Department of Economics

Ashoka University is a private university located in Sonipat, Haryana, India, focusing on liberal arts and sciences. It was established in 2014.&nbsp;It is guided by an academic council of academics and scholars from around the world. The council sets the university&#39;s academic standard, advising on matters of curriculum, faculty hiring and research.&nbsp;

Ashoka University offers a full-time 3 (+ 1) year undergraduate programme. The University comprises of&nbsp;2500 plus students, with a mix of both national and international students.&nbsp; &nbsp;

&nbsp;

&nbsp;

Ashoka University

I estimate the effect of financial constraints on the response of firms that import inputs to a large exchange rate depreciation. Using data from a census on Indonesian firms, I find that while domestic importers face lower value added due to a rise in their costs of production, foreign-owned importers fare better: they are more likely to sustain higher value added, hire more labor and use more materials than domestic owned firms. These effects are driven by firms in industries with high demand for external finance, emphasizing the importance of access to finance in mitigating the impact of trade and credit shocks. This suggests another channel through which FDI can add value to a firm in a developing country, particularly with the increasing importance of trade in intermediate goods.

Review of International Economics

Exchange rate shocks, multinational firms and access to finance

In a three-sector closed economy where housing land is accumulated for the construction of houses, we depict significant effects of housing and land market on sectoral growth. We assume agriculture is the most intensive in the use of land, followed by manufacturing and then services. In the long run, land intensity differences in conjunction with labor growth contribute to sectoral growth gaps. In the short run, due to housing land accumulation, the economy transitions along a non-monotonic convergent path to the steady state. Using the US data, we quantify that land accounts for about one-tenth of long-run and short-run sectoral output growth gaps. We also incorporate sector-specific land-use restrictions to show that, despite these regulations, land and housing have qualitative effects on non-balanced growth. © 2023 Elsevier Inc.

Journal of Macroeconomics

Land and housing: The twin forces of non-balanced growth

This study analyzes the time-varying nature and determinants of comovements in US housing prices using state and metropolitan statistical area (MSA) data. We employ dynamic factor models with time-varying loadings and stochastic volatility (DFM-TV-SV) to estimate the national, regional, and state factors. The time-varying factor loadings and stochastic volatility features enrich the dynamic factor model structures and are an effective tool to examine the comovements in housing prices. We find that the national factor is the dominant factor in explaining the movement of housing prices. The national factor accounts for 79% of the variation in state-level housing prices on average, with the greatest magnitude occurring during the housing boom and bust periods in many regions and states. We also find that the factors and synchronization effects are time-varying and heterogeneous across regions. The state-level housing prices contain higher national housing factor components in states with more diverse economies, higher wages and house prices, and lower unemployment rates. These findings shed light on the effectiveness of residential real estate diversification across the United States and the potential for elevated national housing risk amid economic downturns due to increased national housing price integration. © 2023 American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association.

World University root node

Real Estate Economics

Nature of comovements in US state and MSA housing prices

This paper presents the cost-effectiveness of a WHO-recommended harm-reduction programme implemented among a cohort of persons who inject drugs in Delhi, India. We estimate the number of infections averted using Bernoulli process model and calculate cost-effectiveness ratio as the total programme cost per infection averted. The intervention averted 996 HIV infections over 36 months, with a cost-effectiveness ratio of INR 24,763 (US$ 476) per infection averted per year. The first phase, when HIV testing and counselling were initiated, was more cost-effective than the second phase when full intervention package, including needle-syringe exchange, condom distribution, harm-reduction education, etc., was implemented. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Journal of Development Effectiveness

Infections averted by a comprehensive HIV prevention intervention and its cost-effectiveness: a prospective cohort study of persons who inject drugs in Delhi, India

The global output of food staples is far more stable than most individual nations&#39; outputs, but does this lead to consumption risk sharing? This paper applies tools from the risk sharing literature to address this question for rice, wheat, and maize, using a multilateral risk sharing model that, unlike the canonical model, accounts for trade costs. While the data show that optimal risk sharing does not occur, the wheat market comes closest to the idealized model. Our analysis also implies that both trade and storage play significant roles in smoothing domestic output shocks. Further, we find that risk sharing tends to rise with a nation&#39;s income.&nbsp;

Fulltext

Journal of Development Economics

International risk sharing for food staples

We study the association between the ritual of menstrual restrictions and maternal healthcare access in Nepal as similar restrictions are also practised around the time of childbirth. These restrictions are based on the assumption that women are ritually impure during both menstruation and childbirth. Our outcomes of interest include the likelihood of giving birth at home and receiving no trained medical assistance at childbirth. We use a rich set of controls as well as assess the sensitivity of our results to alternative estimation methods. We find that women who face any menstrual restriction are also more likely to give birth at home and receive assistance only from untrained individuals during childbirth, which potentially increases the risk of maternal mortality. These findings indicate that menstrual restriction related rituals can have persistent negative implications on women’s physical health that is not just limited to the time of menstruation.

World Development Perspectives

Cultural norms and women’s health: Implications of the practice of menstrual restrictions in Nepal

Climate change has increased rainfall uncertainty, leading to greater production risks in agriculture. We examine the gender-differentiated labor impacts of droughts using unique individual-level panel data for agricultural households in India over half a decade. Accounting for unobserved heterogeneity across individuals, we find that women’s workdays are 19% lower than men’s when a drought occurs, driven by the former’s lack of diversification to the non-farm sector. Women are less likely to work outside their village and migrate relative to men in response to droughts and are consequently unable to cope fully with the adverse agricultural productivity shock. We find suggestive evidence in support of social costs emanating from gender norms that constrain women’s access to non-farm work opportunities. The results highlight the gendered impact of climate shocks, potentially exacerbating extant gender gaps in the labor market.

Labour Economics

The gendered effects of droughts: Production shocks and labor response in agriculture

This paper examines the factors that influence the four most common measures of global value chain participation, separately for the sample of countries included in the World Input&ndash;Output Database and Trade in Value-Added database. For both samples, country size is an important driver of global value chain indicators. Participation in global value chains varies by industry groups and their technological classification. The influence is strongest for high-tech manufacturing, followed by high-tech services. Real exchange rate has a&nbsp;significant positive relationship with the domestic value added in gross exports ratio and forward linkage. The findings on the other covariates are sample sensitive.

Indian Economic Review

Determinants of global value chain participation: cross-country analysis

This paper examines if in-home access to toilets reduces the risk of violent crimes against women. We use the roll out of the Swachh Bharat Mission, a flagship toilet construction program in India, to ascertain if assaults and rapes of women reduce when access to in-home toilets increases. We bolster our findings through an <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/economics-econometrics-and-finance/instrumental-variables">instrumental variable</a> strategy using political alignment of locally elected representatives in close elections with the national government&rsquo;s political party, post the launch of the program, as an instrument. We find that construction of toilets reduces sexual assaults on women, but do not discern consistent changes in rapes. Our findings for sexual assaults are robust to a variety of controls, specifications, and identification approaches. We address reporting changes as a plausible alternative explanation and present evidence to support the exclusion restriction in our IV strategy.

Journal of Environmental Economics and Management

Access to toilets and violence against women

India has seen lower inflation by historical standards for the past 6&nbsp;years. This has been attributed to the adoption of inflation targeting by the central bank, the Reserve Bank of India in 2016. In particular, it has been asserted that the lower inflation reflects the anchoring of expectations. We evaluate these claims. An econometric investigation indicates that there is no basis to the claim that inflation has been lowered due to the anchoring of expectations. On the other hand, we are able to account for the trajectory of inflation in India after 2016 in terms of an alternative explanation of inflation, namely the structuralist.&nbsp;