Health policy, land market, HR in firms

Health policy

India is emerging out of lockdowns with an epidemic that is gathering pace, and all eyes are now on health policy. On 1 June, I have a column in the Business Standard titled Health policy for the coming year.

Puja Mehra has a new podcast, Everyday Economics, and I spoke with her on Will nationalising private hospitals reduce our hospital bills?

There has been a lot of debate on the checks and balances surrounding a mandatory government app that does contact tracing. On 25 May, Vrinda Bhandari and Faiza Rahman wrote an article on The Leap Blog titled Constitutionalism during a crisis: The case of Aarogya Setu. They show how to think about this question, and offer a series of proposals on how the concerns can be addressed. On 26 May, the union government announced that the source code of the app would be released.

Land market

Transaction taxes are considered to be well understood: in the field of finance, they hamper the liquidity of the market, and in the field of public finance, they are `bad taxes’. On 23 May, Diya Uday had an article on The Leap Blog titled Do stamp duties affect transaction volumes? A study of real estate transactions in Mumbai? In this analysis of episodes of changes in stamp duties, she finds a puzzling result: there was no large and obvious impact on the turnover.

HR in firms

Tapishnu Samanta and Manish Kumar Singh have an article on The Leap Blog on 30 May, Stockholm syndrome in Indian organisational culture. In this, they look at the extent to which abusive practices are present in Indian firms, and wonder whether the victims are suffering from Stockholm syndrome.