Publications | Humanities & Social Sciences

Publications

Discipline wise list of recent selected publications
Jun
29
2017

Implementation in Undominated Strategies with Partially Honest Agents

By Saptarshi Mukherjee
We consider implementation in undominated strategies by bounded mechanisms. We provide a complete characterization of the class of social choice correspondences that are implementable when agents are partially honest, in the sense that they have strict preferences for being sincere when truthfulness does not result in a worse outcome. As an application, we show that the Pareto correspondence is implemented by a finite mechanism.
Jun
14
2017

Sex Ratio Imbalances and Marriage Squeeze in India: 2000–2050

By Ravinder Kaur
Rapid fertility decline and availability of sex determination technologies have led to a skewed sex ratio in favour of males. This imbalance in the sex ratio at birth impacts the marriage markets, albeit in a lagged manner, resulting in a ‘male marriage squeeze’. This paper examines the present and future trends of marriage squeeze in India. For this purpose, an ‘original’ age-sex distribution is constructed using different data sources such as Census, NFHS, NSS, and SRS. Several methods are used for this analysis, focusing on two main determinants of marriage squeeze
Jun
14
2017

Sex Ratio at Birth - The role of Gender, Class and Education

By Ravinder Kaur
The paper uses a class and education based approach to investigate the trends in the sex ratio at birth (SRB) in India. While the definition of the middle class is a purely economic one, it incorporates both social and economic understanding of its behaviour. The paper introduces the concept of the “emerging middle class”– a class that lies between the poor and the “stable” middle class. It argues that the social mobility strategies of the emerging class have much to do with the rise of the SRB; and the increasing share of the stable middle class has much to do with the improvement in
Jun
14
2017

Sex Ratio Imbalances and Crime Rates

By Ravinder Kaur
This paper analyzes the effect of adult sex ratio on violent crimes and crimes against women for 18 Indian states in the time period 1995–2014. Contrary to existing literature and speculation, we obtain a negative relationship between sex ratio and crime rates for both violent crimes and crimes against women, i.e, as the sex ratio rises to become more skewed in the favour of males, crime rates fall. A strong positive relationship is seen between crimes against women and the gap between male and female years of education.
Jun
09
2017

Feeding insecurities

By Reetika Khera
It is widely believed that Aadhaar-Based Biometric Authentication (ABBA) is necessary to improve the delivery of welfare programmes such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), Public Distribution System (PDS), social security pensions, and so on. This is a misconception. We have been studying these programmes for a decade, focusing mainly on the source of leakages and how the states are trying to plug them. The findings suggest that the UPA-2 government oversold Aadhaar because of a poor understanding of the leakage mechanisms in MNREGA and PDS.
Jun
09
2017

The real beneficiary

By Reetika Khera
Ironically, in the week that the UIDAI revealed its draconian face, serving a legal notice to those who exposed flaws in the Aadhaar eco-system, Ajay Pandey (CEO, UIDAI), wrote, “The critics tend to forget that Aadhaar empowers the people, not the state” (‘Criticisms Without Aadhaar’, IE, May 13). However, government data reveals that Pandey is wrong to believe that “Aadhaar empowers the people”.
Jun
09
2017

Evidence no bar

By Reetika Khera
In the month preceding The Economic Survey, leaks from the Ministry of Finance helped created a buzz around “Universal Basic Income” (UBI). Two key principles of UBI are universality, so all citizens are covered, and an entitlement to a “basic income” that allows dignified living even in the absence of other earnings. Yet, the ideas that have been discussed so far are mangled versions of a UBI. The Economic Survey starts with an enthusiastic conversation with Mahatma Gandhi on UBI.

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