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This paper examines market structure and efficiency of price transmittals in the two national stock exchanges of India: The Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange. Price movements in a large number of important stocks in both markets are considered. The framework used is the Johansen‐Juselius multivariate cointegration technique. It is discovered that price movements within each market are cointegrated. Short‐run ECM analysis shows that no stock in any market is exogenous, thus indicating that there is considerable feedback in short‐run price movements from each stock. Some short‐run price movements are stabilizing. The Bombay Stock Exchange and National Stock Exchange appear to be reasonably efficient markets.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a broad overview of welfare schemes in India and their impact on social protection during a period of high economic growth. It summarizes India's performance with respect to select economic and social indicators relative to select low and middle-income countries in the Asia Pacific region. It further overviews trends in some key select economic and social indicators for India and discusses India's attainment in Social Protection relative to an index of such protection provided by the Asian Development Bank.

This paper uses a comparative statistical approach and evaluates India's performance in key social welfare areas vis-à-vis that of countries with economic performance comparable to that of India. It also evaluates India's progress along these parameters over time.

The basic messages of this paper are: first, compared to low and middle-income countries in the Asia Pacific India's economic performance has outstripped its performance in social and welfare indicators. Second, nevertheless India is spending less on social welfare programs and other welfare schemes than many countries in the Asia Pacific, including some of those whose economic performance has been less impressive than India's. Third, the efficiency and effectiveness of key welfare programs in India need to be substantially improved. Particular attention needs to be paid to female participation in and their access to social welfare programs.

Informed analyses of social sector spending in India and their impact on welfare outcomes are relatively scarce although descriptive studies of social sector spending and welfare schemes abound. This paper attempts to fill this gap with a cross-country as well as intertemporal analysis of India's performance in these key areas.

Analyses the structure of costs in the cement, lime and plaster industry of India. Using aggregative data for the period 1960‐61 to 1982‐83 a generalised translog cost function is estimated. It is discovered that (1) this industry has been characterised, by and large, by allocative efficiency; (2) production is characterised by increasing returns to scale; (3) technical progress has been biased against the use of capital; and (4) there exist considerable opportunities for substitution between factors of production. Several policy conclusions of the analysis are also examined.

The purpose of this paper is to amend the New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) model to include inflation volatility. It provides results on the determinants of inflation volatility and expected inflation volatility for ordinary least squares and autoregressive distributed lags (1,1) models and for change in inflation volatility and change in expected inflation volatility using error correction mechanism (ECM) models. Output gap affects change in expected inflation volatility alone (in the ECM model) and not in the other models. Major determinants of inflation volatility and expected inflation volatility are identified. To the best of the authors knowledge this is the first paper to augment the NKPC to include inflation volatility.

Recent analysis has indicated the importance of inflation volatility for the monetary transmission mechanism in India (Kapur and Behera, 2012). In the analysis of such monetary policy mechanisms the NKPC has proved to be a useful tool. Thus Patra and Ray (2010) for India and Brissimis and Magginas (2008) for the USA find considerable support for the standard NKPC. The purpose of this paper is to synthesize and integrate these two models by extending the standard NKPC framework to include inflation volatility and test its significance for the case of India.

In the case of inflation volatility output gap, lagged output gap and lagged inflation volatility are all insignificant. The level of inflation has a negative significant impact whereas the level of expected inflation has a positive and significant impact. In the case of expected inflation volatility lagged output gap has a negative and significant impact, the price level has a positive and significant impact whereas expected price has a negative and weakly significant impact. ECM reveals change in inflation variability falls significantly with lagged inflation volatility and lagged inflation and less significantly with change in expected inflation. It rises with lagged expected inflation although the coefficient is only weakly significant. Lagged output gap and change in output gap are insignificant.

This paper makes two original contributions. First, it extends the New Keynesian framework to include inflation volatility. Second, it estimates this model for India. To the best of the authors knowledge this is the first paper to make these contributions.