Independent Research and Policy Advocacy

Does financial and macro policy explain household investment in gold?

Gold dominates household portfolios in India. This has been labelled as irrational behaviour by financially illiterate households. In this paper, we show that household preference towards gold is not irrational in the context of the Indian financial and macroeconomic environment which includes high inflation, financial repression, and capital controls.

What is Social Protection?

Blog post series: This series of posts will attempt to do two things – first, to examine the definitional boundaries of social protection and where they relate to other financial services for low-income households, and second, to use this to arrive at a working definition of social protection for policymakers and research organisations such as Dvara Research. As a first step, we break down a few questions in this first post.

A Brief Comparison of the Bad Bank Experience across Jurisdictions

Bad Banks are typically Government sponsored Asset Reconstruction Companies (ARCs) setup with the primary objective of cleaning up bank balance sheets. Unlike private ARCs, the Bad Banks are setup as a one-time measure with the primary objective of reducing the build-up of Non-Performing Assets (NPAs) post a financial or economic crisis.

Managed Competition – Revisiting Enthoven’s Principles

In this piece, we revisit Enthoven’s principles and propose a broader definition of the concept of managed competition in order that it may encompass other countries’ experiences that do not conform to a strict application of Enthoven’s concept.