Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research

About: Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research is a facility organization based out in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Monetary policy & Inflation. The organization has 307 authors who have published 1021 publications receiving 18848 citations.

The Heterogeneous welfare impacts of participation in contract farming schemes: Evidence from Southern India

Abstract: Assessing the extent of welfare gains from participation in contract farming arrangements is important to be able to make a case for promoting contract farming as a way for smallholders to capitalize on the opportunities okered by modern supply chains. At the same time, empirical accounts of contract farming schemes in developing countries not only suggest high mortality rates but also show that many schemes have high farmer exit or attrition rates, indicating that farmer experiences might be variable. This paper demonstrates the heterogeneity of welfare impacts of contract farming participation by estimating an endogenous switching model using survey data for 474 farmers in four commodity sectors, gherkins, papaya marigold and broiler. The study shows that net welfare gains vary widely both across contract commodities and across farmers within a commodity sector. While contracting in papaya and broiler are associated with improvements in net prolt per month for those participating and potential improvements of 47 and 123 for current non-participants, the impacts for gherkins and marigold are more ambiguous. The standard deviation of point estimates of treatment ekects is quite large indicating variability in welfare gains from contracting to dikerent farmers even within the same commodity sectors. It is therefore important to recognize that notwithstanding the sign of average treatment ekects, contract farming arrangements have diverse impacts on income for individual farmers.

Finance, Growth, and Inequality: Channels and Outcomes

Abstract: This paper assesses how financial development impacts income inequality using a data set which covers over 150 countries and goes back to before 1960. Using System Generalized Method of Moments (GMM), we find that financial development leads to a reduction in income inequality which is economically significant. A one standard deviation increase in the private credit to GDP for the median country-year observation would reduce the gini co-efficient by 10.0% (from 41.05 to 36.93). We also find that broadening access to financial services (increasing the geographic/demographic penetration of bank branches) may work faster in reducing income inequality than merely deepening the availability of credit. In addition, identifying the specific channels through which financial development impacts inequality via growth is important both for research and policy prescriptions. The existing literature on the subject has not yet attempted this important task in a cross-country setting. In the present study we consider two possible channels: (1) educational attainment, in particular the level of tertiary education; and (2) the labor channel, where we look at the relative wage difference between skilled and unskilled workers. While financial development is weakly associated with a rise in the level of tertiary education, we find that its relationship with the second channel is much stronger. Higher financial development is associated with a tightening of the wage gap between the skilled and the unskilled. Both channels are associated with inequality in an economically meaningful way.

To Pool or to Aggregate? Tests with a Dynamic Panel Macroeconometric Model of Australian State Labour Markets

Abstract: We construct a dynamic error correction model of the Australian labour market using a macroeconomic panel across seven states from 1972:3 to 1999:1 Long run equilibrium estimates support a real wageproductivity gap and an unemployment gap The dynamic short-run estimates support expectations augmented Phillips curves for wages and prices, and Keynesian demand-led employment growth We compare three procedures – pooled, aggregate and mean group estimates Considerable heterogeneity existed across states in the pooled procedure, and state-level variables had a significant impact in the aggregate procedure Out-of-sample aggregate forecast ing for the pooled, aggregate and mean group procedures indicate that the pooled one performs best

Impact of communist parties on the individual decision to join a trade union: evidence from india

Abstract: This paper analyzes the impact on individual decisions to unionize of several factors: the reach of communist parties, the degree of political activism, personal attributes of workers, and industrial characteristics. The workers examined are Indian nonagricultural regular workers, using micro-data from the 2004–5 Employment and Unemployment Survey conducted by the National Sample Survey Organisation, linked to state-level factors. A notable result is that the reach of communist parties has considerable effect on unionization probability. Moreover, it seems that the mere existence of communist parties in a state also facilitates unionization to some extent. State-level political activism and unemployment rate also influence the individual decision to join a union. The paper concludes also that a worker's gender, marital status, ethnic background, employment status, experience, occupation, sector of employment, establishment size, and type of industry remain important in the determination of union membership.

Dynamic Harmonic Regression Methods in the Analysis of Stochastic Time Series Exhibiting Strong Trigonometric Components

Abstract: Strongly periodic series occur frequently in many disciplines. This paper reviews one specific approach to analyzing such series viz. the harmonic regression approach. In this paper, the five major methods suggested under this approach are critically reviewed and compared, and their empirical potential highlighted via two applications. The out-of-sample forecast comparisons are made using the Superior Predictive Ability test, which specifically guards against the perils of data snooping. Certain tentative conclusions are drawn regarding the relative forecasting ability of the different methods.