Arvind Subramanian testified before the Ways and Means Committee of the United States Congres hearing on US-India trade relations on March 13, 2013.
In her presentation at the Centre for Policy Research in New Dehli on November 6, 2012, CGD President Nancy Birdsall outlines the likely rise of a new struggling middle class in India and the challenges and opportunities it presents.
The authors conduct a rigorous econometric analysis of a civil conflict that the Indian Prime Minister has called the single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by his country, the Maoist conflict.
In developing countries where elections are costly and accountability mechanisms weak, politicians often turn to illicit means of financing campaigns. This paper examines one such channel of illicit campaign finance: India’s real estate sector. Politicians and builders allegedly engage in a quid proquo, whereby the former park their illicit assets with the latter, and the latter rely on the former for favorable dispensation. At election time, however, builders need to re-route funds to politicians as a form of indirect election finance. One observable implication is that the demand for cement, the indispensible raw material used in the sector, should contract during elections since builders need to inject funds into campaigns. Using a novel monthly-level data set, we demonstrate that cement consumption does exhibit a political business cycle consistent with our hypothesis. Additional tests provide confidence in the robustness and interpretation of our findings.
After rejecting emissions caps, India seems poised to curb greenhouse gases on its own. Senior fellow David Wheeler calculates that a proposed new renewable energy standard would cause a massive shift of new power capacity within a decade.
This controversial book argues that irresistible demographic forces for greater international labor mobility are being checked by immovable anti-immigration ideas of rich-country citizens. Pritchett proposes breaking the gridlock through policies that support development while also being politically acceptable in rich countries. These include greater use of temporary worker permits, permit rationing, reliance on bilateral rather than multilateral agreements, and protection of migrants' fundamental human rights.
Human capital flows from poor countries to rich countries are large and growing. A leading cause is the increasing skill-focus of immigration policy in a number of leading industrialized countries—a trend that is likely to intensify as rich countries age and competitive pressures build in knowledge-intensive sectors. The implications for development are complex and poorly understood.