XKDR Newsletter - Issue 26
Metrics on Debt Recovery Tribunal • Exchange rate as a shock absorber • Re-thinking electricity subsidies • Making the most of FDI • The economics of labour mobility and more.
Probability of disposal and hearings at the Debt Recovery Tribunal
In earlier work, we reported our findings on 3 questions in the field of litigant decision making for cases filed and heard before the Mumbai bench of the Debt Recovery Tribunal, between September 2021 to December 2022. We have now updated our dataset upto December 2023:
OP-ED & COMMENTARY
In his column in the Business Standard, Ajay Shah writes on the importance of the exchange rate as a shock absorber for the economy . He argues that price flexibility of shares, bonds, real estate, and exchange rates are shock absorbers in the financial system and holding the exchange rate artificially stable, forces adjustments upon other parts of the economy.
In their article in the Business Standard, Ajay Shah and Akshay Jaitly discuss the merits of organising subsidies more transparently. This is encouraging the rise of explicit on-budget electricity subsidies as opposed to the traditional, complex, within-sector tax-and-subsidise schemes. They argue that these developments can help decouple political objectives from electricity policy.
Natasha Agarwal writes for the Institute for Security and Development Policy on how countries can make the most of FDI. In her article, she argues for investment in human capital and proposes short to medium term solutions like brain circulation for countries like India.
VIDEOS AND PODCASTS
We have released new episodes of XKDR’s YouTube series Big Ideas - conversations with some of the leading thinkers of today.
The economics of labour mobility, with Dr. Lant Pritchett: Ep 15
Why road side barricading is obsolete, with AP Singh: Ep 14
Government commissioned software must be released as open source, with Shuvam Misra: Ep 13
New episodes of Ajay Shah’s YouTube show Everything is Everything with Amit Varma are out:
The Art of Podcasting: Ep 49
Graduating to Globalisation: Ep 48
India Needs Decentralization: Ep 47
Stay Away From Luxury Beliefs: Ep 46
Beware of These Five Fallacies! Ep 45
EVENTS
Book talk
We hosted Dr. Yugank Goyal on 30th May 2024, for a talk on his recently launched book, “Who moved my vote: digging through Indian electoral data”, co-authored with Arun Kumar Kaushik. In their book, the authors analyse data from India’s national and state election results to show the leakages in the Indian electoral system and the need for radical reforms.
We hosted Dr. Rajat Nag on 29th May 2024, for a talk on his book “From Here to Denmark: The Importance of Institutions for Good Governance”, co-authored with Harinder S. Kohli. The book represents the journey of developing nations from a state of poor governance to a state of good governance, reflected in predictability, accountability, and fairness in governance matters, and the strong presence of the rule of law.
Seminar
We hosted Seminar #8 of the Indian Legal System Reform on 31st May 2024. In this event,
Diya Uday presented XKDR’s work on “Evaluating the quality of judgements: A literature review”; and
Bhavin Patel presented TrustBridge’s work on “LLM-assisted study of appeals from SEBI insider trading orders at SAT”.
Conference
Diya Uday presented the paper, “Does The Quality Of Land Records Affect Credit Access Of Households In India?” co-authored with Susan Thomas in the Research Track at the World Bank Land Conference 2024 held in Washington D.C. In this paper,
the authors examine the link between the heterogeneity of the quality of the land records infrastructure across states and the access to credit by households;
their findings indicate a weak linkage between the quality of land records and access to finance - particularly finance from formal sources;
they find that demand-side variables like the nature of borrowing and the supply-side variable of the presence of financial institutions may explain the results.
XKDR Forum is an inter-disciplinary research and policy organisation harnessing knowledge and capabilities across diverse fields of economics, law, public administration, engineering, statistics and science. We welcome your comments and suggestions on our work. Please write them to us here.