51ST CONFERENCE OF THE INDIAN ECONOMETRIC SOCIETY

51^st Conference of The Indian Econometric Society

The 51^st conference of The Indian Ecomonetric Society held in the Department of Economics ,Punjabi University,Patiala  during 12-14 December,2014.The conference was inaugurated by Prof.M.S. Ahluwalia-the Ex .Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission of India. Welcome address was given by Prof Sablok of Patiala University.The Presidential address was given by Vice President Prof. Pami Dua in stead of Prof. P.Pattanayak on Welfare Economics:Trends and its measurement.In the inaugural address,Prof Ahluwalia emphasised inclusiveness,labour laws reform,the policy to increase growth rates of the low income states of India,and to proper implementation of the 12^th Five Year Plan.He also told that liberalisation may not harm to the backward states.But their growth rates must converge .In mentioning the poverty and inequality in India,he stressed that top 1% or 2% of the rich people may not matter the rest of the Indians.India should prioritise the scope of skill improvement.Lastly he expects that India must achieve the 8% growth rate of GDP.

Under the chairmanship of Prof.Biswajit Chatterjee,Prof.Satya Ranjan Chakraborty of ISI,Kolkata addressed on “Generalised Gini Polarization Indices for an Ordinal Dimension of Human Well –Being”

A panel discussion on the tribute of Prof. A.L.Nagar was held and Prof.K.L.Krishna,Prof.V.N. Pandit and Dr.Pami Dua showed their great tribute to Prof.Nagar.It was chaired by Prof.B.B.Bhattacharjee.

Prof. Chetan Ghate of ISI,Delhi gave a special lecture on Sectoral Infrastructure Investments in an Unbalaced Growing Economy which was chaired by Prof. R.B. Barman.(Ex.Executive  Director of RBI)

Prof.Mukul Majumder of Cornell University of USA gave special invited lecture on “Ruin Probabilities” which was chaired by Prof.K.L.Krishna.Prof.V.N.Pandit ,Former VC of SSIHL,addressed on “On Ethics,Economics and Finance” under chairmanship of Prof V.R.Panchamukhi.

Dr.Pami Dua of Delhi School of Economics, gave lecture on the topic “ Impact of Euro zone Crisis obn China and India” which was chaired by Dr.Shubhada Rao, Chief Economist,Yes Bank.

A special session on “Punjab Economy” was chairmed by S.Jaspal Singh ,Secretary,Govt. Of Punjab where Prof Upinder Sawhney of Punjab University lectured on “National Fiscal Issues with Special Reference to Punjab”, Prof. R.S. Sidhu of PAU,Ludhiana , lectured on “Agricultural economy of Punjab:Challenges and Way forward” and Prof. Sukhpal Singh of IIM,Ahmedabad, lectured on “Achieving Agro Industrial Development in Punjab:Potential ,Strategy and Mechanism”

There were six groups of technical sessions in which 290 papers on Economics and Econometrics were  presented so far ,all of which are high quality and innovative and of them most of them were discussed on recent issues on economics in both national and international contexts.

My paper (Dr.Debesh Bhowmik) was on the topic of “The determinants of Foreign Direct Investment :An econometric study with special reference to India” in which I took six variables namely, growth rate, openness, external debt, interest rate, and exchange rate and tested by cointegration and VECM  and good relation with unstable impulse response function.

The valedictory session was chaired by Prof Inderjeet Singh-Head ,Deppt. Of Economics who gave  praises to prof and staff and students of the Department to succeed the conference.The secretary,Prof.Bhanumurthy assured their good completion of the conference and Tresurer , Prof. Samugan gave mementos to all  volunteers of the department scholars. The valedictory lecture was given by Dr.T.C.A.Anant –the Chief Statistician of India on the topic “Harnessing the data revolution for measuring social development” where he mentioned about the technological advancement of data availability and pointing to useful or unuseful purposes of data.