Basu, Deepankar

Job Title

Professor, Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Last Name

Basu

First Name

Deepankar

Discipline

Economics

Expertise

Applied econometrics
Development economics
Political economy

Introduction

Deepankar Basu specializes in applied econometrics with a focus on Marxian political economy, and economic development.

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 58

BJP’s Demographic Dividend in the 2014 General Elections: An Empirical Analysis
(2014) Basu, Deepankar; Misra, Kartik
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept the 2014 General Elections in India and emerged as a single party with absolute majority, a result not witnessed since 1984. Not only did it win a majority of seats, it also managed to increase its vote share in almost all states between 2009 and 2014. Using state-level data, we show that BJP’s extraordinary poll results relied crucially on attracting young, especially first time, electors.
The Structure and Content of Das Kapital
(2017) Basu, Deepankar
Karl Marx’s magnum opus, Das Kapital, presents an analysis of the long run dynamics of a mature capitalist economy. The analysis is conducted at two primary levels of abstraction – ‘capital in general’ (where competition between individual capitals is abstracted from) and ‘many capitals’ (where the phenomenon of competiton between individual capitals is introduced) – and the presentation is organized into three volumes. In terms of structure, the analysis in the first two volumes is located at the level of ‘capital in general’, and the analysis in the third volume is located at the level of ‘many capitals’. In terms of content, the first volume analyses the production and accumulation of surplus value, the second volume investigates the problems of realization of surplus value, and the third volume analyses the mechanisms that lead to the distribution of surplus value into income streams of different fractions of the ruling class – as profit of enterprise, commercial profit, interest and rent (and monopoly profit more generally). The three volumes together give a comprehensive picture of the workings of a mature capitalist economy and highlights its long run, contradictory tendencies.
Son Targeting Fertility Behavior: Some Consequences and Determinants
(2010-01) De Jong, Robert; Basu, Deepankar
This article draws out some implications of son targeting fertility behavior and studies its determinants. We demonstrate that such behavior has two notable implications at the aggregate level:(a) girls have a larger number of siblings (sibling effect), and (b) girls are born at relatively earlier parities within families (birth-order effect). Empirically testing for these effects, we find that both are present in many countries in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and North Africa but are absent in the countries of sub-Saharan Africa. Using maximum likelihood estimation, we study the effect of covariates on son targeting fertility behavior in India, a country that displays signi􀀀 cant sibling and birth-order effects. We 􀀀 find that income and geographic location of families significantly affect son targeting behavior.
Comprehensive public health evaluation of lockdown as a non-pharmaceutical intervention on COVID-19 spread in India: national trends masking state-level variations
(2020-01) Salvatore, Maxwell; Basu, Deepankar; Ray, Debashree; Kleinsasser, Mike; Purkayastha, Soumik; Bhattacharyya, Rupam; Mukherjee, Bhramar
Objectives To evaluate the effect of four-phase national lockdown from March 25 to May 31 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in India and unmask the state-wise variations in terms of multiple public health metrics. Design Cohort study (daily time series of case counts). Setting Observational and population based. Participants Confirmed COVID-19 cases nationally and across 20 states that accounted for >99% of the current cumulative case counts in India until 31 May 2020. Exposure Lockdown (non-medical intervention). Main outcomes and measures We illustrate the masking of state-level trends and highlight the variations across states by presenting evaluative evidence on some aspects of the COVID-19 outbreak: case fatality rates, doubling times of cases, effective reproduction numbers and the scale of testing. Results The estimated effective reproduction number R for India was 3.36 (95% CI 3.03 to 3.71) on 24 March, whereas the average of estimates from 25 May to 31 May stands at 1.27 (95% CI 1.26 to 1.28). Similarly, the estimated doubling time across India was at 3.56 days on 24 March, and the past 7-day average for the same on 31 May is 14.37 days. The average daily number of tests increased from 1717 (19–25 March) to 113 372 (25–31 May) while the test positivity rate increased from 2.1% to 4.2%, respectively. However, various states exhibit substantial departures from these national patterns. Conclusions Patterns of change over lockdown periods indicate the lockdown has been partly effective in slowing the spread of the virus nationally. However, there exist large state-level variations and identifying these variations can help in both understanding the dynamics of the pandemic and formulating effective public health interventions. Our framework offers a holistic assessment of the pandemic across Indian states and union territories along with a set of interactive visualisation tools that are daily updated at covind19.org.
Marx's Theory of Ground-Rent: A Suggested Reformulation
(2020) Basu, Deepankar
This paper develops a simple theoretical model to analyze Marx's theory of ground rent. Using the model, I demonstrate two important results. First, if we take capital as exogenous, then total ground-rent can be decomposed into the three components: differential rent of the first variety (DRI), differential rent of the second variety (DRII), and absolute rent (AR). Second, if we endogenize capital outlays using profit-maximizing behaviour of capitalist farmers, then absolute rent becomes zero. Thus, under reasonable behavioural assumptions about landlords and capitalist farmers, there will be no absolute rent in a capitalist economy.
An Approach to the Problem of Employment in India
(2018) Basu, Deepankar
The challenge of employment in the Indian economy, especially after it growth acceleration since the mid-1980s, relates to its quality rather than its quantity. While employment growth has kept pace with the labour force over the long run, what has grown is informal employment. The coexistence of rapid capital accumulation, robust output growth and lack of growth of formal employment can be understood using the well-known Harris-Todaro model of a dual economy. This framework highlights the key role of the wage gap between the modern and traditional sectors as a determinant of urban informal employment. Hence, one of the most effective and egalitarian ways to address the employment problem is to adopt policies to increase agricultural productivity and income, which can reduce the wage gap. Since crop yields in India are far lower than many other countries in the world, including China, Brazil, and Bangladesh, there is ample scope for land-augmenting and labour-absorbing technological change in Indian agriculture. Efforts to ramp up industrialization should be taken up in earnest only after the wage gap has been narrowed significantly.
Relative mortality improvements as a marker of socio-economic inequality across the developing world, 1990-2009
(2011-10) Basu, Deepankar
Using cross country regressions, this paper constructs a novel distance-to-frontier metric for tracking broad socio-onomic inequality (including access of the poor to health infrastructure) over time for individual countries. Given the unavailability of reliable and consistent direct measures of inequality for most poor countries, especially related to non-income aspects of living standards, the metric developed in this paper can be used as an alternative indirect measure that is intuitive and easy to compute. To highlight its potential use, the metric is used to rank countries in terms of improvements in socio-economic inequality for the period since 1990. Notable examples of poor performance are displayed by China, Thailand, Kenya and India.
Profitability in India’s Organized Manufacturing Sector: The Role of Technology, Distribution, and Demand
(2015) Basu, Deepankar; Das, Debarshi
Using aggregate data from the Annual Survey of Industries, we analyze profitability in India’s organized manufacturing sector from 1982-83 to 2012-13. Over the whole period of analysis, the rate of profit grew at about 1 percent per annum, primarily driven by a rising share of profits. We use structural break tests to identify medium and short run regimes. We find two medium run regimes, one of declining profitability (1982-83 to 2001-02), and another of growing profitability (2001-02 to 2012-13). We find six short run regimes, of which only two are periods of rising profitability, 1987-88 to 1996-97, and 2001-02 to 2007-08. All other short run periods have witnessed declining profitability. Profit rate decomposition analysis shows that both in the medium and short run, technological factors have been the most important determinants of changes in profitability.
Asymptotic Bias of OLS in the Presence of Reverse Causality
(2015) Basu, Deepankar
In this paper, I derive an expression for the asymptotic bias in the OLS estimator of the partial effect of a regressor on the dependent variable when there is reverse causality and all variables in the model are covariance stationary. I show that the sign of the asymptotic bias depends only on the signs of the bi-directional causal effects.
Revisiting India’s Growth Transitions
(2020) Basu, Deepankar
This paper reconsiders two questions relating to India’s economic growth: structural breaks in growth and the impact of equipment investment on aggregate economic growth. First, statistical tests of structural change show that economic growth in post-independence India has witnessed four structural breaks: in 1964-65, in 1978-79, in 1990-91, and in 2004-05. However, substantial growth accelerations, i.e. increase of more than 1.0% per annum in the growth rate of per capita real GDP, occurred only at two points: 1978-79 and 2004-05. Second, to analyze the impact of equipment investment on growth, I use an ARDL bounds testing methodology. I find a positive and statistically significant long run positive impact of private investment in equipment and machinery on the growth rate of real GDP.