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.

Energy Efficiency and Environmental Implications in India's Household Sector

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter provides a methodological framework for estimating the costs and benefits to the household sector through the replacement of the existing inefficient technologies with efficient ones, and suggests policy measures. Energy efficiency improvements have multiple advantages, such as the efficiency of utilization of natural resources, reducing air pollution levels, and reduced spending by the consumer on energy related expenditure. Annualized Life Cycle Costs (ALCC) are calculated taking into consideration the capital cost of the device, its life, operating cost, energy carrier price, etc., using a 12% discount rate. The results show that the average discounted payback period for many of these technologies, at the current capital costs, is less than two years, which usually considered warranting the investment. It is seen from the results that, on an average, for every hundred rupees of capital invested on efficient lighting systems, the consumer gets an annual return of about 60 Rupees. This shows that the rate of return on investment is very high. The chapter identifies the barriers that prevent the government from achieving its energy efficiency goals, analyzes programs that address these barriers, and explores the creation of an institutional mechanism.

Introduction to Development in India: Micro and Macro Perspectives

Abstract: Our focus in this book is to look at the big picture from the vantage points of contributing authors’ thematic or sector specializations in order to draw out the successes and challenges of development theory as well as policy. Each one of the main authors represented in this volume are known for laying out specific research agendas that have been pursued over decades if not life times. By design, they distil and present the core ideas in an accessible style, which to some extent eschews technicalities that are normally unavoidable in modern day economics writing. Given one common characteristic of their Indian origin, their writing is either voluntarily or involuntarily suffused with Indian development policy debates. However, their international characteristic adds a more nuanced general perspective to these universal development problems that transcend individual country experiences. The book is organized into six parts: Formal and Informal Institutions; Aid and Poverty; Indian Agriculture Growth and Distribution; Financial Markets and Macro Economy; Technological Change, Trade and Development; and, Energy and Ecosystems.

Trade Credit, Bank Credit and Profits: Evidence from Indian Manufacturing Firms

Abstract: An important question that is empirically under researched pertains to the relationship between trade credit (accounts payable and accounts receivable), bank credit and profits when there are imperfections in the credit market. Theory predicts complementarity between accounts payable and bank credit for financially constrained firms and substitutability for financially unconstrained firms. On the other hand, only those firms that are relatively unprofitable and constrained should invest in accounts receivable. We test these predictions using a sample of 3041 Indian manufacturing firms for the period 1993 to 2009. Trade credit transactions in the Indian context are different from the developed countries as the rediscounting of such transaction bills is almost negligible in India. Using an endogenous regime switching model, we show complementarity between accounts payable and bank credit in the event of finance constraint. We also show that firms which are unconstrained or firms which are constrained and relatively profitable do not offer trade credit. In fact, firms which are constrained and unprofitable do so.

On Delays in Project Completion with Cost Reduction: An Experiment

Abstract: We examine the voluntary provision of a public project via binary contributions when contributions may be made over multiple periods. In many situations, early contributors are likely to pay a higher cost than those who wait. We show that in such circumstances the provision of the project always involves delay. Because this game involves coordination on complex, dynamic strategies in the face of asymmetries in payoffs, we examine behavior in the laboratory.

Sector GDP concentration bias in the macro-money demand specification: New evidence for India

Abstract: Money serves as an intermediate target variable for transmitting monetary policy actions in macroeconomic management. In this connection, no other macro-behavioural function is subjected to more modelling modifications and regression rigors than the macro-money demand function. Monetary policy planning crucially depends on the parameters of the money demand function. An emerging market economy undergoes structural change in the sector GDP composition when compared to that of a structurally (invariant) mature advanced economy. This obviously introduces a bias in the estimation of the income elasticity of money demand parameter if the structural change were not modelled into the money demand function. The present study tries to incorporate this structural change into the money demand function as an additional variable besides the aggregate GDP and interest rate as the conventional scale and opportunity cost parameters variables respectively. The simplified algebra permits us to proxy the sector GDP concentration variable by the numbers equivalent Herfindahl index(H) For the opportunity cost variable,1-3 year deposit rate and the call money rate are alternatively used. Maximum Likelihood estimates of the have thrown up a statistically highly significant positive coefficient of the H variable besides equally highly significant scale and opportunity cost variables with their expected positive and negative coefficients respectively. This empirical evidence suggests that without this variable, the conventional specification of the money demand function contains a serious policy-centric specification error. Also, the implication of the result is that as the sector GDP concentration increases, the demand for real money balances increases less proportionately, indicating presence of economies of scale.