Showing papers by "Debraj Ray published in 2020"

India's lockdown: an interim report.

Abstract: The world has continued to change rapidly since the last version of this article was written on May 20, 2020. Yet, as this article goes to press, we are aware of two realities; first, that we cannot perennially chase a moving target, but second, that nothing about the fundamental trends that we have identified appear to have changed. India is firmly in the throes of a vicious pandemic that we can only hope will abate with the development of an effective vaccine. Our plea for the widespread provision of adequate health and medical facilities, adequate protection for the elderly, and transfers to those severely affected by the lockdown are absolutely unchanged in the face of the latest data. In contrast, the brutal enforcement of a lockdown with none of these accompanying measures can only worsen outcomes for the poorest and most vulnerable among the population.

Aspirations and Economic Behavior

Abstract: This article reviews the literature on aspirations in economics, with a particular focus on socially determined aspirations. The core theory builds on two fundamental principles: (a) Aspirations ca...

India's lockdown

Abstract: On March 24, 2020, the Government of India ordered a nationwide lockdown for 21 days as a preventive measure against the spread of the coronavirus. The lockdown – in full force as we write – restricts 1.3 billion people from leaving their homes. Transport services are suspended, educational institutions are closed, and factories are shut down. This is in line with the measures imposed in most European countries and in the United States, but the sheer scale of the measure – as in the case of most policies in India – is intimidating. Add to this the grim truth of Indian occupational structure and poverty, and you would likely predict what we now see: unending streams of migrants trying to find their way home, the fear of loss of all income, deep privations, and even (in the space of days) hunger, starvation and death.

Games of Love and Hate

Abstract: A strategic situation with payoff-based externalities is one in which a player’s payoff depends on her own action and others’ payoffs. We place restrictions on the resulting interdependent utility ...

Decoding India’s low Covid-19 case fatality rate

Abstract: India’s case fatality rate (CFR) under covid-19 is strikingly low, with a current level of around 1.7%. The world average rate is far higher. Several observers have noted that this difference is at least partly due to India’s younger age distribution. We use age-specific fatality rates from 17 comparison countries, coupled with India’s distribution of covid-19 cases, to “predict" India’s CFR. In most cases, those predictions yield even lower numbers, suggesting that India’s CFR is, if anything, too high rather than too low. We supplement the analysis with a decomposition exercise, and we additionally account for time lags between case incidence and death for a more relevant perspective under a growing pandemic. Our exercise underscores the importance of careful measurement and interpretation of the data, and emphasizes the dangers of a misplaced complacency that could arise from an exclusive concern with aggregate statistics such as the CFR.

India’s Lockdown: An Interim Report

Abstract: Our goal is to provide an interim report on the Indian lockdown provoked by the covid19 pandemic. While our main themes — ranging from the philosophy of lockdown to the provision of relief measures — transcend the Indian case, our context is deeply India-specific in several senses that we hope will become clear through the article. A fundamental theme that recurs throughout our writing is the enormous visibility of covid-19 deaths worldwide, now that sensitivities and anxieties regarding the pandemic have been honed to an extreme sharpness. Governments everywhere are propelled to respect this visibility, developing countries perhaps even more so than their developed counterparts. In advanced economies, the cost of achieving this reduction in visible deaths is “merely” a dramatic reduction in overall economic activity, coupled with a farreaching relief package to partly compensate those who bear such losses. But for India, a developing country with great sectoral and occupational vulnerabilities, this dramatic reduction is more than economics: it means lives lost. These lost lives, through violence, starvation, indebtedness and extreme stress, both psychological and physiological, are invisible, in the sense that they are—and will continue to be—diffuse in space, time, cause and category. They will blend into the surrounding landscape; they are not news, though the intrepid statistician or economist will pick them up as the months go by. It is this conjunction of visibility and invisibility that drives the Indian response. The lockdown meets all international standards so far; the relief package none.

Decoding India's Low Covid-19 Case Fatality Rate

Abstract: India’s case fatality rate (CFR) under covid-19 is strikingly low, trending from 3% or more, to a current level of around 2.2%. The world average rate is far higher, at around 4%. Several observers have noted that this difference is at least partly due to India’s younger age distribution. In this paper, we use age-specific fatality rates from 14 comparison countries, coupled with India’s distribution of covid-19 cases to “predict" what India’s CFR would be with those age-specific rates. In most cases, those predictions are lower than India’s actual performance, suggesting that India’s CFR is, if anything, too high rather than too low. We supplement the prediction exercises with the application of a decomposition technique, and we additionally account for time lags between case incidence and death, for a more relevant cross-country perspective in the growth phase of the pandemic.