This book assesses how efficient primary and upper primary education is across different states of India considering both output oriented and input oriented measures of technical efficiency. It identifies the most important factors that could produce differential efficiency among the states, including the effects of central grants, school-specific infrastructures, social indicators and policy variables, as well as state-specific factors like per-capita net-state-domestic-product from the service sector, inequality in distribution of income (Gini coefficient), the percentage of people living below the poverty line and the density of population. The study covers the period 2005-06 to 2010-11 and all the states and union territories of India, which are categorized into two separate groups, namely: (i) General Category States (GCS); and (ii) Special Category States (SCS) and Union Territories (UT). It uses non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and obtains the Technology Closeness Ratio (TCR), measuring whether the maximum output producible from an input bundle by a school within a given group is as high as what could be produced if the school could choose to join the other group. The major departure of this book is its approach to estimating technical efficiency (TE), which does not use a single frontier encompassing all the states and UT, as is done in the available literature. Rather, this method assumes that GCS, SCS and UT are not homogeneous and operate under different fiscal and economic conditions.

This book is an innovative exercise to unravel recent advances in development fundamentals in emerging economies through Indian lens that include various aspects of macroeconomics, international trade, finance, and issues connected to social sector that have become more important in post-pandemic world. The book throws light on efficacy of existing policies and need of reform in policy framework to enhance growth and development and reduce gender disparities in the context of India and other emerging economies. The papers included in different chapters use frontline techniques to discuss various issues that in turn will be of great help for graduate and postgraduate teaching as well as for research. The book substantially contributes to the growing literature on issues relating trade, development, finance, and social sector in light of threat posed by COVID-19 pandemic in emerging market economies and extends the frontiers of knowledge.

This book discusses the extent and nature of COVID-19 pandemic in India and its effect on the society and economy. The suggested management practices discussed here are also not stereotype. At the same time, it highlights deficiency in development fundamentals in India on several dimensions, especially health, education, quality of public spending, taxation orientation, external trade involvement across states, etc., deficiencies which create an inbuilt bottleneck toward the creation of a more equal society. While discussing these, the book throws light on how they were expectedly exacerbated by the sudden negative shock in the form of COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, the book has highlighted the COVID pandemic and its response in India in the background of certain less discussed aspects of development fundamentals.  The contents would be of interest to researchers and students studying socioeconomic aspect of developmental economics and also to policy makers and non-government entities involved in mitigating effects of pandemic in the socioeconomic sphere.

Considering disaggregated data on Indian manufacturing at two- & three-digit levels, provided by Annual Survey of Industries during 1970-71 to 2001-02, a performance related overview is constructed to observe whether the feat of Indian industries has generated sufficient growth potential in terms of industrial output. A dummy-variable approach is adopted here. The study also focuses on the effects of trade-liberalization policies on output growth process by estimating break points & examining its occurrence & persistence level in pre- or post-liberalization era by employing unit-root hypothesis. For analyzing cost-competitiveness of an industry, measurement of technical efficiency is done by employing Stochastic Frontier Production function approach & extent of total factor productivity growth is examined by non-parametric approach of Data Envelopment Analysis. Inter-industrial variation is observed regarding the explanatory factors responsible for movements of technical efficiency & total factor productivity growth of different industries. The policy prescriptions should focus on the specific broad objectives: whether to endorse efficiency or productivity of a particular industry.