CDS-KNRaj Library

Updates from K.N. Raj Library, CDS, Thiruvananthapuram

Motivating Knowledge Agents: Can Incentive Pay Overcome Social Distance?

by Erlend Berg, Maitreesh Ghatak, R Manjula,  D Rajasekhar and Sanchari Roy LSE [Mar 2013] This paper studies the interaction of incentive pay and social distance in the dissemination of information. We analyse theoretically as well as empirically the e ffect of incentive pay when agents have pro-social objectives, but also preferences over dealing with one [...]

India’s senior citizen’s policy and an examination of the life of senior citizens in North Delhi

by Hitoshi Ota IDE DP No.402 [Mar 2013] The paper investigates the ageing situation in India and the development of the government initiatives for the welfare of senior citizens. It also presents the initial results of a survey that the author conducted in 2011 in North Delhi. The main features related to ageing in India [...]

Food Prices, Wages, and Welfare in Rural India

Hanan G. Jacoby The World Bank Development Research Group Agriculture and Rural Development Team April 2013 Policy Research Working Paper 6412 This paper considers the welfare and distributional consequences of higher relative food prices in rural India through the lens of a specific-factors, general equilibrium, trade model applied at the district level. The evidence shows [...]

The role of bribes in rural governance:The case of India

by Hari Nagarajan; Raghbendra Jha and Kailash C pradhan ASARC Working Paper no. 2013/03 Given that the phenomenon of capture of public programs by sections the population is rampant in developing countries, households can indulge in a strategy to improve their participating in public programs by bribing the suppliers of such programs. This is an [...]

Mixed fortunes for the daughters of Travancore

Banyan (The Economist Blog), 28-Mar-2013. Modern Kerala is still often upheld as India’s best state for women. It has the country’s highest female literacy rate at 92%, with only four percentage points’ difference between male and female rates. In Rajasthan, a large northern state, only 53% of women are literate: almost 30 percentage points behind [...]

OECD Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-being

by OECD (2013) These Guidelines provide advice on the collection and use of measures of subjective well-being, and will allow statisticians and researchers to better measure how individuals evaluate and experience their lives. url: http://x-oecd-live-01.ingenta.com/economics/oecd-guidelines-on-measuring-subjective-well-being_9789264191655-en Courtesy: OECD

Objectivizing the Subjective: Measuring Subjective Wellbeing

by A. Vijayamohanan Pillai and B. P. Asalatha MPRA Paper 45005 [Mar 2013] Wellbeing has always eluded definition, and the elusive definition, in turn, has denuded the concept of an objective measure. Attempts at an objective measure have brought out two basic methodological alternatives. The first, objective, measure has come out as the famous Physical [...]

“All’s well that ends well!” subjective wellbeing: an epistemic enquiry

by N. Vijayamohanan Pillai and B. P. Asalatha MPRA Paper 45004 [March 2013] Wellbeing in general is represented in terms of the quality of life of an individual or group. The different objective and subjective indicators that go into the composition of quality of life leave its definition and measurement elusive, despite its global recognition [...]

NREGS net expands to include railway works

by Kirtika Suneja, Sandip Das The Financial Express [9-Mar-2013] National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) — will now be able to create permanent infrastructure assets, giving the seven-year-old scheme providing livelihood to almost 5 crore families annually an altogether new direction. The rural development ministry has decided to include building railway underpasses under the ambit of [...]

Welfare Analysis of Changing Food Prices: A Nonparametric Examination of Export Ban on Rice in India

Ben Groom and Mehroosh Tak SOAS Department of Economics Working Paper Series No 177 – 2013 During the world food crisis of 2007-08, the price of staples soared rapidly. Higher food price impacts poor households more as they spend  approximately three quarters of their income on food. Together rice and wheat provide more than 50% [...]

Social innovation for women empowerment: Kudumbashree in Kerala

by Christabell P. J. Innovation and Development. Vol. 3, No.1, 139-140 Kudumbashree is a major social innovation initiated at the instance of the Government in the state of Kerala in India. Kerala is known for its unique development model, which attracted world attention on account of its human development indicators even comparable to the developed [...]

Chartbook of Economic Inequality: 25 Countries 1911-2010

by Tony Atkinson, and Salvatore Morelli INET Research Note #15 [October 2012] —————————————————— The purpose of this Chartbook is to present a summary of evidence about changes in economic inequality – primarily income, earnings, and wealth – for 25 countries covering a 100 year period from 1911 to 2010. There is a range of countries and they [...]

Inequalities and the Post-2015 Development Agenda

UNRISD Beyond 2015 Brief No.2 [Feb 2013] Income inequalities between and within countries have worsened in recent decades. Gender inequalities are narrowing at a snail’s pace. Citizenship and location continue to determine life chances, despite the increasing integration of economies. Policy instruments to promote equality of outcome have largely been neglected in the name of approaches that claim to [...]

Domestic Migrant Labour in Kerala

by D. Narayana, C. S. Venkiteswaran with M. P. Joseph IAS Gulati Institute of Finance and Taxation [Feb 2013] The objectives of this Study are as follows: (i) To estimate the stock of DML in Kerala (ii) To estimate the net annual inflow of DML into the State; (iii) To estimate the distribution of the [...]

Corruption, Shadow Economy and Income Inequality: Evidence from Asia

by Saibal Kar and Shrabani Saha IZA DP No. 7106 (Dec 2012) A number of recent studies for Latin America show that as the size of the informal economy grows, corruption is less harmful to inequality. We investigate if this relationship is equally compelling for developing countries in Asia where corruption, inequality and shadow economies [...]

Fair Share

by Francesca Bastagli, David Coady,  and Sanjeev Gupta FINANCE & DEVELOPMENT, December 2012, Vol. 49, No. 4 Fighting income inequality with redistributive social spending has been more effective in advanced than in developing economies URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2012/12/bastagli.htm Courtesy: IMF

Livelihood decisions under the shadow of conflict in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh

Muhammad Badiuzzaman, John Cameron, and Syed Mansoob Murshed WIDER Working Paper 2013/006 We analyse rural household livelihood and children’s school enrolment decisions in a post-conflict setting in the Chittagong Hill Tracts region of Bangladesh. The innovation of the paper lies in the fact that we employ information about current subjective perceptions regarding the possibility of [...]

World Human Development: 1870-2007

by Leandro Prados de la Escosura EHES Working Paper No.34 (Jan 2013) How has wellbeing evolved over time and across regions? How does the West compare to the Rest? What  explains their differences? These questions are addressed using an historical index of human development. A sustained improvement in wellbeing has taken place since 1870. The absolute gap between OECD [...]

Work and Welfare: Revisiting the Linkages from a Gender Perspective

Sarah Cook, Shahra Razavi UNRISD Research Paper 7 This paper examines the relationship between employment and social policy specifically from a gender perspective. It first lays out, in section 1, the conceptual ground, drawing on a range of heterodox economic and feminist analyses to suggest alternative ways of understanding institutions and labour markets as gendered [...]

Inequality of opportunity, income inequality and economic mobility : some international comparisons

by Paolo Brunori; Francisco H.G. Ferriera and Vito Peragine WB Policy Research Paper no.WPS 6304, January 2013 Despite a recent surge in the number of studies attempting to measure inequality of opportunity in various countries, methodological differences have so far prevented meaningful international comparisons. This paper presents a comparison of ex-ante measures of inequality of [...]

The Heterogeneous Welfare Impacts of Participation in ContractFarming Schemes: Evidence from Southern India

by Sudha Narayanan IGIDR WP-2012-019, September 2012 Assessing the extent of welfare gains from participation in contract farming arrangements is important to be able to make a case for promoting contract farming as a way for smallholders to capitalize on the opportunities oered by modern supply chains. At the same time, empirical accounts of contract [...]

Disabled Definitions, Impaired Policies:Reflections on Limits of Dominant Concepts of Disability

by Nandini Ghosh IDSK Occasional Paper no. 34, May 2012 Disability is a complex category as it is understood and interpreted in very different ways. While disability has been defined primarily in terms of medical deficit, socio-cultural constructions give meaning to impairments and influence the experiences and interactions of disabled people in different socio-historical contexts. [...]

The Pursuit of Happiness: An Economy of Well-Being

by Carol Graham A Brookings FOCUS Book – “Since 1776 the ‘pursuit of happiness’ has been the great world question. Here, reflecting on modern survey techniques and results, Carol Graham drills deeper. What does happiness mean? For example, is it opportunity for a meaningful life? Or, is it blissful contentment? And why does it vary, [...]

Vulnerability and Responses to Risk in Rural India

Raghbendra Jha, Woojin Kang, Hari K. Nagarajan and Kailash C. Pradhan ASARC Working Paper 2012/05 Using Vulnerability as Expected Utility (VEU) analysis that permits the decomposition of household vulnerability into its components on a unique data set this paper demonstrates that in rural India household vulnerability is most explained by poverty and idiosyncratic components.  So far as risk coping [...]

Vulnerability as Expected Poverty in Rural India

Raghbendra Jha, Woojin Kang, Hari K. Nagarajan and Kailash C. Pradhan ASARC Working Paper 2012/04 Using a unique panel data for rural India for  the periods 1999 and 2006 this paper models vulnerability to poverty. We quantify household  vulnerability in rural India in 1999 and 2006, investigate the determinants of ex post poverty as well as ex ante [...]

Individual property rights and bargaining outcomes: evidence from intra-household asset data

by Hema Swaminathan, Suchitra J Y,  and Rahul Lahoti IIM Bangalore WP364. [2012 ] This paper examines the determinants of the decision-making process among couples. Using an expanded conceptualization of decision-making, this paper explores factors that affect convergence or divergence between spousal perceptions. In particular, the paper considers the impact of women’s property status, specifically, their ownership [...]

Transfers, diversification and household risk strategies : experimental evidence with lessons for climate change adaptation

by Karen Macours; Patrick Premand and Renos Vakis WB Policy Research Paper No. WPS6053, April 2012 While climate change is likely to increase weather risks in many developing countries, there is little evidence on effective policies to facilitate adaptation. This paper presents experimental evidence on a program in rural Nicaragua aimed at improving households’ risk-management [...]

The Impact of Redistributive Policies on Inequality in OECD Countries

Philipp Doerrenberg and Andreas Peichl IZA DP No. 6505 April 2012 Recent discussions about rising inequality in industrialized countries have triggered calls for more government intervention and redistribution. Due to obvious behavioral effects caused by redistribution, it is however not clear whether redistributional policies are indeed able to combat inequality. This paper contributes to this [...]

Ordinal Welfare Comparisons with Multiple Discrete Indicators: A First Order Dominance Approach and Application to Child Poverty

by Channing Arndt, Roberta Distante, M. Azhar Hussain, Lars Peter Østerdal, Pham Lan Huong, Maimuna Ibraimo UNU-WIDER Working Paper No. 2012/36 We develop an approach for making welfare comparisons between populations with multidimensional discrete well-being indicators observed at the micro level. The approach is rooted in the concept of multidimensional first order dominance. It assumes [...]

Productivity and the welfare of nations

by Susanto Basu; Luigi Pascali; Fabio Schiantarelli and Luis Serven WB Policy Research Paper no.WPS 6026, April 2012 This paper shows that the welfare of a country’s representative consumer can be measured using just two variables: current and future total factor productivity and the capital stock per capita. These variables suffice to calculate welfare changes within [...]

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