Brinda Viswanathan

Causality between foreign direct investment and tourism: empirical evidence from India.

This paper investigates the causal link between foreign direct investment and tourism in India by employing the Granger causality test under a VAR framework. A one-way causality link is found from foreign direct investment to tourism in India. This evidence once again adds to the need for appropriate policies and plans to further expand and develop tourism given that FDI flow into India is expected to be strong in the coming years, bringing along a demand for tourism as well.

Weather, agriculture and rural migration: evidence from state and district level migration in India

This study explores three-way linkage between weather, agricultural performance and internal migration in India at the state and district level using census data. The estimations are based on a two-stage least squares model using panel data. The elasticity of the inter-state out-migration rate with respect to per capita net state domestic agricultural product is − 0.775, indicating that a decline in the value of agricultural output related to weather variations results in an increase in out-migration rate. The crop-wise analysis shows that a 1 per cent decline in rice (wheat) yield leads to a nearly 2 per cent (1 per cent) increase in the rate of out-migration from a state. The district-level analysis shows larger magnitudes of estimated change in in-migration rates to relative changes in crop yields. However, the district-level analysis using two-period panel data constructed from a single census provides relatively less robust results compared to the state-level analysis owing to the associated data limitations.

Socio-economic Differences in Heights of Adult Indian Women

This study provides additional insights into the nature of variations in heights of adult Indian women based on the demographic and health survey data for the year 2005–06. Though contiguous regions show similar mean heights, the gap between geographic regions reduce once socio-economic differences are accounted for. While teenage child birth, wealth differences and caste affiliations are some of the key variables that explain the gaps in mean heights, better educational attainment reduces these gaps and has also contributed to temporal gains in heights.

INFLUENCE OF WEATHER ON TEMPORARY AND PERMANENT MIGRATION IN RURAL INDIA

While a wide range of factors influence rural–rural and rural–urban migration in developing countries, there is significant interest in analyzing the role of agricultural distress and growing inter-regional differences in fueling such movement. This strand of research acquires importance in the context of climate change adaptation. In the Indian context, this analysis gets further complicated due to the significant presence of temporary migration. This paper analyzes how weather and its variability affects both temporary and permanent migration in India using National Sample Survey data for the year 2007–2008. The paper finds that almost all of the rural–urban migrants are permanent. Only temperature plays a role in permanent migration. In contrast, many temporary migrants are rural–rural and both temperature and rainfall explain temporary migration.

Modelling the domestic and foreign tourist arrivals to Tamil Nadu (India)

In recent years, due to the Indian Federal Governments and Tamil Nadu State Governments various initiatives and promotional activities, foreign and domestic tourist arrivals in Tamil Nadu are on the increase. This article aims to model the monthly tourist arrivals (foreign as well as domestic) in Tamil Nadu for monthly time series data during the period 1998 to 2002 using univariate time-series models. As both time series show strong seasonal patterns, we also investigate the possibility of seasonal unit roots in the domestic and foreign tourist arrivals series. The results show that significant growth in domestic and foreign arrivals takes place during the months December to January. Growth rate for domestic tourist arrivals is positive during April and May, but is negative for the foreign tourist arrivals during April and insignificant during May. Such information would be very useful to the Tamil Nadu government and the tourism industry in maximizing the usage of available tourist spot infrastructure and to provide high quality service.

Estimation of Calorie Norms and Measurement of Food Intakes: Some Implications for the Magnitudes of the Prevalence of Undernutrition in India

This paper highlights the significant measurement issues in the computation of the prevalence of inadequate calorie intakes in India using NSS data. It focuses on the setting of appropriate norms or cut-offs which determine adequacy or inadequacy, as well as the measurement of intakes. Although energy norms for an individual are biologically determined their use as a policy tool necessitates several additional considerations that have not received sufficient attention in the literature. We demonstrate that changes in assumptions regarding age-sex distribution, average heights of adults, and physical activity status can lead to substantial changes in norms. Also important is the way food intakes are measured: changes in food habits that may lead to greater underreporting as the recall period increases, and the increasing trend, even though small, of eating meals outside the home, can exert a significant influence on the trends in the POU over time. With more realistic assumptions, the prevalence of inadequate energy intakes are quite reasonable in magnitude, although still high in absolute terms. The paper also suggests that by accounting for outliers, there is a correlation between anthropometric indicators for adults and food intakes.

Financial market and growth: Evidence from post-reforms India

Abstract A significant boom occurred in the Indian financial market and growth in the post-liberalization era. This motivates us to analyze the impact of stock market and credit market (two components of financial market) for the growth of financial market. This paper attempts to show the linkage between stock and credit markets and their impact on the Indian economy taking the period after post-liberalization. The period of analysis is from 1994 to 2010; we identify the three variables as stationary and find a relationship between the financial market and gross domestic product (GDP) and a long-run effect of lagged differences in credit market on GDP. It has been inferred that stock market development has larger and more significant long-run mutual effects on economic growth than credit market development in India.

Household Level Pollution in India: Patterns and Projections

Solid fuels are still a major source for cooking in many households in India causing significant disease and global warming burden. This study analyses the pollution–income relationship (for both local and global pollution), separately across rural and urban households in India based on unit record data on fuel consumption obtained through the National Sample Survey for 2009–2010. The fuel consumption and pollution (local and global) patterns are analysed at regional and all-India level for rural and urban households. Highlighting the significant difference between rural and urban India in terms of access to clean energy, the results show inverted-U shape relationship between pollution and income among rural households and monotonically decreasing relationship among urban households for local pollution. Global pollution, on the other hand, is monotonically increasing among both rural and urban households reflecting carbon intensive energy use. Based on the estimated relationship, the study makes an attempt to project household level pollution for 2026. The study analyses the emissions of particulate matter and greenhouse gases under various policy scenarios including deeper penetration of clean fuels and wider utilization of improved cook stoves. The article argues that penetration of improved cook stoves has significantly large potential to reduce both local and global pollution from the household sector in India.

Vulnerability to Globalization in India: Relative Rankings of States Using Fuzzy Models

Globalization is one of the important issues confronting developing countries. While globalization means different things to different people, this study interprets it as the component that arises from trade liberalization. Some argue that the inability of countries to integrate into the global economy because of a complex set of factors, including domestic policies, institutions and infrastructure, can cause economies to contract and poverty to rise, while others say that trade liberalization could help developing countries to address poverty issues more effectively. But, as Bardhan (2005) argues, the net impact of globalization on poor people is complex and context-dependent, making it an appropriate case for empirical analysis.

Child Under-weight and Agricultural Productivity in India

A recent global hunger index indicated a 12 percent decline in child underweight rates. This study attempts an empirical explanation of the factors that influence child underweight rates at the district level. Agricultural land productivity, share of women educated above the secondary level and participating in work, maternal, and child health seem to contribute to the reduction in child underweight. However government health and water supply facilities turn out to be ineffective.