Achievements,capabilities and the concept of well-being

Conclusion Sen's book raises a variety of new and important issues concerning human wellbeing and its measurement. However it also leaves plenty of open questions and uncovered ground. Its argument for shifting our attention from commodities to functionings is powerful and I hope this will find increasing favour among welfare economists and other social scientists. Regarding its argument for shifting attention from achievements to capabilities, I am more skeptical.Some of the concepts developed in this book can have important applications to questions beyond that of measurement, questions which Sen does not touch on in this book. For instance, the concept of exploitation is difficult to describe in a utility-based framework. This is because people who are chronically exploited learn to adjust to their predicament and may achieve a reasonable level of utility and may not even strive for change. A definition of exploitation based on utility or choice would fail to identify such people. The concept of well-being can be useful in identifying the chronically exploited. This is just one of many possible directions that can be pursued from here.     

A study of combustibility of wastes of two hospitals for determining disposal by incineration

Determination of quantity, quality and characteristics of the wastes of two hospitals located in the same sector of a class B city was undertaken to review the present dumping method of disposal. On an average 1,424.71 and 224.6 kgs. of five types of wastes as per the moisture content were found daily for seven days in these two hospitals of 1000 general beds, and 600 long stay beds for chest tuberculosis and other Cardiothoracic diseases respectively. The wastes of first hospital had higher combustibility due to its sprawling nature and activities for general patients than that of the second multistoreyed hospital treating special cases. A combustibility analysis of hospital wastes would help to decide whether to adopt incineration for disposal.     

Diffusion approximations for insurance risk processes

We consider a risk-reserve process for an insurance company where premium income and the claim sum process are modeled as a renewal reward processes. Moreover, dividends are paid out according to a barrier rule. The aim of the article is to establish a diffusion approximation of this model and to compute ruin probabilities (in finite and in infinite time) and other relevant statistics approximately using the limiting diffusion process. We also demonstrate that, under special circumstances, there exists a stationary distribution for the limiting diffusion.     

A MONETARY BUSINESS CYCLE MODEL FOR INDIA

A New Keynesian monetary business cycle model is constructed to study why monetary transmission in India is weak. Our models feature banking and financial sector frictions as well as an informal sector. The predominant channel of monetary transmission is a credit channel. Our main finding is that base money shocks have a larger and more persistent effect on output than an interest rate shock, as in the data. The presence of an informal sector hinders monetary transmission. Contrary to the consensus view, financial repression in the form of a statutory liquidity ratio and administered interest rates, does not weaken monetary transmission. (JEL E31, E32, E44, E52, E63)     

Impact of rural employment guarantee schemes on seasonal labor markets: optimum compensation and workers’ welfare

The recent enactment of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in India has been widely hailed as a policy that provides a safety net for the rural poor with the potential to boost rural income, stabilize agricultural production and reduce rural-urban migration. This paper models the impact of such employment guarantee schemes in the context of an agrarian economy characterized by lean season involuntary unemployment as a consequence of tied-labor contracts. Specifically, we examine labor and output market responses to a productive rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS) and determine the optimal compensation to public work employees consistent with the objectives of (i) productive efficiency in agriculture and (ii) welfare maximization of the laborers. Our framework provides a theoretical framework for the evaluation of a number of (sometimes) conflicting observations and empirical results on the impact of an EGS on agricultural wages, employment and output, and underscores the importance of the relative productivity of workers in the EGS program vis-à-vis their counterparts engaged in agricultural production in determining the success of these programs.     

Deregulation,workplace, and women: Nurses in private health care in India

The paper examines the growth of private health care in India in the context of its regulatory provisions and questions the work and employment conditions of female care workers (nurses) employed there. Nurses constitute 80% of the total workers in each nursing home/hospital. In the wake of increased demand for private health care since mid‐1990s, insertion of technology and investment is inducing transformation of nursing homes into multi‐ and super‐speciality hospitals resulting in changes in work organization of nurses. This has led to demand for larger numbers of workers. Employers gain by the segmentation in the nursing labor market, paying low wages. Workers face widespread social discrimination, long working hours, and high work intensity. The deplorable situation of a significant section of workers employed in this sector indicates state failure to control the private health sector. Lack of effective standards of work impacts nature of work of the workforce employed in various levels in the healthcare system.     

Coercion,contract and the limits of the market

It is a widely accepted principle of economics that if two or more adults voluntarily agree to a contract or an exchange that has no negative fall-out on others, then the government should not stop such a contract. This is often called the ‘principle of free contract’ (PFC). There is a body of writing in economics which upholds the PFC. Yet this ubiquitous principle is ill-defined and full of ambiguities. For instance, since it refers to voluntary choice, its proper use presumes an understanding of what is ‘voluntary’ and, therefore, also, of what is coercive. What is ironic is that, while philosophers and legal scholars have debated and analyzed these concepts and the validity of the principle of free contract, there is very little discussion of these in economics, even though so much of economics is founded on this principle. This has caused a lot of policy confusion. The aim of this paper is to construct general rules for when we may violate the PFC. The argument is constructed within the Paretian framework. Hence, the violation of the PFC is not justified by appeal to deontological ethics or non-welfarist criteria. This is not an easy task since the principle of free contract is often viewed as a rule that is a derivative of the Pareto principle.     

ON THE POWER BREAKDOWN OF THE NEGATIVE EXPONENTIAL DISPARITY TESTS

The generalized negative exponential disparity, discussed in Bhandari et al. (Robust inference in parametric models using the family of generalized negative exponential disparities, 2006, ANZJS, 48 , 95–114), represents an important class of disparity measures that generates efficient estimators and tests with strong robustness properties. In their paper, however, Bhandari et al. failed to provide a sharp lower bound for the power breakdown point of the corresponding tests. This was acknowledged by the authors, who indicated the possible existence of a sharper bound, but noted that they did not “have a proof at this point”. In this paper we provide an improved bound for this power breakdown point, and show with an example how this can enhance the existing results.