In spite of the hype in the international media about India’s global integration, economic reform there has been rather halting and hesitant. Cheerleaders of reform among corporate tycoons and financial columnists are often not aware how unpopular reform is, rightly or wrongly, among the general public in India. In the National Election Survey 2004 more than twothirds of about 23000 sample resp...

There are many avenues to studying or recommending economic policy. Most common in public debates is an approach, where someone offers some amazingly precise policy conclusion (‘‘the age of mandatory retirement should be 67’’) based on an equally amazingly vague or secondary policy objective (‘‘financial viability of the pension system in the long run’’). Similar examples abound in monetary pol...