-The Hindu Business Line The development economist, now part of Tamil Nadu’s Economic Advisory Council, says that public expenditure on health is just 0.6 per cent of the state domestic product, one of the lowest ratios among Indian states * Universal quality education, health care and social security are still distant goals * A well-designed system of emergency cash transfers would be quite useful in this situation of recurrent crises, which may last...

-The Inidan Express A white paper detailing the true state of Tamil Nadu’s finances will be released in July, said Governor Banwarilal Purohit during the first session of the 16th state legislative assembly in Chennai. Chennai: The Tamil Nadu government will form an economic advisory council comprising Nobel laureate Esther Duflo of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA and former Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan to advise the chief...

-The Hindu Seeing economists as ‘plumbers’, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo show how economic reasoning and evidence can shed light on real-world issues John Maynard Keynes, the founder of Keynesian economics, once said that “if economists could manage to get themselves thought of as a humble, competent people, on a level with dentists, that would be splendid”. Judging from recent opinion polls, economists still have a long way to go. According to...

-The Indian Express CAA and NRC introduce a meddlesome officialdom into a question as fundamental as citizenship. Why not open our doors to all who sign up in our national mission of being democratic, open, tolerant and inclusive? In 2014, then candidate Narendra Modi’s slogan of “maximum governance minimum government” had resonated with many voters who felt that the Indian government loomed too large in their lives while delivering too little to...

-TheWire.in The problem with the domination of RCTs in development is the depreciation of other, more relevant findings using different methodologies. This year’s Nobel prize in economics has been awarded to the three researchers Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer, who are well-known for their field experiments in the form of randomised controlled trials (RCTs). But can that methodology make meaningful contributions to solving the problem of our schools failing our...