Economics

<p>Shiv Nadar University is a comprehensive, multidisciplinary, research-focused, and student-centric University offering a full range of academic programs at the undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral level. With state-of-the-art infrastructure, the University comprises of academic wings, sophisticated labs, international standard sports facilities, amphitheaters, auditorium, conference rooms and smart classrooms. The University&rsquo;s goal is to become internationally recognized for the quality of its research and creative endeavors and their applicability to improving quality of life, generating new insights and expanding the boundaries of human knowledge creativity. Committed to excellence in teaching, research and service, the University aims to serve the higher education needs of India and the world beyond.</p>

Shiv Nadar University

We consider implementation of a deterministic allocation rule using transfers in quasi-linear private values environments. We show that in multidimensional single peaked type spaces, an allocation rule is implementable if and only if it satisfies a familiar and simple condition called 2-cycle monotonicity. © 2014 Elsevier Inc.

World University root node

(SoHSS) School of Humanities and Social Sciences

Journal of Economic Theory

Multidimensional mechanism design in single peaked type spaces

Individuals are randomly matched to play a 2X2 coordination game where the Pareto efficient and risk dominant equilibria differ. Players choose strategies by imitating the strategy of the most successful individual they observe. So, while individuals interact globally, their observation and hence imitation, as determined by their social network, may be local. When all individuals observe each other, the most successful individual in the entire population is imitated; here, in the stochastically stable state, the population coordinates on the Pareto-efficient outcome. While this outcome is always stochastically stable, even when observability is incomplete, the state where everyone plays the action of the risk-dominant equilibrium may be stochastically stable as well. Reasonably tight sufficient conditions for unique stochastic stability of the state where all coordinate on the Pareto-efficient equilibrium strategy include each individual observing at least four other individuals or when each individual observes the same number of other individuals. These properties are readily generalisable to larger mXm coordination games where the coordination outcomes can be Pareto-ranked. © 2014, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

Fulltext

International Journal of Game Theory

Coordination under global random interaction and local imitation

In water-scarce regions of the world, water-saving technology adoption augments farm productivity. But so does social capital. In this paper, the issue of ensuring livelihood for farmers through the combined use of social capital and water-saving technology is modeled in the context of repeated droughts. The model presented here derives optimal resource conservation and accumulation strategies when the farmer must ensure minimum consumption during a set of repeated drought events in the future. Findings indicate that the path to drought resilience presents a complex trade-off between accumulating one form of capital over another and is influenced by farmers' wealth and water endowments, level of risk associated with the repeated droughts and the duration of the repeated drought event that the farmer plans to survive. A higher risk of repeated droughts leads to an increase in groundwater conservation efforts but delays technology adoption. Lower water endowments may also delay adoption and reduce social capital, however, a lower social capital or a slow rate of its growth is not a hindrance to adopting water-saving technology earlier. Finally, social capital evolves to higher levels when farmer is simultaneously faced with a higher level of risks and a longer span of drought events. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Natural Resource Modeling

Combining social capital and technology for drought resilience in agriculture

Surviving prolonged water scarcity in agriculture requires farmers to be resilient along multiple dimensions. Farmers may aim to attain resilience from financial as well as natural capital perspectives. In this paper, a model of multi-dimensional resilience is developed which incorporates risk reduction and wealth accumulation as farmers' key survival strategies. Findings indicate that the relative choice over risk reduction and wealth accumulation strategies varies depending upon whether the farmer is groundwater resilience seeking type or financial resilience seeking type. Also, as the level of risks increases, the financial resilience seeking type farmer may exhibit a non-linear pattern of tradeoff between risk reduction and wealth accumulation behavior. At lower levels of risks, the farmer's optimal response is to reduce risk further with a marginal increase in the exogenous component of the risk. However, at higher levels of risk, more wealth is accumulated as the exogenous component of the risk increases. © 2014 © 2014 Taylor & Francis.

Journal of Natural Resources Policy Research

Multi-dimensional resilience in water-scarce agriculture

In regions where common pool resources provide significant support to their surrounding communities, any climate change related shock could produce multiple livelihood repercussions. In this paper, a model explores how the health of common pool resources could impact upon human capital outcomes for communities that struggle to find alternate livelihood options when traditional means such as agriculture become unsustainable. The management of common pool resources is modeled as a strategic interaction process between two heterogeneous communities that are directly or indirectly dependent upon it. An unconstrained harvesting of common resources such as forestry not only depletes its stocks, but it also indirectly affects crop output through soil degradation. A number of situations are constructed where communities are able to successfully finance human capital accumulation through proper management of their common pool resources. However, results also warn that communities that are faced with limited opportunities towards accumulating human capital must plan ahead to prevent the depletion of their common resources below critical levels. When non-linear feedbacks to soil degradation emanate from low levels of common pool stocks, human capital outcomes as well as future livelihoods of such communities are threatened. © 2013 Elsevier B.V.

Ecological Economics

Linking common property resource management to human capital outcomes

In this paper, a mathematical model of optimal management of prolonged and consecutive drought events is developed to evaluate circumstances under which the adoption of a water-efficient technology may offer long-term drought resilience. The decision over technology adoption and its timing is affected by the objective of surviving a certain number of consecutive droughts besides being influenced by the costs of technology and the farmer's endowments. A key finding is that planning for surviving through a longer drought period may discourage early technology adoption among poorer farmers faced with groundwater scarcity. Compared with wealthy farmers, the tendency to conserve groundwater for the poorer farmers when the drought planning horizon is longer gets reversed with an increase in the risks of repeated droughts. At low risks, groundwater conservation increases with the drought-planning horizon, but at higher risks, groundwater is depleted faster as the drought-planning horizon increases. Technology adoption may be discouraged when the possibility of repeated droughts is imminent or when the risk of an irreversible loss of groundwater is present. © 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.

Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management

Technology adoption for long-term drought resilience

Affirmative action, in the form of reservation policies, to address the issues of inclusion has been in place in India for a long time. While its scope has enlarged with inclusion of new social groups, the efficacy remains a matter of debate. This paper explores if parental education is an appropriate criterion for affirmative action. Empirical results using three rounds of the National Sample Survey data suggest that parental education as a determinant of participation in higher education not only transcends the impact of caste, religious, and economic status, it is also very attractive for the ease of implementation. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd.

World Development

Parental education as a criterion for affirmative action in higher education

This paper explores the role of socio-religious affiliations in determining participation in higher education in India, and whether the importance of these affiliations changes over time. Using National Sample Survey data it follows the change in the hierarchy of participation within a binary probit framework over the years. Since being eligible for higher education is found to be the key f actor in par ticipation, it also explores the ro le of supply-side constraints by controlling for the distance to a secondary school. Econometric estimations for rural and urban areas indicate a vast rural-urban divide in the role of socio-religious affiliations. Eligibility seems to be the key factor in participation, and a better understanding of the constraints on school education is critical if par ticipation in higher education is to be increased.

Economic and Political Weekly

Access to higher education in India

The threat of release of methane sequestered in the circumpolar Arctic regions of the world creates the possibility of triggering additional feedback effects from the terrestrial and the deep ocean systems which could potentially add large amounts of carbon (C) into the atmosphere. This paper analyses the implications for C mitigation policy under the threats of a substantial permafrost methane release. Several insights emerge from the analysis. First, the presence of non-linear feedbacks creates a bifurcation zone in the C emissions-stock space, on one side of which large accumulations of atmospheric C materialize leading to significant damages. Second, the bifurcation line does not have a steep slope, implying that it would be possible to avoid falling on the wrong side of this zone even if the current atmospheric stock of C were higher than what they are today. Third, when the release of permafrost C is uncertain, there is benefit in reducing anthropogenic C more than what would be optimal under a certain release of the same. Fourth, higher abatement cost scenarios do not necessarily imply significantly reduced abatement efforts. On the contrary, abatement efforts, which are only reduced marginally under this scenario, ensure that long run carbon path is stabilized. This is done in order to avoid incurring substantial costs of abatement in the future when non-linear feedback effects kick in. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.

Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change

Optimal carbon mitigation strategy under non-linear feedback effects and in the presence of permafrost release trigger hazard

Inspired by the behavior in repeated guessing game experiments, we study adaptive play by populations containing individuals that reason with different levels of cognition. Individuals play a higher order best response to samples from the empirical data on the history of play, where the order of best response is determined by their exogenously given level of cognition. As in Young’s model of adaptive play, (unperturbed) play still converges to a minimal curb set. Random perturbations of the best response dynamic identifies the stochastically stable states. In Young’s model of adaptive play with simple best-responses, the set of stochastically stable states are sensitive to the sample size that individuals from a population can draw. In generic games with higher order best-responders in both populations, the sample size is rendered irrelevant in determination of the stochastically stable set. Perhaps counter-intuitively, higher cognition may actually be bad for both the individual with higher cognition and his parent population. © 2014, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.