Category Archives: legal reforms

Trade Liberalization, Tax Law Changes and Wage Inequality

09 Wednesday Dec 2009

Posted by in economic reforms, legal reforms

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

Public economists love tax law changes. It gives them a setting of a natural economic experiment allowing them to see how people respond to change in incentives. Such experiments are even rare for developing countries, not because nothing changes in these countries but because of unavailability of reliable data. This paper by Sivadasan & Slemrod is an exception. They find that a particular change in tax laws in 1992 explains almost all of the post 1992 wage inequality in India. This is an interesting finding in the context of the debates on trade and wage inequality as well.

Cost of Credit and Debt Recovery Tribunals

21 Monday Sep 2009

Posted by in legal reforms

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

The interest rate charged on loans, also referred to as cost of credit, may reflect variety of things including the obvious inflation and real cost of borrowing. Aggregate factors such as economy wide loan recovery rates would certainly be such a factor.

A recent paper by Sujata Visaria finds that this infact is the case in India. She tries to assess the impact of the recent debt recovery tribunals introduced by the Indian government on loan recovery rates. She finds that not only the tribunals reduced delinquency rates by a substantial percentage but also reduced the interest rates on larger loans, holding the quality of borrowers constant. Thus, an improvement in economy wide loan recovery rates also reduces the overall cost of credit.

Ref:

Visaria Sujata (2009),  Legal Reform and Loan Repayment: The Microeconomic Impact of Debt Recovery Tribunals in India, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 1(3), 59-81.