The Placement Programme of the Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics organized an Alumni Meet on February 28, 2009, to celebrate and mark ten years of its existence. On this occasion, it was an honour to have as the Chief Guest, Honourable Professor Suresh Tendulkar, Chairman of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, and retired Professor, Delhi School of Economics.

The event started with Professor Pami Dua, Faculty Coordinator, Placement Programme, welcoming the guests. Reminiscing on the development and growth of the Placement Programme from a very modest beginning in 1998-99, Professor Dua thanked all who had contributed towards its success.

Professor B.L. Pandit, Head, Department of Economics, then extended a warm welcome to all present, and introduced the Honourable Chief Guest. Professor Tendulkar enlightened the faculty, alumni, staff and students about the “Current Economic Scenario and Prospects”. Finally, Professor Partha Sen, Director, Delhi School of Economics, offered a vote of thanks and presented a token of appreciation to Professor Tendulkar.

The morning activities culminated with lunch, and a photo session that included alumni from batches as far back as 1960, and as recent as 2008. It was a pleasure to have all these cohorts smiling together for the photographs, signifying decades of association. Indeed a proud moment for us all !

 

The Centre for Development Economics, Delhi School of Economics in association with Swiss Reinsurance Company Ltd. organized a 3-day Workshop on “Productivity and Efficiency Analysis” during January 5-7,2009. The theme of the workshop was “Benchmarking for Performance Measurement”.

There were four keynote speakers. Professor Subhash C Ray (University of Connecticut, USA) provided a broad overview of the nonparametric methodology of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) for measuring technical and economic efficiency of firms in his keynote address. Professor Subal Kumbhakar (State University of New York at Binghamton, USA) in his keynote address reviewed the widely applied econometric method of Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) as a tool for estimation. Apart from their keynote addresses, both Professor Ray and Professor Kumbhakar gave expository lectures on the conceptual and methodological foundations of DEA and SFA. Professors Finn Forsund (University of Oslo, Norway) and Thijs ten Raa (Tilburg University, the Netherlands) were the other two keynote speakers who spoke on Dynamic Efficiency Measurement and Benchmarking, respectively. Professor Jesus Pastor (Miguel Hernandez University, Spain) was among other distinguished international scholars in this field who also participated. Professors K L Krishna (CDE) and B N Goldar (Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi), both well known researchers in the field of productivity analysis, also presented their research at the Workshop.

The workshop also featured applied papers from both international and Indian participants. Professor Anna Lozano Vivas (University of Malaga, Spain), Dr. Arun Bhattacharya (Wolters Kluwer Health Pharma Solutions, USA), Professors Subrata Sarkar (IGIDR, Mumbai), Pushpa Trivedi (IIT Bombay), Joyashree Roy (Jadavpur University, Kolkata), and Maniklal Adhikary (Burdwan University, Burdwan) presented papers on empirical applications in various areas. The organizing committee included Prof. Pami Dua, Prof. K.L. Krishna, Prof. Subhash C. Ray and Prof. Subal Kumbhakar.

 

The Centre was set up with grants from the Ministry of finance and the Ford Foundation with the aim of providing better research facilities at the Department of Economics. It organizes seminars, workshops and conferences throughout the year dealing with a wide variety of issues, providing a platform for discussing and disseminating the latest concepts in economic thought and methods. It maintains modern computer facilities, where students receive training in the use of econometric software packages and economic modelling. The Centre regularly publishes working papers of the Department's faculty and visiting research scholars. The centre's publications are exchanged with other research institutions in India and abroad.

The papers are also published online on the Centre's website (www.cdedse.org)

The CDE and Sukhamoy Chakravarty Memorial Trust organised the "Annual Sukhamoy Chakravarty Memorial Lecture" on January 9, 2009 delivered by Prof. Pranab Bardhan on the topic "The Institutional Economics of Development: A Critical Assessment". Professor Deepak Pental, Vice Chancellor of University of Delhi, was the chairperson at the event. Besides giving some historical background of the institutional economics of development, the lecture focused on the role of distributive conflicts in shaping institutions. It covered topics highlighting the importance of institutions in development beyond the current narrow focus of institutional economics on security of property rights and answered questions like, why do dysfunctional institutions persist over a long period of time? It was concluded with a discussion on governance institutions and brought out a central dilemma of autonomy vs. accountability.