Nirvikar Singh

About

Nirvikar Singh is a Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), where he currently serves as Co-Director of the Center for Analytical Finance, an institution he founded. From 2010 to 2020, he held the Sarbjit Singh Aurora Chair of Sikh and Punjabi Studies at UCSC and has also directed the UCSC South Asian Studies Initiative. His academic leadership roles at UCSC have included Director of the Santa Cruz Center for International Economics, Co-Director of the Center for Global, International and Regional Studies, and Special Advisor to the Chancellor. In the 1990s, he organized one of the first major U.S. conferences on Indian economic reform, highlighting his longstanding engagement with economic issues related to India. He earned his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and his BSc and MSc from the London School of Economics, where he was awarded the Allyn Young Prize, Gonner Prize, and Ely Devons Prize. Professor Singh's research spans a broad range of topics including entrepreneurship, information technology and development, electronic commerce, business strategy, political economy, federalism, economic growth, the Indian economy, and Sikh and Punjabi studies. He has contributed over 100 research papers and has co-authored or co-edited six books covering subjects such as joint ventures, international investment, technology transfer, federalism in India, the Indian IT revolution, and the economic transformation of…

Research topics

• Economics
• Business
• Econometrics
• Statistics
• Natural resource economics
• Finance
• Environmental economics
• Engineering

Selected publications

• India’s Strategy for Achieving Net Zero

  Energies · 2022 · 14 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  This paper reviews and assesses India’s energy policy in the context of its commitment to achieve the target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2070. It emphasizes the central role of green electrification, particularly through the expansion of solar power capacity. It discusses policies outside the energy sector that need to be part of a strategy of achieving this target, including the use of information technology, infrastructure development, and transportation. Furthermore, it examines possible…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Embedded autonomy, political institutions, and access orders

  Economics and Politics · 2022-04-18 · 5 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  Abstract We construct a model of “embedded autonomy,” the idea that the closeness of bureaucrats and business people may lead to growth‐promoting policies by the government, though at the risk of leading to crony capitalism. We analyze how the level of monitoring to control corruption and the weight given to the future affect the nature of the possible outcomes. We explore possible tradeoffs between growth and inclusiveness and discuss how our model relates to more general concepts of inclusiven…

  PublisherDOI

• Business Credit, Household Credit and Economic Performance in Malaysia: A Quantile Regression Approach

  Malaysian Journal of Economic Studies · 2021 · 5 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  This study examines the effects of business (enterprise) credit and household credit on economic performance in Malaysia. The World Bank’s Doing Business report ranked Malaysia at number one among developing countries in terms of ease of getting credit in the six consecutive years since 2008. The analysis is based on quantile regression estimations, using quarterly time series datasets from 1999: Q4 to 2019: Q4. The empirical findings reveal that business credit is positively associated with eco…

  DOI

• Religion, Morality, and Economics: Insights from the Sikh Tradition

  Journal of Economics Management and Religion · 2022-12-01 · 4 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This paper analyses the Sikh religious tradition in light of research on the connections between religion, morality, and economics. Sikhism provides a compact and well-documented example of the creation and evolution of a religious community, in which moral guidance is paramount, but interacts with material incentives and material conditions. The time scale of this case, and its geographic and conceptual location in juxtaposition to Hinduism and Islam, make Sikh tradition a useful additional dat…

  PublisherDOI

• Federal Dimensions of India's Response to the Covid Pandemic

  Indian Public Policy Review · 2023-02-02 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  
 This paper examines India’s responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, from the perspective of its federal structures. It first summarizes different institutional components of India’s federal system. Next, it outlines the responses to the pandemic, both over time, and across different levels of government. The main contribution of the paper is a new evaluation of the federal dimensions of India’s governmental responses at different levels. It is argued that, while the national government did we…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Intergovernment Grants with Asymmetric Information

  NSF · $25k · 1986–1987

Frequent coauthors

• Daniel Friedman

  27 shared

• M. Govinda Rao

  25 shared

• Michael M. Hutchison

  20 shared

• Jake Kendall

  University of Washington

  16 shared

• Steven T. Anderson

  Mater Research

  13 shared

• Garrett Milam

  University of Puget Sound

  12 shared

• Rajeswari Sengupta

  Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research

  11 shared

• Anirban Sanyal

  11 shared

Awards & honors

• Allyn Young Prize
• Gonner Prize
• Ely Devons Prize

Similar researchers at University of California, Santa Cruz

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