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.

Technology portfolio analysis for residential lighting

Abstract: Electricity consumption in India is increasing rapidly over the years. The increased demand for electricity forces the electricity utilities to increase their generating capacity. The huge investments on generation, transmission and distribution (at the cost of alternative development projects) adversely affect India's scarce capital resources. Also, internal energy resources like coal are utilised with a great risk to the environment. This paper attempts to show analytically the benefits of shift in the focus from supply augmentation to demand management through a case study of replacement of inefficient devices with efficient ones for residential lighting. This is being done by analyzing the economics of various alternatives and developing an optimal portfolio for meeting the lighting requirement of a typical household in Maharashtra State in India. A mixed integer-programming model has been used for developing the optimal portfolio and a comparison of annual returns is made. Finally, the results for the typical household have been extended to the state of Maharashtra and the cost and benefits are estimated. The results show that the optimal lighting portfolio provides a far higher return at a lower risk compared to other investment alternatives like the stock market while providing substantial savings both in terms of energy and peak demand.

Analysing Household Consumption Pattern in Orissa

Abstract: This paper investigates the the household consumption pattern in rural and urban Orissa during 1999-00 for a basket of twelve commodities and estimates the corresponding Engel functions with Working-Leser methodology. Both in rural and urban areas, cereals, edible oil, vegetables, spices and fuel & light are found to be treated as necessities. Additionally, we find that pulses and beverages are necessities in urban areas. On the other hand, egg, fish & meat, sugar, education and medical are found to be luxuries in both areas. We observe differential impact of household size on household consumption pattern in rural and urban regions. In rural areas, income effect dominates the specific effect in most cases, where as the converse is true for urban areas. This difference can be attributed to the inherent structural difference due to various demographic and social factors. We demonstrate that the factors like occupational status, religion and social groups are helpful in explaining the variation of budget shares of the commodities in most of the cases.

External shocks, cross-border flows and macroeconomic risks in emerging market economies

Abstract: We study the relationship between cross-border flows and risks to macroeconomic stability for a sample of ten major emerging market economies (EMEs) from 2000 to 2017 in the presence of external shocks. We examine this relationship with a focus on two key channels of cross-border flows, namely external debt securities (EDS) and cross-border loans (CBLs). Our analysis focuses on the transition in cross-border flows post-global financial crisis 2008 (GFC) termed as the second phase of global liquidity (Shin in Keynote address at Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Asia economic policy conference, 2013). Panel vector autoregression estimations show that volatility in global risk perception affects cross-border flows to EMEs more as compared to the effect of the US monetary policy stance. Post-GFC, EDS flows rise with shocks in global risk perception, while CBL flows register a decline. CBL flows are also associated with larger risks post-GFC compared to the pre-GFC period, which is in contrast to the result for EDS flows. Second, a panel threshold estimation confirms a nonlinear association between EDS/CBL flows and macroeconomic risks largely dependent upon global uncertainty. US GDP growth also affects the nonlinearity, but US federal funds rate have insignificant threshold effects. Our results conclude that global uncertainty is a significant driver of cross-border flows to EMEs post-GFC and that it is a strong signal in determining riskiness of EDS flows and CBL flows for EMEs.

Measuring HDI: The old, the new and the elegant

Abstract: The Human Development Index (HDI) is calculated using normalized indicators from three dimensionshealth, education, and standard of living (or income). This paper evaluates three aggregation methods of computing HDI using a set of axioms. The old measure of HDI taking a linear average of the three dimensions satisfies monotonicity, anonymity, and normalization (or MAN) axioms. The current geometric mean approach additionally satisfies the axioms of uniformity, which penalizes unbalanced or skewed development across dimensions. We propose an alternative measure, where HDI is the additive inverse of the distance from the ideal. This measure, in addition to the above-mentioned axioms, also satisfies shortfall sensitivity (the emphasis on the neglected dimension should be at least in proportion to the shortfall) and hiatus sensitivity to level (higher overall attainment must simultaneously lead to reduction in gap across dimensions). An acronym of these axioms is MANUSH, which incidentally means human in some of the South Asians languages and the alphabets can also be rearranged to denote HUMANS. Using Minkowski distance function we also give an alpha-class of measures, special cases of which turn out to be the old linear averaging method (alpha=1) and our proposed displaced ideal measure (alpha=2) and when alpha>=2 then these class of measures also satisfy the MANUSH axioms.

Is Devaluation Working? Evidence from India in Phase of Economic Liberalization

Abstract: Using the data from a developing country like India, we offer an empirical analysis to examine the relationship between devaluation of the Rupee and the real trade balance with her major trading partners since the liberalization process that began in July 1991. Exploiting the recent advances in panel-data time-series econometrics, we document that devaluation may not be effective in improving trade balance in the long run. Success may follow only if the policymakers view devaluation as a short run tool to improve the trade balance. Nominal devaluation is unable to alter real exchange rates substantially and hence, the inflationary impact of devaluation is large in India.