decomposability condition we can
similarly isolate the dimensions
which are major contributors to
global deprivation. We also provide
an empirical illustration of the
index using Indian data.
Satya R. Chakravarty, Economic
Research Unit, Indian Statistical
Institute, Kolkata, India. E-mails:
satya@isical.ac.in,
rc_satya2@yahoo.com
Amita Majumder, Economic Research
Unit, Indian Statistical Institute,
Kolkata, India. E-mail:
amita@isical.ac.in
ARTICLES / 5
Governing a Democracy
Constrained Discretion for
Macroeconomic Policy
Ashima Goyal
Representation of diverse interests
is a strength of democracy but
conflict of interests makes it slow
moving. Rules are feasible that use
the strengths of a democracy and its
structure and history as enforcement
devices, mitigate its weaknesses,
and substitute incentives for
discretionary controls. Reforms give
an opportunity to restructure rules
towards constrained discretion that
respects these principles. In a
developing democracy the poor are
the largest vote block, but they
discount the future heavily, and
future generations are not present
to voice their interests. Strategic
interaction between fiscal and
monetary authorities and economic
agents, can lead to the creation of
more populism than is socially
optimal. The tradeoff through which
this occurs is that between populism
and growth. The paper explores
potential rules that implement
macroeconomic policy coordination
for such a democracy, forcing a
long-term perspective, yet retaining
flexibility.
The author is Professor, Indira
Gandhi Institute of Development
Research, Mumbai. Email:
ashima@igidr.ac.in
ARTICLES / 6
Access Demand for Telecom
Services in India
Evidence for Household Determinants
and Policy Implications for Goa
State
M.R. Narayana
This paper estimates the
socioeconomic and demographic
determinants of access demand for
telecom services in India by using a
small household survey data of Goa
State in Western India. Estimates of
a binary logit model are used to
compute the probabilities, marginal
effects, and elasticities of
household access demand. To gain
further insights, socioeconomic
determinants are estimated by rural
and urban Goa. The results offer
evidence for unique similarities and
essential difference in the nature
and impact of determinants in regard
to subscribers' sex, social caste,
education level, type of occupation,
income level, family size, nature of
family, and location of friends and
relatives. About 83 per cent of
computed probability of access
demand is explained
by these variables. Income
elasticity of probability for
subscription is remarkable. A new
method of translating the responses
of households to hypothetical
questions to price changes into
elasticities offers support for
international evidence on "elasticities
increase with distance." The
empirical results are useful for
design of a selective and focused
promotional policy for access demand
for telecom services in rural and
urban Goa and elsewhere in India.
The author is Professor of
Economics, Centre for Economic
Studies and Policy Institute for
Social and Economic Change (ISEC),
Bangalore, India. Email:
mrn@isec.ac.in ,
mrnarayana@yahoo.com
ARTICLES / 7
Bootstrap Estimate of a
Behavioural Stock Price Model
N. Lalitha and D.N. Rao
A behavioural stock price model that
incorporates inertia in investor
behaviour is developed and
estimated. The estimates are
consistent but biased, because of
the presence of lagged dependent
variables and errors-in-variables.
The method of recursive bootstrap
overcomes these problems and seems
to provide a more accurate estimate
of the behavioural model.
N. Lalitha, Department of Economics,
Shyama Prasad Mukherjee College,
University of Delhi, New Delhi,
India. Email:
lalitha_nat@yahoo.co.in
D.N. Rao, Centre for Economic
Studies and Planning, School of
Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru
University, New Delhi, India.
Email:
dnrao@mail.jnu.ac.in ,
dnrao@indiatimes.com
COMMUNICATIONS FOR DEBATE AND
RESEARCH / 1
The Nominal Income Targeting Rule
of Monetary Policy
and its Stability Properties in the
Open Economy
Baotai Wang*
Recently there has been increasing
interest in nominal income targeting
rule, one of the
possible policy rules for conducting
monetary policy, with much of this
interest focusing on whether or not
the nominal income targeting rule
would result in a dynamically stable
process for output and inflation.
The discussions so far have been
mainly conducted within the context
of the closed economy. Conflicting
conclusions on the stability
properties of such a policy rule
have been derived from different
specifications of the formation of
inflation expectations in the
Phillips curve and the timing with
which the interest rate affects
output and inflation. The present
paper extends the discussions to the
open-economy case. Results of this
study show that stability for output
and inflation prevails under the
nominal income targeting rule of
monetary policy in a general
open-economy model when the
asymmetric effects of the interest
rate on output and inflation and the
different formations of inflation
expectations are taken into the
analysis.
The author is Economics Program,
University of Northern British
Columbia, 3333 University Way,
Prince George, British
Columbia,CANADA. Email:
wangb@unbc.ca
COMMUNICATIONS FOR DEBATE AND
RESEARCH / 2
Knowledge Spillover and Information
Sharing
The Case of Uncertain R&D*
Shantanu Banerjee and Arijit
Mukherjee
We show the effects of "knowledge
spillover at the R&D stage" and "no
knowledge spillover at the R&D stage
but information sharing after R&D"
on the equilibrium R&D investments.
For large knowledge spillover, the
equilibrium R&D investments are
higher under no knowledge spillover
but information sharing compared to
knowledge spillover at the R&D
stage. However, these two regimes
can generate the same outcome for
small knowledge spillover.
Shantanu Banerjee, Lancaster
University, UK.
Arijit Mukherjee, School of
Economics, University of Nottingham,
University Park, Nottingham, NG7
2RD, UK. E-Mail:
arijit.mukherjee@nottingham.ac.uk
BOOK REVIEW
/ 1
Poverty Mapping in Rajasthan-P.C.
Bansil
(Concept Publishing Company, New
Delhi, Price: Rs. 750, pp.366).
Reviewed by Dr. V.B. Jugale,
Professor of Economics, Shivaji
University, Kolhapur
E-mail:
vbjugale@gmail.com
BOOK REVIEW
/ 2 Annals of a Central Bank
Meticulously Documented
History of Reserve Bank of India:
Volume 3, 1967-1981,
(published by Reserve Bank of India,
Mumbai, 2005, Price Rs.1300,pp.:
xxxii+1197)
Reviewed by Dr. N.K. Thingalaya,
Emeritus Professor, Justice K.S.
Hegde Institute of Management, Nitte
and former CMD of Syndicate Bank
