Bibhas Saha

Academic specialisation and returns to education: evidence from India

Journal of Education and Work, Nov 1, 2011

We study returns to academic specialization for Indian corporate sector workers by analyzing cros... more We study returns to academic specialization for Indian corporate sector workers by analyzing crosssectional data on male employees randomly selected from six large firms. Our analysis shows that going to college pays off, as it brings significant incremental returns over and above school education. However, the increase in returns is more pronounced in the specializations of management and engineering, and less so in the specializations of science, arts and commerce. Some of the less attractive specializations, like commerce and science, tend to make up by rewarding progression from Bachelors to Masters. Short-course Diplomas are also rewarding.

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Mixed Ownership, Managerial Incentives and Bank Competition

Bulletin of Economic Research, Oct 5, 2010

We consider deposit competition between two banks, where prior to competition one bank is subject... more We consider deposit competition between two banks, where prior to competition one bank is subjected to a nationalization decision and the other bank chooses managerial incentives. The government who maximizes a modified form of social welfare (with greater weight on profit than depositor surplus) chooses only partial nationalization, which still hurts the rival private bank. But by offering deposit-linked managerial incentives the private bank recovers its lost profit and induces even less nationalization, leaving social welfare unchanged. However, under interest rate competition for differentiated deposits the private bank offers profit-linked managerial incentives while the other bank may be completely nationalized.

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Divestment and Bank Competition

Journal of Economics, Dec 23, 2003

We address the questions of disinvestment (partial privatization) and entry in the context of qua... more We address the questions of disinvestment (partial privatization) and entry in the context of quantity competition between a partially privatized public bank and a private bank. We find that social welfare improves with entry only when the private banks are more efficient than the public bank. We also determine socially optimum degree of disinvestment and entry.

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Reviving the informal sector from the throes of demonetisation

While recent measures announced by the government indicate some awareness of the hardships inflic... more While recent measures announced by the government indicate some awareness of the hardships inflicted on the informal sector by the note ban, more needs to be done. In this article, Kaushik Bhattacharya, Siddhartha Mitra, Sarmistha Pal and Bibhas Saha summarise the emerging evidence on the significant adverse impact of demonetisation on the informal sector, and suggest policy measures to ensure a steady recovery.

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Credit where credit's due: The enabling effects of empowerment in Indian microfinance

World Development, 2019

We utilise primary data collected from a North Indian village in 2015 to 2016 and examine the imp... more We utilise primary data collected from a North Indian village in 2015 to 2016 and examine the impact of women's empowerment on their creditworthiness measured by the total annual loan amounts. Our key explanatory variable -an empowerment index -has been constructed using four individual-level factors --economic, social, interpersonal and political. We find that more empowered women received greater cumulative loans. We have instrumented empowerment by the sex of the borrower's first child being male. It seems that in the male-dominated environment of North India, the 'luck' of giving birth to first child as a son helps a woman seize opportunities for empowerment. The village-level finding of empowerment is consistent with the result we obtain for the whole of North India using a separate and national dataset. We also show that for the rest of India education, but not empowerment, is an important determinant of loan volumes.

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Institutions or Geography: Which Matters Most for Economic Development?

Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics, 2013

Although development economics generally confines its attention to the last 60 years, there is a ... more Although development economics generally confines its attention to the last 60 years, there is a growing body of research that looks back centuries and tries to determine if the events in the long past are responsible for underdevelopment of today’s developing countries. Broadly speaking, there are two views on the long-term determinants of comparative development. One view is that the extractive institutions created during colonization between 1500 and 1900 are responsible for underdevelopment we see today. The other view is that these institutions were created because of particular geographical factors, and the role of geography is played out on a much longer time scale. This article provides a brief survey of the two alternative perspectives on development economics. JEL: N4, O1, O4

Trade Unions Bargaining, Privatization and Adjustment Measures

Wage and Employment Bargainin with Asymmetric Information

An Economist’s Perspective on Match-fixing and Self-sabotage in Contests

IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review, 2015

In this note we provide an economist’s perspective on self-sabotage in contests. When such self-s... more In this note we provide an economist’s perspective on self-sabotage in contests. When such self-sabotage is engineered at the behest of a third party for financial gains from betting markets, we see the twin problems of self-sabotage and betting corruption, which are known as the problem of match-fixing in sporting contests. We discuss the hidden incentives that different agents face in this environment. To curb match-fixing, legalization of betting would be a positive step followed by intelligent enforcement. Further, using a simple model we demonstrate that the risk of match-fixing diminishes with the number of teams involved in the contest.

Trade, Labour Institutions and Flexibility in Indian Manufacturing

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2010

ABSTRACT There has been increasing ‘flexibilisation,’ in the formal labour markets of both develo... more ABSTRACT There has been increasing ‘flexibilisation,’ in the formal labour markets of both developed and developing countries. Labour institutions and globalisation are often taken to be causally related to this phenomenon, but the evidence remains inconclusive. In India, there has been an increasing use of temporary workers employed through contractors (contract workers), who are not represented by trade unions and who do not fall under the purview of the labour laws that are applicable to directly employed workers (formal workers) in formal labour markets. We develop a model of labour demand where firms choose a mix of contract workers and formal workers, rather than formal workers alone. Then we test the model using state-industry-year panel data for Indian manufacturing from 1998 to 2005. We find that both pro-worker labour institutions and increased import penetration lead to greater use of contract labour in Indian manufacturing.

Wage Bargaining and Managerial Incentives

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2005

Abstract: If managers bargain with workers over wage before choosing output in a Cournot duopoly,... more Abstract: If managers bargain with workers over wage before choosing output in a Cournot duopoly, owners face two conflicting interests in designing managerial incentives: one for profit orientation to reduce wage, and the other for sales orientation to gain in output competition. The net effect depends on the workers&amp;amp;#x27; bargaining power.

Mixed ownership in a mixed duopoly with differentiated products

Journal of Economics, 2009

... Bibhas Saha Received: 22 October 2008 / Accepted: 3 May 2009 / Published online: 26 May 2009 ... more

Interest rate discrimination, tenancy and cost sharing

Indian Growth and Development Review, 2011

PurposeThe aim of this paper is to develop a theory of sharecropping with cost sharing after allo... more PurposeThe aim of this paper is to develop a theory of sharecropping with cost sharing after allowing for an explicit role of a creditor. In the tenancy literature, the prevalence of sharecropping has remained an important issue. While most contributions have focussed only on output sharing, very few have studied the issue of cost sharing. Besides, the existing models have considered interactions only between a landowner and a tenant. The purpose of this paper is to extend this setup to a third player – creditor.Design/methodology/approachThe authors adopt a static contract approach with full information and no uncertainty and model possible credit‐cum‐tenancy arrangements among a money‐lender, a landowner and a tenant under the restrictions that the money‐lender cannot charge a lump‐sum fee and the input choices are left with the tenant.FindingsIt is shown that all Pareto optimal arrangements between a creditor, a landowner and a tenant must involve interest rate discrimination bet...

Betting in the Shadow of Match-Fixing

University of East Anglia AEP Discussion Papers in …, 2010

Page 1. Betting in the Shadow of Match-Fixing ∗ Parimal Kanti Bag Bibhas Saha July 01, 2010 A... more

Match-Fixing in a Monopoly Betting Market

Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, Mar 11, 2016

A monopolist bookmaker may set betting odds on a fairly even contest to induce matchfixing by an ... more A monopolist bookmaker may set betting odds on a fairly even contest to induce matchfixing by an influential corrupt punter. His loss to the corrupt punter is more than made up for by enticing enough ordinary punters to bet on the losing team. This result is in sharp contrast to competitive bookmaking, where even contests have been shown to be immune to fixing. The analysis also reveals a surprising result that the incidence of match-fixing can dramatically fall when match-fixing opportunities rise. This is shown by comparing two scenarioswhen only one team is corruptible and when both are corruptible. For both teams corruptible, the bookmaker is uncertain about to which team the influential punter will have access, so carefully maneuvering the odds to induce match-fixing is too costly.

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Under Competitive Odds

Two bookmakers compete in Bertrand fashion while setting odds on the outcomes of a sporting conte... more

Corrupt Bookmaking in a Fixed Odds Illegal Betting Market

The Economic Journal, 2017

A problem of underground betting in a two-team sports contest is studied with player sabotage ins... more A problem of underground betting in a two-team sports contest is studied with player sabotage instigated by a monopolist bookmaker. Whereas punters hold beliefs about the teams' winning chances correlated with Nature's draw, the bookmaker observes this information noise-free. The enforcement authority investigates potential match-fixing with a higher probability, the greater the upset in the contest outcome. In such an environment, if punters do not suspect match-fixing, contests will often be fixed by targeting the favourite, thus creating upsets and intensifying subsequent investigations. The match-fixing result continues to hold even when punters are rational, provided that the bookie's beliefs are noisy: the bookie may resort to fixing by bribing the team he thinks is the favourite, and the bettors still bet on their respective perceived favourites.

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Match-Fixing in a Monopoly Betting Market

Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 2016

A monopolist bookmaker may set betting odds on a fairly even contest to induce matchfixing by an ... more A monopolist bookmaker may set betting odds on a fairly even contest to induce matchfixing by an influential corrupt punter. His loss to the corrupt punter is more than made up for by enticing enough ordinary punters to bet on the losing team. This result is in sharp contrast to competitive bookmaking, where even contests have been shown to be immune to fixing. The analysis also reveals a surprising result that the incidence of match-fixing can dramatically fall when match-fixing opportunities rise. This is shown by comparing two scenarioswhen only one team is corruptible and when both are corruptible. For both teams corruptible, the bookmaker is uncertain about to which team the influential punter will have access, so carefully maneuvering the odds to induce match-fixing is too costly.

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Environmental outcomes in a model of mixed duopoly

We show under general demand and cost conditions that in a mixed duopoly with pollution the gover... more We show under general demand and cost conditions that in a mixed duopoly with pollution the government will implement the socially optimal outputs and abatements by a tax-subsidy scheme and keeping the public fi rm fully public. The scheme requires taxing outputs and subsidizing abatements at diff erent rates, unlike a pollution tax. Our result contradicts some of the recent claims that social optimum is not implementable and privatization is necessary. We also show that when the private firm is partly foreign-owned, the government will adopt some privatization and will not implement the social optimum, though the social optimum is implementable.

Labour Market: Balancing Freedom and Protection

This chapter provides a broad account of the labour market by focussing on some of its key aspect... more This chapter provides a broad account of the labour market by focussing on some of its key aspects, such as industrial relations and labour market rigidities of the organised sector. With increased product market competition and rent dissipation industrial disputes have fallen; increased opportunities also had some calming effects. But the labour market rigidities, which can be attributed to an array of legislative and institutional provisions for the organised sector, are to be taken seriously. Recent researches that have explicitly allowed for changes in legal provisions among the states systematically uncover unequal effects of liberalisation between the states and between the organised and the unorganised sectors. The unorganised sector, by and large, has responded positively to reform and globalisation. But the welfare of the unorganised sector workers has to be addressed, and they have to be empowered to take advantage of new opportunities in a globalised world.

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