Tag: decentralization

On The Fiscal Position of Panchayati Raj Institutions

Getting the budget “approved” for, say, the Annual Sports Day is a rite of passage that students must go through while they are in college. It is also, if you think about it, a great way to help students understand public finance.

What percentage of your college’s revenue is due to you guys? That is, the student body, through the fees it pays, contributes what percentage of your college’s annual income? What percentage of that amount are you asking for in your Sports Day budget? What is a “fair” amount? Who is it “fair” to? How should one think about answering these questions? What framework should one use?

What if we replace the word “student body” with states, and the word college with “the central government”? What if the student body is further divided into seniors and juniors? What if the seniors are referred to as the states, and the juniors as Panchayati Raj Institutions?

Well, if you do all that, you get a “handle” as a student on thinking about a very important question: who, exactly, should actually run our country? Running a country costs money, and that money is raised by the government through taxes (duh).

Ah, but which government? Does the central government raises these taxes? Or does the state government? Or does local government raise these taxes? Who is best placed to do so, and what does best mean in this context? How have other nations done it?

What about spending this money that has been collected? Should – I’m stepping away from public finances and going back to our college for a moment – the college run annual days and festivals and sports days, or should the different programs that are a part of the college run separate events? Who is best placed to do so, and what does best mean in this context?

Thinking through the answers to these questions is one part of the study of public finance, and to aid us in our study, the Reserve Bank of India has come up with an excellent report, called Finances of Panchayati Raj Institutions. It is a most lucid report, something you can’t always accuse official reports of being, and going through it shouldn’t take you very long. And hey, incentives matter, so if you’re looking for a reason to plough through the four chapters, consider that you will have excellent economic arguments for freeing up your sports day budget!

“Hey, if our country can call for greater devolution of funds to the local level, surely the same ought to apply to our college!”

No?

Speaking of the call for greater devolution of funds to the local level, this is known as the subsidiarity principle:

Subsidiarity is a principle of social organization that holds that social and political issues should be dealt with at the most immediate or local level that is consistent with their resolution. The Oxford English Dictionary defines subsidiarity as “the principle that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed at a more local level”.The concept is applicable in the fields of government, political science, neuropsychology, cybernetics, management and in military command (mission command). The OED adds that the term “subsidiarity” in English follows the early German usage of “Subsidiarität”. More distantly, it is derived from the Latin verb subsidio (to aid or help), and the related noun subsidium (aid or assistance)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity

“…performing only those tasks which cannot be performed at a more local level”, please note. That, alas, hasn’t been the principle for much of our history, and especially so in recent times.

What percentage of our Panchayati Raj Institutions revenue comes from their own ability to administer and raise taxes, and what percentage comes from state and central governments? No reason for you to know the answer to this question, of course, but if you had to guess, what would your guess be?

Was it 1%?

https://www.rbi.org.in/Scripts/PublicationsView.aspx?id=22402

What might be the implications of this, the fact that our PRI’s own-tax revenue amounts to only 1% of total receipts? Is this by design? Whose design? Why? Why can we not change this situation? What are the political, economic and administrative hurdles?

Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRI’s) receive funds from both the central government as well as the state governments. We’ll get to the central government later, but first, let’s deal with the state governments. This transfer of funds has been, well, less than desirable:

Article 243-I of the Indian Constitution stipulates the establishment of State Finance Commissions (SFCs) for recommending tax sharing between the State and the Panchayats. The initial SFC was to be constituted within one year of the enactment of the Constitution (73rd Amendment) Act in 1992. Subsequently, new SFCs were to be formed every five years. While the setting up of the sixth SFC was scheduled for all the States in 2019-20, its constitution has not been uniform and timely across States (Chart II.2.1). As per the Fifteenth CFC Report, only 4 States, namely Assam, Bihar, Punjab and Rajasthan, had established their 6th SFCs, and another 11 States had constituted their 5th SFC till then. According to MoPR, only 9 States have constituted their 6th SFC by 2022. Keeping in view the importance of SFC grants for the local bodies, the Fifteenth CFC recommended that the compliance to constitutional provisions in respect of SFC will be a necessary condition for disbursement of grants to local bodies for 2024-25 and 2025-26

https://www.rbi.org.in/Scripts/PublicationsView.aspx?id=22402

But that’s the setting up of a commission. Once these state commissions are set up, how much money do they actually share with PRI’s on a per capita basis?

Get in the habit of staring at tables like these, and thinking about what seems interesting, confusing or best of all, mystifying. What’s up with Bihar, you might ask, and that might lead you to ruminations about state capacity and development in Bihar. Or you might want to learn more about Karnataka’s state finances.

But as you can clearly see, decentralization is a bit of a mixed bag in India. Some states seem to have done a good job, others, not so much. What impact has decentralization had on the development of those states that decentralized well? What about the others? Can I read papers about this?

That’s states to PRI’s. What about the central government to PRI’s? How’s that devolution coming along?

https://www.rbi.org.in/Scripts/PublicationsView.aspx?id=22402

The good news is that over the last six central finance commissions, the quantum of grants has been consistently going up (that’s the second column). But on the other hand, the gap in disbursement remains worryingly high (that’s the fourth column).

Why should this be so? The report tells us that “this was primarily due to the local bodies’ failure to meet the conditions attached to the performance grants”.

Please do spend some time going through the report, all of the four chapters. Remember, one implication of the subsidiarity principle is that PRI’s is where India’s public policy really and truly comes alive.

For India (and Indians) to grow rapidly and on a sustainable basis, we need to get our PRI’s right.

What does getting them right mean?

Finances of Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) face constraints in that they have limited own revenues from property taxes, fees, and fines. Nearly all of their revenues are generated through grants from higher levels of government, underscoring their heavy reliance on the Central and State governments. Even as grants-in-aid from the upper tiers of government have aimed at mitigating horizontal disparities, the large dependence on grants can affect their financial self-reliance, limiting their ability to decide on local spending and priorities independently. Such dependence also lessens their drive to establish independent revenue streams. For sustainable growth, Panchayats need to intensify their efforts to augment their own tax and non-tax revenue resources and improve their governance. Nevertheless, the prompt establishment of State Finance Commissions (SFCs), eschewing the sizeable delays that occur currently, assumes importance. SFCs, with roles identical to those of the Central Finance Commission (CFC), and with the obligation of tabling their action-taken reports in State legislatures, can fortify the financial position of PRIs and help them in better delivery of their responsibilities for upliftment of the rural economy.

https://www.rbi.org.in/Scripts/PublicationsView.aspx?id=22404

And how do we make this happen?

The RBI report tells us that we should:

  1. Empower local leaders and officials (ask yourself if we are choosing to do this as a society)
  2. Provide them with ample and diverse funding sources
  3. Promote greater decentralisation
  4. Implement capacity building reforms
  5. Upgrade infrastructure

Not all of these may be directly within our own capabilities, but if you ask me, we could do with a greater impetus for the first and the third items on this list.

The RBI report ends with an exhortation:

There is also a need to raise citizens’ awareness about the functions and significance of PRIs by encouraging their increased participation in local governance processes and by enhancing people-centric administration and communication

I couldn’t agree more: please, go and read the report, and share it far and wide!

On Decentralization

Andrew Batson has a nice post out about an essay in the Palladium magazine. The theme of both the essay and the blog post is decentralization in China.

Dylan Levi King has a nice essay out in Palladium on the history of decentralization in China, opening with the assertion that “the most significant reform carried out in China after 1978 was one of systematic decentralization.” It is difficult to disagree with this. As the best China scholarship of the last few decades has made clear, local initiative played a central role in the country’s growth miracle–see for instance Jean Oi’s book on local state corporatism, or Xu Chenggang’s classic article on “regionally decentralized authoritarianism”.

https://andrewbatson.com/2021/11/29/the-consensus-on-centralization/

The essay is a reflection on how decentralization has evolved (and retreated) under the various leaders who have been in charge of the central Chinese government, beginning with Mao, and ending with Xi Jinping. As always, please read the whole thing.

The essay makes the rather unsurprising point that under Xi’s leadership, China is becoming ever more centralized. But the interesting (if not entirely surprising) nugget is that the attempt to increase the degree of centralization began about thirty years ago – Xi is the first leader since then who’s been very successful at it.

Well, so far, at any rate. See this thread, for example:

But the essay helps us think about a question which should be of interest to a student of economics: what is the appropriate level of decentralization? I mean this to be a one-size-fits-all question: for any organization, institution or level of governance, how should we think about the appropriate level of decentralization?

Think about the answer to this question in regard to your own college/school, for example. Who do you need to approach for permission in order to hold an event in your college? Does any prof have the ability to give permission, or are they likely to pass your question up to the head of the department? What about the head of the department? Are they likely to take the decision, or will they pass the question up to the principal or the director? In other words, how much decision-making authority is vested in the lower levels of hierarchy? And how much decision-making authority should be vested in the lower levels of hierarchy?

It is a question with far reaching implications: a centrally driven decision making system retains all the power at the centre, and everybody knows who to go to for getting approval. On the other hand, this is likely to make the system rather inflexible, with very little decision-making authority at lower levels.

Here’s a very simple example: let’s say you’re fifteen minutes late while checking out of a hotel. Should you be charged a fine or not? Should this be up to the clerk who is helping you check out, or should the clerk just blindly follow the “rule” with zero decision-making authority? If you (the guest) then kick up a ruckus, should the clerk call their superior? Should the superior call their superior? And on and on…

Management consultants agonize about this, as do politicians and bureaucrats. But so do government officials, professors in universities and even parents! What is the appropriate level of decentralization is an important question in literally any organization!

So how do we go about building a model in our heads to think about this issue?

Here’s one way to think about it:

Let’s assume that we’re seeking to optimize for the long term growth and stability of the organization in question. That is, to me, an entirely reasonable assumption. Concretely, the management consultant in charge of instituting check-out processes in the hotel is charged with creating a process that will optimize for the long term growth and stability of the hotel chain.

Should the management consultant vest, then, the clerk with the power to waive off the late fee? Under what circumstances? To what extent? With what amount of leeway given for mitigating circumstances? Maybe the clerk can waive off the late fees only for a certain number of times per month? Can HR track which clerks waive off fees the least across the year, and decide bonuses accordingly? Or should clerks be rewarded for building out customer loyalty by waiving off late fees by default for a period of up to an hour beyond the checkout time?

What about re-evaluation requests for semester-end examinations? What about disciplinary committees for deciding upon the punishment for low attendance? The decision to sell land in order to meet revenue requirements by local governments? As you can see, once you start to think of hierarchies and organizations, this can get very complicated very quickly.

And within the field of economics (at least for a specific context), the Oates Theorem is a good starting point to think about this analytically:

Many years ago in Fiscal Federalism (1972), I formalized this idea in a proposition I referred to as “The Decentralization Theorem.” The basic point is that if there are no cost advantages (economies of scale) associated with centralized provision, then a decentralized pattern of public outputs reflecting differences in tastes across jurisdictions will be welfare enhancing as compared to a centralized outcome characterized by a uniform level of output across all jurisdiction

Oates, Wallace E. “On the evolution of fiscal federalism: Theory and institutions.” National tax journal 61.2 (2008): 313-334.

In English, what this means is that so long as centralized provisioning doesn’t have any “bulk” benefits, lower levels of hierarchy will always know more about “local” tastes and preferences, and therefore decision making ought to be as decentralized as possible.

Put another way, a one-size fits all rule won’t be as optimal for the hotel chain as letting the clerk in question decide on a case-by-case basis.

So as a thumb rule, the more one decentralizes, the better. Alas, decentralizing decision-making also has the knock-on effect of decentralizing power, and that tends to not go well with those who, well, have power.

And so while effective decentralization has economic benefits, it also has political consequences. Which is why it makes sense to ask what one is optimizing for. And occasionally, it behooves all of us to ask what one should be optimizing for.

The answers are often wildly different, and more’s the pity.

Thinking Aloud About Uttar Pradesh

Until very recently, I used to teach a course called Contemporary India. The program in which I used to teach this course is suspended temporarily, for it was designed for American students who would spend a semester studying in India.

One of my favorite classes in that course was about India’s demographics. It was one of my favorite classes because I got to show three slides in it. These slides were nothing but screen-grabs from an excellent feature that the Economist magazine had published a while back. Note that the content requires Flash, and it therefore probably will not work in our modern browsers. But the slides I speak of are presented below.

The first of these shows each state in India mapped to the country that is closest to it in terms of economic output:

The second shows each state as mapped to the country that is closest to it in terms of economic output per capita:

And finally, we have the third chart: each state in India being represented as a country that is closest to it in terms of population:

Each chart is worth more than a few minutes of your time. Note how Maharashtra is like Singapore, Sri Lanka and Mexico respectively, for example, when you make comparisons in terms of economic output, economic output per capita and population respectively.

My favorite thing to point out, especially to my American students, used to be how all of Canada’s population could fit inside Kerala. India is truly a mind boggling country!

But, Uttar Pradesh. That is what we’re going to talk about today. This is a mind boggling country (not a typo. It really is a country. If it were a country, it would be the fifth most populous country in the world. Yes, really).

It has, as this article points out, about 10 percent of India’s districts. One out of every seven Lok Sabha MP’s comes from this state. One out of every six Indian is from the state of Uttar Pradesh. Yogi Adityanath is the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, but he is responsible for the same number of people as Imran Khan or Jair Bolsonaro. It, to put it mildly, is a truly large state.

And the article that I linked to in the paragraph above makes a point that is worth thinking about: is it too big?

Shekhar Gupta recommends carving up the state into five separate states, and before you scoff at the idea, consider the facts once again: should one chief minister be responsible for the governance of the fifth most populous country in the world?

And the problem isn’t just about population, it is also about national level politics. Or rather, about a problem that nobody wants to think about with any level of urgency.

Here’s the problem: how many people should a Member of Parliament in the Lok Sabha represent? Ideally, it ought to be India’s population divided by the number of elected representatives in the Lok Sabha. But obviously, in a country of India’s size and complexity, that isn’t always possible.

Here’s Ajit Ranade from two years ago, writing in the Livemint:

We may desire “equality” of constituencies, but economic development and demographic patterns do not develop uniformly across the country. Some states have achieved zero population growth while others still have very high fertility rates. This pattern too has a north-south dimension. It is as if the economic centre of gravity is shifting south and the political centre of gravity is shifting north.

Here is what he means by that: in the year 1976, we passed a law that effectively froze the number of seats in India’s Lok Sabha, per state. That number was frozen on the basis of the 1971 census. And from 1976 until the year 2000, we decided to not do anything about it.

And then, in the year 2000, we made the problem worse. Here’s Ajit Ranade again:

In 2000, another amendment postponed the day of reckoning to 2026. Thus, only after 2026 will we consider changing the number of seats in Parliament. Till then, everything is frozen as per the 1971 census. Remember, in 1971, India’s population was 548 million, and by 2031, the first census after 2026, it may well be close to 1.4 billion. The great apprehension is that redrawing boundaries and distributing the existing 550 MPs might mean that the south will lose a lot of seats to the north. Even if more members are added to the Lok Sabha, that incremental gain will mostly go to the northern states.

https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/7unVzUcfBJxbHHaiRpenmK/India-should-begin-discussing-the-delimitation-question.html

It is not just the fact that Uttar Pradesh is too big from an administrative viewpoint, and that it contains too many people for it to be administered as one state in a country. It is not just the fact that it is far too important a state in the political calculus of India.

It is the fact that it is about to get a lot bigger, a lot more complex, and a whole lot more important in about five years from now. Why do I say that, you ask? Well, for all of the reasons above, but also for the chart below:

Here’s Shekhar Gupta, from the article I referred to earlier:

Twenty crore people, divided over 75 districts spread over 2,43,000 sq km, is too much to govern for one government, especially when run entirely by one individual, which is the norm in our states now. Similarly, 80 seats in the Lok Sabha is too much power for one state in a federal republic. It is more than Gujarat, Rajasthan and Karnataka put together. It is politically distortionary. Especially when UP’s politics is so internally divisive based on caste and religion that the incentive for improving social indicators is poor.

https://theprint.in/national-interest/uttar-pradesh-is-indias-broken-heartland-break-it-into-4-or-5-states/458552/

When you think about that excerpt, and think about the point Ajit Ranade makes in his article two years ago, you realize that we need to start talking – soon, and a lot – about what is to be done about Uttar Pradesh.

I would love to read more about this. If any of you reading this have reading material to share, I would be very grateful indeed. Thank you.

India: Links for 19th August, 2019

CCS is organizing a conference around the theme “Legal Foundations of a Free Society”, and it is being hosted by the Gokhale Institute. One of the speakers is Shruti Rajagopalan, whose writing I have long admired. Here are five pieces by Shruti that I thoroughly enjoyed reading:

  1. The implementation of laws matters as much as their framing (as any parent will tell you!)
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  2. “Deshmukh, a former RBI governor who had argued against bank nationalization immediately after independence, was also contesting the election, this time supported by the Swatantra Party and Jan Sangh. Giri won with Gandhi’s support, and his legacy is often regarded as that of a rubber-stamp loyalist who damaged the independence of the President’s office.”
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    A little bit of trivia that I was completely unaware of, and makes me think of many counterfactuals – but the article is about how the nationalization of banks came to be.
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  3. Shruti explains (rather acerbically and entirely appropriately so) why the budget is a spectacle we’d all do well to ignore completely.
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  4. “First, we need to create more positions for judges, especially in the lower levels of the judiciary, as caseloads have exploded over the years. India has only 12-15 judges per million people compared to the US’s 110 per million. The immediate goal is to reach the Law Commission’s 50-judges-per-million recommendation. A good start is to double the number of judges across the board in the lower judiciary.”
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    On some much needed reforms to the Indian judiciary.
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  5. A paper by her on a favorite theme (and bugbear) of mine: the complete lack of true decentralization in India.

 

EC101: Links for 1st August, 2019

Heard of cantons?

Here’s an interesting question to ask: when one thinks of an organization, how decentralized should it be? Should all decision making flow from the very top, with lower levels of hierarchy being essentially automatons with no autonomy at all? Or should it be the other way around – little fiefdoms that are only nominally a part of a larger whole?

When you are early to check in at a hotel, should the clerk have the ability to decide whether you should be checked in, or should she be inflexible about rules that have been set at the very top?

Can one think of nations as one thinks of organizations? If yes, then what about the ability to tax and spend at the governmental level? Should that rest with the centre, or the states? Today’s five articles help us start to learn about this particular problem, keeping India front and centre:

  1. Here’s the World Bank with it’s view on decentralization in India.
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  2. “The effectiveness of decentralization requires the calibration of the administrative, political and fiscal dimensions. Without political decentralization, participatory decision-making is not possible. Administrative decentralization is necessary to implement political decisions, and an important precondition for fiscal decentralization. Efficiency in the delivery of public services depends on administrative efficiency and accountability. To assess rural local government finance in India, it is useful to compare the system with current thinking on a well-functioning intergovernmental fiscal system.”
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    Again from the World Bank, this time the rather more difficult issue of separating out decentralization and what it means in an administrative sense, and in a fiscal sense.
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  3. The results of a UNDP survey about decentralization in India. I found the slide on challenges about decentralization to be the most thought provoking.
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  4. “Vertical imbalance essentially arises due to the fiscal asymmetry in powers of taxation vested with the different levels of government in relation to their  expenditure responsibilities prescribed by the constitution. Our Federal Structure has three levels of Governments: Central Government, State Governments and the elected Local Bodies. In India the Central government has far greater or larger domain where it may tax e.g., income taxes personal or corporate, taxing consumption of goods and services (CGST), taxing foreign transactions (exports/imports) and capturing natural resources rents, e.g.,
    Spectrum Auction. In contrast, post-GST, the State governments may only tax the consumption of goods and services (SGST) and agricultural incomes, while the local or the third tier has even more limited power to tax which is largely confined to property tax”
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    My apologies for the poor alignment of the text – pasting from a PDF is an act of sorcery that I am very far from mastering. The PDF itself is well worth reading for a student of fiscal federalism in India – Dr. Kelkar on the subject in a working paper.
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  5. And finally, if you have made it this far, a rather long (but fascinating) read from the RBI on the experience of fiscal decentralization from other nations – especially pertinent for India in terms of how to think about this rather thorny issue in the years to come.

RoW: Links for 3rd July, 2019

 

Five articles to help you understand China today a little bit better (well, one is on North Korea, axshually)

  1. “There is truth in this linguistic yarn; Chinese does deserve its reputation for heartbreaking difficulty. Those who undertake to study the language for any other reason than the sheer joy of it will always be frustrated by the abysmal ratio of effort to effect. Those who are actually attracted to the language precisely because of its daunting complexity and difficulty will never be disappointed. Whatever the reason they started, every single person who has undertaken to study Chinese sooner or later asks themselves “Why in the world am I doing this?” Those who can still remember their original goals will wisely abandon the attempt then and there, since nothing could be worth all that tedious struggle. Those who merely say “I’ve come this far — I can’t stop now” will have some chance of succeeding, since they have the kind of mindless doggedness and lack of sensible overall perspective that it takes.”
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    A long, but fun read on how and why Chinese (both kinds) is so difficult to learn – and do think about what this might tell us about China.
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  2. “But that is the wrong way to approach the challenge. In the near term (1-4 years), the US certainly could inflict a lot of damage on China through tariffs, bans on technology purchases, and other trade-war policies. But it would also inflict a lot of damage on itself; and in the end, the Chinese would suffer less. Whereas the Chinese government can buy up Chinese-made products that previously would have been sold to the US, thereby preventing mass unemployment and social turmoil, the US government could scarcely do the same for American workers displaced by the loss of the Chinese market.”
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    Brad DeLong argues against the anti-China line that almost everyone in America seems to toe to these days (Biden almost excepted)
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  3. “Total food production figures, however, are not the end of the story. The important question is who gets access to food, rather than just how much is harvested. Theoretically, North Korea could produce 10 million tons of food, but if all of it ends up in Pyongyang, there would still be massive shortages in the countryside. Here is where markets matter. The WFP assessments are based on the assumption that most food consumed in North Korea is still handed out by the government through the public distribution system (PDS); they do not take account of the role of markets in the food distribution system.”
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    38North on how bad the food situation is in North Korea. Markets matter!
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  4. “This is a useful reminder that decentralization is not an immutable feature of the Chinese system, or something that happened automatically just because China is a very large country. Clearly Gu saw that in the 1970s the Chinese system was too centralized to be efficient, and that it needed to be more decentralized. (Jae-Ho Chung’s book Centrifugal Empire: Central-Local Relations in China also argues that the Maoist emphasis on local autonomy in the 1970s was largely rhetorical, with most localities compelled to follow the same political campaigns and economic priorities.)”
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    For a variety of reasons, decentralization really matters – here’s how China learnt this lesson.
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  5. “At the heart of China’s Going Out policy is a media offensive launched in March 2018, an initiative coordinated by the broadcast group Voice of China and carefully monitored by Communist Party censors. In addition, the state-run news agency Xinhua was expanded and now claims to be the largest news wire in the world.”
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    A fascinating read on how China is reshaping the media narrative in Africa.

Links for 7th June, 2019

  1. “In 1982, Deming’s book Quality, Productivity, and Competitive Position was published by the MIT Center for Advanced Engineering, and was renamed Out of the Crisis in 1986. In it, he offers a theory of management based on his famous 14 Points for Management. Management’s failure to plan for the future brings about loss of market, which brings about loss of jobs. Management must be judged not only by the quarterly dividend, but also by innovative plans to stay in business, protect investment, ensure future dividends, and provide more jobs through improved products and services. “Long-term commitment to new learning and new philosophy is required of any management that seeks transformation. The timid and the fainthearted, and the people that expect quick results, are doomed to disappointment.””
    I cam across this link via Amit Paranjape on Twitter. I was familiar with Deming’s role in Japan, but hadn’t read the book referenced here, in this excerpt. Duly added to the list.
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  2. “While the Constitution provides for setting up of SFCs at regular intervals, this has
    not been adhered to by the states. The paper reviews the reports of the latest SFCs of 25 states in India. This involves examining the status of constitution of SFCs, their functioning and the approach adopted by them in carrying out their task and the principles adopted by them in allocating resources to local governments both vertically and horizontally. It also quantifies the devolution recommended by the SFCs in order to get a comparative picture of funds devolved by them across states. It is observed that there is huge variation in the recommended per capita devolution across States. We do not find any relation between the recommended per capita devolution and per capita income of States, but per capita devolution is in general very low across states in India. Is it that the state governments arbitrarily reject the recommendations or are the SFCs themselves to be blamed for non-acceptance of their recommendations? The paper also examines the quality of SFC
    reports from the point of view of their implementability and finds that at times state governments are constrained to implement these recommendations on the grounds of poor quality of SFC reports.”
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    Financial decentralization (well, decentralization in general) has never really worked in India. Financial decentralization in particular is an important, under-rated topic in economics. This paper is not a good place to learn about these topics, but it is good analysis of how State Financial Commissions haven’t really worked at all in India.
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  3. “What is Luminary’s problem? The answer is that their strategy is not well thought out. They give all of the appearances of starting with the notion ‘Netflix for Podcasts’ and then jumping to the later Netflix model to start that (where Netflix spends $$ on its own content) rather than where Netflix started which was streaming older ad-free content.Where should they have started? They should have started with an idea — “we are going to bring expensive to produce audio content to the Internet” — and then asked who their customers would be, what technology choices they would make, what is the core of their business and who precisely will they compete against?”
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    Worth reading for three reasons. One, it helps you understand what podcasts really are, and how they started. Second, because this article helps you understand how to evaluate business models. Third, because Joshua Gans is worth following in any case.
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  4. “This very short sketch of the well-known effects of the first globalization allows us to remind ourselves of both its positive and negative sides: huge technological progress as against exploitation, increased incomes for many vs. grinding poverty and exclusion for others, European mastery of the world vs. a colonial status of Africa and much of Asia.In what ways should it inform our thinking about the current globalization?”
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    An important question to ask, and one that is succinctly answered in this op-ed. A good article to read to get a sense of global economic history, and what inequality means in that context.
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  5. “I haven’t studied philosophy, but from the outside it mostly seems to revolve around three basic issues:Reality (ontology)

    Values (ethics and aesthetics)

    Knowledge (epistemology)

    Here are three basic questions, one from each field:

    A. Why is there something rather than nothing?

    B. Is it better that there is something rather than nothing?

    C. Can we answer questions and ? If so, how?”
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    A lovely, and slightly unusual post from Scott Sumner – he does return to typical topics towards the end. But enjoyable, to help you understand how to think about philosophy, economics and therefore monetary theory. And try coming up with your “three questions”!

Links for 17th May, 2019

  1. “Despite the 73rd and 74th Constitutional amendments, except in a few states, there has been little progress at decentralization—to both rural and urban local bodies. Most state governments have been reluctant to devolve the functions, funds and functionaries for delivering public services at the local level. The functions assigned are unclear, funds uncertain and inadequate, and decision-making functionaries are mostly drawn from the state bureaucracy. Local bodies do not even have powers to determine the base and rate structure of the taxes assigned to them. The states have not cared to create institutions and systems mandated in the Constitution, including the appointment of the State Finance Commissions, and even when they are appointed, states have not found it obligatory to place their reports in the legislature. In fact, the local bodies are not clear about delivering local public goods, with the prominent agenda of implementing central schemes obscuring their functions.”
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    M. Govinda Rao pulls no punches in pointing out how and why decentralization hasn’t (and likely will not) taken place in India. This is a conversation more people need to be having in India – and in particular, to aid meaningful urbanization.
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  2. “I love this paper because it is ruthless. The authors know exactly what they are doing, and they are clearly enjoying every second of it. They explain that given what we now know about polygenicity, the highest-effect-size depression genes require samples of about 34,000 people to detect, and so any study with fewer than 34,000 people that says anything about specific genes is almost definitely a false positive; they go on to show that the median sample size for previous studies in this area was 345.”
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    Slate Star Codex helps us understand the importance of learning (and applying!) statistics. The website is more than worth following, by the way.
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  3. “Sucking the life out of a mango is one of those primal pleasures that makes life feel worthwhile. The process is both elaborate and rewarding. The foreplay that loosens up the pulp inside, the careful incision at the top that allows access without a juice overrun, and then the sustained act of sucking every bit juice from the helpless peel. Senses detach themselves from the body and attach themselves to the mango, and even mobile phones stop ringing. The world momentarily rests in our mouths as we slurp, suck and slaver at the rapidly disappearing pulp. The mango is manhandled vigorously till only the gutli remains which is scraped off till it has nothing left to confess. As is evident, there is no elegant way to eat this kind of mango, no delicate and dignified method that approximates any form of refinement, which is just as well, for the only way to enjoy a mango is messily.”
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    An excellent column about an excellent fruit – there isn’t that much more to say! I completely agree with the bit about serving aamras front and center, rather than as an afterthought, by the way.
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  4. “Welcome to the 4th Annual Top Economics Blogs list. For the 2019 edition, we’ve added many newcomers, as well as favorites which continue to provide quality insight year after year. Like lists in previous years (2018, 2017, 2016), the new 2019 list features a broad range of quality blogs in practically every economic discipline. Whether you are interested in general economics or prefer more specific topics such as finance, healthcare economics, or environmental economics; there is something here for you. You will also find blogs which focus on microeconomics, macroeconomics, and the economics of specific geographical regions.Whether you are a student, economics professional, or just someone with a general interest in how economic issues affect the world around you, you’re certain to find the perfect blog for your specific needs.”
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    The most comprehensive answer to that most perennial of questions: what should I read?
    Bonus! If you’re wondering how to keep up with all of this, this might help.
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  5. “India should do the same with our state capitals. The Union government can create fiscal and other incentives to encourage state governments to shift their capitals to brown- or green-field locations. Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Jaipur or Lucknow, for instance, will continue to thrive even if the state government offices move out. Their respective states will benefit from a new urban engine powered by government.”
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    I have been sceptical about the feasibility of doing something like this – my reading of urbanization has always been that it more of an organic process – cities grow (or not) of their own accord, and rarely as a planned endeavor. But maybe I’m wrong?