Gender Bias in Education Expenditure among Religious and Social Groups: A Case Study for Below Class 10 Level in West Bengal

This article attempts to capture gender bias in education expenditure among the religious (Hindu, Muslim and others) and the social groups (SC, ST and General) in West Bengal. Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition technique is used to obtain gender bias for a specific demographic group. Further, an attempt has been made to identify the religious or social groups with the acute problem of gender bias. In this work, 71st round (January–June 2014) education expenditure data (individual level) provided by NSSO (National Sample Survey Office) is used. JEL: I24, R1, C55

Cooking Fuels and Respiratory Infirmity in Rural Barak Valley: An Analysis of Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana Period

This study is an attempt to examine the fuel use pattern and its impact on the respiratory health of the users in the rural area of Barak Valley region of southern Assam. The effectiveness of Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) in mitigating the practice of unclean fuel has also been analysed in this study along with other related issues. The results based on personal information of 2,541 individuals from 530 households of Barak Valley reveal that incidence of respiratory illness is more profound in the households of solid biomass fuel users. The study further reveals that though PMUY has equipped the rural households with clean fuel connections but failed to change the fuel use practice of the beneficiaries. Among the barriers of clean fuel use practices, insufficient income of the households and availability of free and low-cost alternative fuels are found to be more prominent. The ordered probit model to examine the factors posing risk to respiratory illness reveal that women are at higher risk of developing respiratory syndromes as they spend more time in cooking space. While among others, smoking habit and age of the person are significant in increasing the risk pulmonary syndromes. JEL: I15, I38, Q52, Q58

Investigating the Relationship Between Export Diversification and River Water Pollution: A Time Series Analysis of the Indian Experience

This article attempts to test the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) for export diversification and river water pollution (proxied by biochemical oxygen demand) for India during the period from 1986 to 2019. Over the past decade, India’s merchandise exports have been dominated by pollution-intensive industries such as mineral fuels, pharmaceuticals, nuclear reactors, organic chemicals and electrical machinery, iron and steel, and textiles. Additionally, India’s export mix is weakly diversified or a small number of commodities form the merchandise export basket. River water pollution is one of the gravest ecological threats in this country. Although a host of reasons define this ecological devastation, this study attempts to investigate if the weakly diversified, pollution-intensive export basket has any link with biochemical oxygen demand. Dickey–Fuller (ADF) and Philip–Perron (PP) tests are employed to determine the stationary properties of the variables and the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) cointegration test, as well as the bounds test to check the short- and long-run cointegration. Findings suggest that (a) export diversification is strongly cointegrated with biochemical oxygen demand both in the short and in the long run, and (b) the conventional inverted U-shaped EKC was not validated. Furthermore, a weakly diversified export basket increases water pollution. Suggested policy initiatives to combat industrial water pollution include the introduction of economic instruments. The water pollution abatement experience of industrial clusters suggests that radical institutional and governance reforms are paramount for successful policy reforms. Finally, there is a need to reduce the export commodity basket concentration not just to insulate the economy against global dynamics but also for achieving the goal of sustainable development. JEL codes: F18, Q56, Q53. Q580

Have FDI, Globalisation and Energy Security Addressed the Malaise in the Nigerian Economy? A Quantile Analysis

Nigeria, among other developing countries, faces a lot of challenges on growth and global competitiveness as a result of low foreign capital and energy insecurity, among others. Using a quantile-on-quantile regression technique on Nigeria’s data covering 1980–2017, this article examines the impacts of foreign direct investment (FDI), energy security and globalisation on economic growth. Our empirical findings suggest the following: (a) the net impact of energy security on economic growth is negative—implying that energy security impedes growth in Nigeria; (b) globalisation stimulates economic growth across all quantiles, but only significant at the third quantile; (c) as expected, each of labour and capital produces a positive effect on growth; and (d) there exists an adverse, non-significant effect of FDI on economic growth across all quantiles. Similarly, there is evidence of a bidirectional causality between economic growth and FDI; economic growth and energy security; economic growth and globalisation; FDI and globalisation; as well as between energy security and globalisation. There is, however, a uni-directional causality running from energy security through FDI. The policy recommendations of these findings are also explained in the concluding section. JEL: Q43, Q56

Assessment of Productivity and Crop Diversification Pattern in Punjab Agriculture

This study examines the structure of agriculture productivity and crop diversification across different zones in Punjab, India during 1966–1967 to 2017–2018. The composite entropy index shows that almost all zones are specialised in few crops but some of them are relatively less or some are more. Hence, we found zones are experiencing a lateral movement toward crop specialisation and crop diversification is not happening. Further, results reveals that accessibility of market and roadhave a positive influenced the level of crop diversification are accessibility of market, roads have found a positive influenced on crop diversification. Whereas more use of fertiliser, intensity of irrigation and rainfall have leads to concentration rather than crop diversification. Similarly, study also analysed the factors that are responsible of variation in productivity by regional factors such as better road, fertiliser, urbanisation, literacy and cropping intensity. As the analysis indicates that there is need to emphasise on agro-climatic regional preparation by clearly identifying the existing resource endowments and constraints of the agro-climatically homogeneous regions. JEL: C23,Q10, Q19

Do Donors provide higher Aid for Trade flows to Recipient-Countries that Diversify Export Products or Is It the Other Way Around?

This article has explored whether Aid for Trade (AfT) flows that accrue to recipient-countries depend on the latter’s level of export product concentration. The analysis covers a sample of 132 countries over the period 2002–2017. The findings indicate that least developed countries (LDCs) receive higher AfT flows when they experience a rise in the level of export product concentration, while NonLDCs enjoy higher AfT flows when they diversify export products. Interestingly, higher amounts of AfT accrue to countries that diversify their export product basket towards manufacturing products, although different result patterns appear for the components of manufactured exports. JEL: F35; F14; O14

A Comparative Study of Non-performing Assets Using Non-parametric Test: Indian Scheduled Commercial Banks

Galloping levels of impaired assets slowly destroy the economy by throwing it into a major financial crisis. The current article studies recent trends and compositions of stressed assets among 45 selected Indian commercial banks. The non-parametric test (Kruskal–Wallis) is applied to know whether there exists any difference in the movement of gross non-performing assets ratios and net non-performing assets ratios (NNPAs) among bank groups and individual banks. The group-wise comparative study shows that a significant difference exists in the movement of NNPA ratio only between foreign banks and public sector banks and between private banks and public sector banks. Significant differences also exist among the individual banks in foreign and private bank groups. The Games–Howell post-hoc test finds that some pairs of banks have significant differences. The current financial downswing attributed to pandemic has increased the chances of fraudulency and sporadic default events and enhanced the problem of bad loans. Amalgamations of State Bank of India with its associates in 2017 and Bank of Baroda with Dena Bank and Vijaya Bank in 2019 have shown falls in stressed assets that possibly foreshow the future furtherance in asset quality of other four anchor banks that are merged with six banks, with effect from April 2020. JEL Codes: G21, G34

An Analysis of Factors Affecting Private Expenditure on Education in India

Private expenditure on education is a determining factor for ensuring an individual’s educational progress. Though the government provides a vast infrastructure at minimal cost, the individuals have to incur cost from their pockets for various purposes. In this study, we have analysed the various influences on private expenditure on education based on National Sample Survey 71st round conducted in 2014. We have found that household consumer expenditure, respondent’s age, medium of instruction dummy, private coaching dummy and household computer dummy affect private expenditure on education positively, and household size, rural dummy, female dummy, social group dummies, minority religion dummy and type of school dummy affect private expenditure on education negatively. The important policy implications are the tendency to spend less for the female child needs to be amended and the male and female child needs to be given same preference when it comes to expenditure on education. Family planning should be implemented effectively to keep the household size reasonably small for better educational access of an individual. The weaker social groups such as STs, SCs and OBCs and the minorities should be supported well by scholarships and stipends for furthering their education. The number of government institutions should increase to provide low-cost education to society. English medium schools should be made to offer more seats for the financially weak. Private coaching should be made as redundant as possible by improving teaching in the schools. For having computer in households, the financially weak should get some subsidy or may be community computer centres can cater to their needs at reduced cost or free of cost. JEL: I25, I22

Towards a Comprehensive Index of Labour Law Reform and Ranking of States

Since the pioneering paper by Besley and Burgess (2004) claimed to have found a positive relationship between flexible and pro-employer labour regulations with manufacturing sector performance, there has been an increasing pitch among policymakers to rationalise India’s complicated labour laws. Several state governments have since undertaken significant reforms in their respective labour law regimes. During the recent pandemic-induced lockdown, some states have gone to the extent of temporarily suspending labour laws to kick-start the economy. The Government of India has also recently consolidated the fragmented labour laws by integrating them into four functionally arranged Codes. But the regulatory measure developed by Besley and Burgess, the very basis of their conclusions, has been criticised on the ground of narrow coverage, methodological inconsistency, misclassification of amendments, etc. This article, therefore, attempts to construct a comprehensive Index by mapping state level-amendments in five important labour legislations over the seven-decade period from 1949 to 2017 and coding those amendments. The article is organised as follows: After the context-setting introductory section, the second section summarises the existing evidence on the relationship between labour regulations and manufacturing sector performance in India. The third section discusses the limitations of Besley–Burgess Index. The fourth section briefly mentions the research direction post publication of Besley–Burgess paper. The fifth section develops a comprehensive Index, and it discusses how it improves the BB Index. The sixth section concludes the article. JEL: J3, K3