Since its enactment in 2005, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) has been implemented in 200 districts in India. Based on state-by-state employment demand-supply data and the use of funds released under NREGA, it is found that, although it is a demand-driven scheme, there are...

The paper empirically examines the validity of Keynesian philosophy of contracyclical variation in fiscal policy to the macroeconomic activity in India. The macroeconomic activity is proxied by ‘output gap’ a concept defined to estimate the index of economic activity. Applying Johansen’s...

Most discussions of India's substantive economic growth since the 1990s tend to focus on national level statistics or on particular sectors such as the financial and call service sectors or on the pharmaceutical industry. But with a population of 1.2 billion, India demands to be treated like a...

The Thirteenth Finance Commission's recommendation to increase the vertical share of tax devolution to states will help, but its horizontal distribution formula leaves much to be desired. One, its design is such that two of the four key indicators are in conflict with each other. Two, the...

The widening fiscal deficit of sub-national governments has made the task of macroeconomic stabilisation much more difficult and complex. In many countries, including India, multilateral lending institutions provide assistance for sub-national fiscal reforms through structural adjustment loans...