IFMR LEAD recently collaborated with Access Assist as technical partner for the successful Inclusive Finance India Summit - A global platform for deliberating on issues related to financial inclusion, financial education and financial stability, and for building a Financial Inclusion Vision 2020. With an endeavour to inform and influence the pro-poor policies and to strengthen the enabling environment, the Summit successfully brought together important stakeholders to discuss key issues and challenges, and build a consensus on the way forward. The Summit was held on 8th and 9th December, 2015, at Hotel Ashok, New Delhi. 

Inclusive Finance India Report 2015:
Inclusive Finance India Report 2015 was released at the Summit by S.S Mundra, Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India. The report reviews and traces the advancement of financial inclusion in India. Moreover, the report brings together varying perspectives, policy prescriptions and practices around financial inclusion, along with a cri…

A total of 211,000 fresh jobs were added to the US economy during November 2015- more than double the 100,000 fresh jobs required to absorb the economy’s incoming labor force every month. A series of such reassuring economic trends are hinting at macroeconomic firmness in the economy, thus providing impetus to what now seems to be a “done deal”- a hike in short-term interest rate by the Janet Yellen-led Federal Reserve during its December 15-16 meeting.

The Case for Interest Rate Hike: Employment and Price Stability

Maximum Employment and Stable Prices are two of the Federal Reserve’s three objectives as enshrined in the Federal Reserve Act 1913 (the third being long-term interest rates). Figures 1 and 2 show how these two critical indicators of economic performance have varied over time.



In March 2015, the Federal Reserve suggested that the economy’s long-run unemployment rate (or the natural rate of unemployment) falls within the 5.0-5.2% range. While the suggested natural rate of unem…

The recent report titled “'The Human Cost of Weather Related Disasters by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction” provided evidence based discussions on 5 major countries (US, China, India, Philippines & Indonesia) affected by Climate Change ought to Anthropogenic activities. Unfortunately, India and China put together accounted for 3 billion citizens who were hard hit by the natural disasters across the past twenty years (1995 - 2015) - A fact to sigh upon !!
Breaking further into the statistics, India has been through 288 climate associated disasters in the past 20 years, which provides evidences on inefficient vigilance to national disasters, insignificant administrative approaches for national disaster management & a failed nation in managing people lose their lives, resources and associated economic losses.  The report highlights data gaps, noting that economic losses from weather-related disasters are much higher than the recorded figure of 1.89 trillio…

This blog is written by PLAAS Researcher Emmanuel Sulle, based out of University of the Western Cape, South Africa. Emmanuel recently visited IFMR LEAD's KGFS project based out of Thanjavur as part of the ATAI fellowship grant received by our organization from MIT. This blog is written based on his observations from the field.

As one of the earliest countries to implement the Green Revolution in agriculture in the early 1960s, India has many lessons to offer to Africa both in terms of its successes and challenges. These lessons can be harnessed through continued research on some of the key drivers of such successes, including access to finance and agricultural technology adoption.

This blog post is based on my firsthand experience in Thanjavur District, Tamil Nadu State, South India supported by the Harvard University and IFMR LEAD doctoral fellowship grant. The grant facilitated Thomas Ferreira of Stellenbosch University and myself to spend two weeks in Thanjavur as part of the res…