Indira Rajaraman

The role of ROSCAs: lumpy durables or event insurance?

Abstract The stylised representation of ROSCAs in recent theoretical work as a device driven by impatience for lumpy consumer durables misses the important insurance role of this pervasive informal financial institution in the developing world. That insurance role explains why ROSCAs with concurrent bidding are the dominant means of determining the sequence and pricing of allocations. In ROSCAs so structured, the recipient and the implied interest rate for each periods allotment are determined by competitive bids at the time of distribution. We use an example of an actual bidding ROSCA to demonstrate the extent of unpredictable needs for funds, as reflected in the volatility of interest rates implicit in winning bids.

Non-renewable resources: A review of long-term projections☆

Abstract This article reviews available estimates of long-term future demand for the major mineral resources, together with estimates of the total world endowment of each. The confrontation of these two sets of estimates is not to be viewed as an exercise in doomsday forecasting. Rather, it yields a set of indices of the lead times available for the exploration of solutions to the problems of the demand for, and the supply of, resources. It is not obvious that market forces will be able to cope with shortages swiftly and flexibly. There is thus a need for a continuing evaluation of the long-run resource implications of world economic expansion.

Taxing Agriculture in a Developing Country: A Possible Approach

Abstract This contribution presents the results of a cross-country regression showing the impact of the sectoral share of agriculture on revenue. It examines the prescription in the literature for land-based taxation of agriculture, and examines Indian experience with respect to agricultural taxation in that light. Then sets out the design for a feasible crop-specific levy that is parsimonious in its recurring information requirements for assessment, and adapted to skill levels typically found at local levels of government in developing countries. Finally, the case for assignment of rights of levy of land taxation of agriculture to local government is briefly sketched.

Buyer Concentration in Markets for Developing Country Exports

The authors explore the implications of buyer concentration in markets for primary commodity exports of developing countries. Simple partial equilibrium models of monopsony and oligopsony show that the best available policy for the exporting country may be to tax exports so as to extract some of the profits of the monopsonist, even though doing so will actually worsen the distortion caused by the buyers market power. They also explore the general equilibrium implications of these results for factor markets and for patterns of trade.

Public Expenditure Choices and Gender Quotas

Purpose - This paper aims to be nested in the empirical literature examining the impact of gender quotas for elected posts to local government councils ( Design/methodology/approach - The model is tested on field survey data from a sample of 776 Findings - For the region surveyed, a higher probability of expenditure on waterworks is found in the presence of key variables that explain the incidence of water-borne diseases like cholera and diarrhea, as ascertained from a separate set of specifications. The gender of the head is statistically insignificant. Thus, in the region studies, gender of the head is trumped by economic fundamentals in expenditure choices, but this leaves open the possibility that the (uniform) gender quotas at membership level may have been what aligned choices with fundamentals. Originality/value - The key message of this paper is that the citizen candidate framework does not point to unique outcomes where public choice emerges from multi-member councils. Following from this, any finding on the impact of a gender quota at the level of head will necessarily be context-specific, and cannot become the basis for generalized expectations.

Tax Buoyancy Estimates for Indian States

With the introduction of a destination-based VAT in all but eight states starting April 2005, there is need for a good baseline indicator of tax buoyancies in states in the period immediately preceding. This to provide such a base, with buoyancies estimated over a 23-year span starting in 1980-81. If estimated over a sufficiently long period of time, the buoyancy coefficient essentially estimates the underlying revenue-generating properties of the system with endogenised tax policy. A log linear trend fit over the entire period showed serial correlation, which is eliminated for all but one state, Assam, with the introduction of structural breaks. A third specification, including the log of the per cent share of industry in the domestic product, eliminates serial correlation for Assam, and improves the goodness-of-fit for some other states. In all but six states, the sign of the change in the buoyancy coefficient at the break is positive. Where the buoyancy-enhancing break occurs in the late 1990s, the spurt in tax effort might have been an endogenous response to the expenditure shock from implementation of the higher salary scales recommended by the Fifth Pay Commission.

Offered wage and recipient attribute: Wage Functions for Rural Labour in India

Abstract Wage functions are estimated for daily-hire labour in two village markets in India through a single-equation procedure, with the dependent variable defined to yield a true measure of offered wage in the presence of censorship. Wages for males rise with age up to forty, but decline thereafter. For females, by contrast, reward for experience is relatively unimportant, but there is a positive association between offered wage and economic status. These findings differ from those reported so far in the literature without correction for censorship bias, and challenge the assumed homogeneity of rural labour in much theorising about factor markets in less developed countries.

OECD imports of leather: Indian performance and real exchange rates of the Indian rupee

This article reports an econometric investigation of shares by source in imports of leather and leather manufactures into OECD markets over the period 1974–87, at four‐digit SITC level. The Indian share at each destination relative to that of other major exporters, taken serially and independently, is tested for sensitivity to relative price fluctuations as measured by the real bilateral exchange rate between the Indian rupee and the currency of the fellow exporter. The pattern of findings by product category and destination provides important guidelines for exchange rate policy and export strategy.

Indian Borrowing on International Capital Markets in the Eighties

This paper reports the results of an effort to collect loanspecific details on Indian external commercial borrowing starting 1980. Official data on these borrowings, are confidential and not accessible to academic researchers. What is presented here has therefore been assembled from Euromoney, supplemented by other sources. While information on amount borrowed was available in all but a few cases, that on rates and on clauses bearing on rates, such as whether the loan was tax-spared, is very incomplete. Missing altogether is information on other elements of the costs of these loans such as front-end and agency fees, and commitment fees in arrangements with deferred drawdown or underwriting provisions, which are typically not reported in tombstones or by the borrowing organisations. An exercise that began with trhe objective of trying to understand cross-loan variations in terms had therefore necessarily to stop at compilation, and not proceed towards formal analysis. At the existing level of noise, the data can at best provide a base from which to motivate the issues.