Dr. Reetu Verma | University of Wollongong (original) (raw)

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Papers by Dr. Reetu Verma

Using World Bank (2020), this paper estimates microeconomic utility-based elasticity measure of p... more Using World Bank (2020), this paper estimates microeconomic utility-based elasticity measure of poverty-loss and provides better understanding of the distress of poverty and possible policy directions in rural and urban areas for India and the People's Republic of China (PRC). This paper deviates from the conventional use of overly simple head counting. Utility-based welfare point elasticity estimates show substantial welfare gains for both countries, dominated by growth contributing 90%, relative to inequality reductions contributing 10%. Rural India deviates, showing a welfare gain with balanced growth-inequality promotion. Subsequent poverty-loss estimates show potentially declining disutility of poverty in both countries and sectors, with reducing inequality contributing 70%, relative to growth's 30%. The elasticity estimates presented here show that reducing rural and urban inequality can best reduce the distress of the poor. By realigning priorities from promoting future urban growth to reducing urban and rural inequality can lead to substantial reductions in poverty-induced disutility.

The Indian Economic Journal

Applied Economics Letters, Jan 10, 2022

Review of Development Economics, 2022

Internal Migration, Urbanization and Poverty in Asia: Dynamics and Interrelationships, 2019

2018 IEEE International Conference on Teaching, Assessment, and Learning for Engineering (TALE), 2018

Traditionally difficult subjects, such as statistics, offer a substantial learning challenge for ... more Traditionally difficult subjects, such as statistics, offer a substantial learning challenge for students in their first year of university. Supplemental instruction or Peer Assisted Study Sessions (PASS) can provide students with benefits including increased confidence and grades. This project sought to compare face-to-face (F2F) sessions of PASS for the first-year psychology statistics subject PSYC123 with an online version. Employing a mixed-methods approach, including feedback from both students and PASS leaders, results indicated that online students found the platform easy to use and navigate, believing they had benefited from the sessions. All PASS students achieved higher mean grades compared to students who did not attend. PASS Online students also saw increased grades compared to F2F, although this difference was not statistically significant. PASS Leaders found that more time was needed in the online version compared with F2F, but felt that the online sessions allowed for...

Internal Migration, Urbanization and Poverty in Asia: Dynamics and Interrelationships, 2020

Advances in Science, Technology and Engineering Systems Journal, 2020

This paper considers two major issues that need to be treated as matters of urgency. First, inter... more This paper considers two major issues that need to be treated as matters of urgency. First, internal (within country) migrations in the Asian (ACI) region are mostly undocumented and large. It is shown there are significant differences in wages and human development measures to which migrants will respond. Our first (of two) recommendation(s) is the need to collect better information on migration and for wage premiums and discounts to be estimated across sectors and countries. The second major issue is the emerging demographic imbalances in the form of aging, which will give dependency ratios that have never been experienced in all of recorded human existence. This needs urgent attention and the development of appropriate migration policies. Whilst it is possible to share the burdens of ageing and dependency through migration, this will not happen under present arrangements. Migration cannot continue to be treated differently to trade and finance. A framework needs to be developed to provide a coherent set of policies relating to migration and social welfare, within and across countries in the Asian region. Our second recommendation is for the East Asia Summit (ASEAN+10) to set up a high level working group to consider possible future harmonized migration based policies, bringing together relevant economic, political, social and legal issues. This should encompass the recent ASEAN leadership on the rights of migrant workers and labor work programs. It complements the Summit\u27s focus on education and human resource development and heeds the World Economic Forum\u27s call for Asian leadership in enhancing regional connectivity (expanded to include human resources). As we have argued many times in this paper, increasing the mobility of humans is the best way to not only promote economic efficiency, but to provide freedom and significant improvements in their wellbeing and quality of life

This paper considers the interdependencies between per worker household, private corporate and pu... more This paper considers the interdependencies between per worker household, private corporate and public sector savings and investment, foreign capital inflows and GDP in a multivariate setting for India. This is in response to shortcomings relating to previous studies which predominantly analyse savings and investment aggregates only, over long time periods which contain structural changes, using bivariate estimation techniques, which are short run in nature.A sectoral model is developed to provide a theoretical basis for the empirical research and to demonstrate the possible complex interdependencies between these variables and sectors. The analysis is applied over the period 1951 to 2005 with two endogenously determined structural breaks occurring in 1966 and 1981. The long run cointegrating relationship is estimated in a multivariate setting using Johansen\u27s procedure to determine which variables are subject to permanent, semi-permanent and transitory shocks according to Pagan and Pesaran\u27s (2008) innovative classification. Consistent with the recent DSGE and structural VAR modelling, a VAR containing these specifications is estimated to determine the short run interdependencies using statistical tests and the analysis of forecast error variance decompositions.The findings show that the causation runs from per worker household savings and investment positively to private corporate savings and then to private corporate investment, which in turn affects household savings and investment. Per worker public investment is found to negatively (with small elasticity) affect GDP, which negatively affects foreign capital inflows, which subsequently negatively affects private corporate savings. These results imply the need to encourage savings, which is being realised with higher growth rates during the recent period of financial deregulation in India. However the offsetting reduction in the rates of growth in investment during the 1990s, the lack of any identified links to output and the apparent negative influence of public investment, means that policy prescriptions to promote economic growth in India are not straightforward

International Journal of Economics and Business Research, 2017

This paper considers per worker household, private corporate and public sector savings and invest... more This paper considers per worker household, private corporate and public sector savings and investment, foreign capital inflows and economic growth for India in a multivariate setting for the period 1950-2001. The analysis, uses FIML to estimate the long run cointegrating equilibriums and short run Granger causing dynamics for the non-stationary time series data, which includes endogenously detected structural breaks in 1989 and 1993, consistent with the recent period of financial reforms in India. The estimates do not support the commonly accepted Solow and endogenous models of economic growth. The popular view that increases in savings are a necessary condition for economic growth is supported with the detected strong direct links from per worker household and private corporate savings to output in the long run and sectoral per worker savings to investment links in both the short and long run. This implies the need to encourage savings, which is being realised with the estimated si...