This paper estimates how the emission intensity, measured as total emissions of a pollutant per unit of real output, responds to per-capita income growth and trade variables. The objective is to understand the role policies can play in achieving balanced and sustained decoupling of pollutant emissions from economic growth. Using a long-run panel covering ten major pollutants for 145 countries (1970–2012) and two-way fixed effects, we quantify the elasticity of emission intensity with respect to income per capita. The estimated elasticities range from –0.46 to –1.02. Trade exposure is positively correlated with emission intensity in levels but its interaction with income is negative, suggesting that openness can initially worsen pollution through composition effects yet later accelerate development of environmentally friendly techniques. A clear divide emerges between pollutants. The industrial pollutants (such as sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides) are relatively inelastic. Non-industrial pollutants (including ammonia and black carbon) show much higher elasticities. These findings reveal that economic development and global trade integration has shaped environmental outcomes in distinct ways across pollutants. This highlights the need for targeted policies that distinguish between pollutant types to achieve balanced and sustained decoupling of pollutant emissions from economic growth. The results suggest that regulatory framework targeting industrial emissions needs to be stricter than the one that targets non-industrial emissions

The paper asks a simple question. If individuals demand products from the firms in the economy and supply their skills concomitantly to the firms, then why should there be skill gap in the society, i.e., mismatch between skills that individuals possess and firm’s demand. After all, in a decentralised economy prices of various products and skill specific wages should adjust to ensure that there is match between demand and supply of skills. The paper suggests that there are three factors that keep skill gap alive. The first two are the web of dynamic complementarities in the way human beings acquire skills and the way they invent new technologies. The third factor is the lack of competition in the product market that accompanies period of accelerated technical change. The papers looks at the impact automation and globalisation has had in opening up the skill gap and suggest policies that would help close the skill gap. With accelerated changes in technology and concomitant social changes, it is ever so more important to have a learning environment that allows workers and citizens in the society to learn and adapt flexibly.

Keywords: Skill gap, Automation, Globalisation, Market structure.

Using contract theoretic models, the manuscript summarises the current research in the microfinance. It cover the topics of consumption credit, adverse selection, moral hazard and contract enforcement.

The case-study examines the group lending mechanism of a particular Microfinance Institution working in Haryana, India. The Microfinance Institution restricted the number of group members that could borrow simultaneously from it and allowed the internal lending amongst the group members. We found evidence of negative assortative matching in groups i. e. relatively wealthy individuals grouping with poorer individuals, with the wealthier members obtaining a higher proportion of the loans in the group.

Keywords: Group Lending, Microfinance, Savings

Saving opportunities can only be offered in group-lending by restricting the number of borrowers in a group, thus creating intra-group competition for loans. Our model predicts that this would lead to negative assortative matching along wealth lines (the wealthy would group with poorer individuals). We find that in a two member group, the borrower’s wealth threshold for joining the group would be greater than the non-borrower’s wealth threshold. The non-borrower’s wealth threshold increases and the borrower’s wealth threshold decreases with the cost of capital, thus widening the gap between the two thresholds. We thus highlight the two countervailing effects of subsidising the cost of capital, i.e., the trade-off between raising the wealth threshold for joining the group as a non-borrower and decreasing the expected time it would take to loosen the wealth deprived non-borrower’s credit constraints.

Keywords: Group-Lending, Microfinance, Savings, Outreach, Wealth

The paper documents the group lending mechanism used by a typical microfinance lender in Haryana, India. The mechanism had three interesting features. Firstly, the groups were initially formed as Rotating, Saving and Credit Associations. This enabled the lender to screen the groups. Second, there was significant heterogeneity within the group in terms of income and educational achievements. Third, the relatively wealthy individuals dominated the decision making process in the group and were able to obtain a disproportionate amount of credit allocated to the group.