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;

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Ashoka University

This paper studies systematic reporting heterogeneity in self-assessed health in India using World Health Survey (WHS)-SAGE survey that has subjective assessments on own health and hypothetical vignettes as well as objective measures like measured anthropometrics and performance tests on a range of health domains. The study implicitly tests and validates the assumption of response consistency in a developing country setting, thus lending support to the use of vignettes. Additionally, we are able to control for unobservable heterogeneities of reporting behavior at the individual level by employing individual fixed-effects estimation using multiple ratings on a set of vignettes by the same person. The study confirms identical pattern of systematic bias by the socioeconomic subgroups as is indicated by vignette technique. It further highlights that substantial amount of reporting heterogeneity remains unexplained after controlling for the usual socioeconomic control variables. The finding has potentially broader implications for research based on self-reported data in a developing country. JEL Classification: C83, D91, I12, I18, I15, I32, J10. © 2018, The Author(s).

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IZA Journal of Development and Migration

Systematic measurement error in self-reported health: is anchoring vignettes the way out?

Based on intraday high-frequency data, this paper investigates the effect of sterilized interventions on the Slovak koruna/euro exchange rate for different time windows during a period that coincides with Slovakia’s preparation for EU accession and euro adoption. Results confirm a significant relationship between intervention and exchange rate change. The maximum effect of intervention is reflected in the exchange rate change within a couple of hours, and the effect over longer time windows weakens only gradually. The initial impact of sale interventions is stronger than that of purchase interventions. © 2017, Association for Comparative Economic Studies.

World University root node

Comparative Economic Studies

On the Effectiveness of Central Bank Intervention in the Foreign Exchange Market: The Case of Slovakia, 1999–2007

In contrast with global trends, India has witnessed a secular decline in women's employment rates over the past few decades. We investigate this decline in rural areas, where the majority of Indian women reside. Using parametric and semi-parametric decomposition techniques, we show that changes in individual and household attributes fully account for the fall in women's labor force participation in 1987–1999 and account for more than half of the decline in 1999–2011. Our findings underscore increasing education levels among rural married women and the men in their households as the most prominent attributes contributing to this decline. We provide suggestive evidence that changes in more educated women's relative returns to home production compared with market production may have adversely affected female labor force participation in rural India.

Journal of Population Economics

Why are fewer married women joining the work force in rural India? A decomposition analysis over two decades

Since February 2017, the name of the engagement partner has to be disclosed for all audit reports issued in the USA. We show that this quest for transparency has its pitfalls. Though this rule increases the level of information for investors, it can have negative consequences if we ignore how the rule changes the incentives of the relevant players (auditors). There is a tension between monitoring and reputation incentives when moving from collective reputation environments to individual reputation environments. We analyze the new rule and study the resulting change in auditor incentives to show that while the consequent higher reputation incentives can improve audit quality, partners have a lower incentive to monitor other partners when names are disclosed. This may lead to a fall in audit quality when the rule is implemented. We present several solutions to this problem.

SSRN Electronic Journal

What's in a Name? Reputation and Monitoring in the Audit Market

A rich literature on multidimensional poverty measurement has recently sprung up. In this multidimensional setting, an individual is identified as poor or deprived if he or she falls short of these poverty-line-like cut-offs along various dimensions. A key assumption is that these shortfalls are non-comparable-a shortfall in one dimension cannot be compensated by a gain in another. This chapter reviews some of these axiomatic treatments and questions some assumptions. It points out that there are other ways in which one can identify impoverished individuals even within the multidimensional framework. © Oxford University Press 2018. All rights reserved.

Markets, Governance, and Institutions in the Process of Economic Development

Multidimensional poverty: Some comments

In the study of farsighted coalitional behavior, a central role is played by the von Neumann–Morgenstern (1944) stable set and its modification that incorporates farsightedness. Such a modification was first proposed by Harsanyi (1974) and was recently reformulated by Ray and Vohra (2015). The farsighted stable set is based on a notion of indirect dominance in which an outcome can be dominated by a chain of coalitional “moves” in which each coalition that is involved in the sequence eventually stands to gain. However, it does not require that each coalition make a maximal move, i.e., one that is not Pareto dominated (for the members of the coalition in question) by another. Consequently, when there are multiple continuation paths, the farsighted stable set can yield unreasonable predictions. We restrict coalitions to hold common, history independent expectations that incorporate maximality regarding the continuation path. This leads to two related solution concepts: the rational expectations farsighted stable set and the strong rational expectations farsighted stable set. We apply these concepts to simple games and to pillage games to illustrate the consequences of imposing rational expectations for farsighted stability. Copyright © 2017 The Authors.

Theoretical Economics

Rational expectations and farsighted stability

2016 Growth Slowdown Analysis by Income Thresholds and Annual Update of Competitiveness Analysis for 34 Greater China Economies

Comments on “growth slowdown analysis by income thresholds for greater China economies and India sub-national economies”

2016 Annual Competitiveness and Growth Slowdown Analysis for Sub-national Economies of India

Comments on “competitiveness ranking for sub-national economies and five regions of India”

Since 1991, there has been an acceleration of economic growth accompanied by a widening of the range of consumer goods produced, together with improvement in the quality of services available. Furthermore, the economy has passed through the longest period since 1947 without facing balance-of-payments stress. However, not all sectors of the economy have shown the same dynamism, with the performance of agriculture actually becoming a cause for concern. The unequal distribution of social opportunity has meant that this shortcoming has left a significant section of the population in a low-income trap. What underlies this outcome is examined and what is needed to correct the imbalance is proposed.

Economic and Political Weekly

Markets, growth and social opportunity: India since 1991

Amid (near) jobless economic growth during 2000-12, construction employment boomed at over 9% annually. It was part of a 10 percentage point rise in fixed capital formation rate in 13 years, to 35% of gross domestic product. The boom was rural, growing 2.5 times (at over 12%) as fast as in urban areas (at a mere 5%). National Sample Survey Office primary data reveals that a rise in rural private residential construction is the principal factor explaining the boom. This suggests improvements in rural housing status: conversion of kutcha houses into pucca houses. Decline in price-to-income ratio-of cement to rural wages-expanded rural construction demand. The popular perception (or explanation) for the rural construction employment boom in terms of rural-urban migration-of short-term, circular or seasonal-does not hold water.