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ENVIRONMENT AND FINANCIAL MARKETS: ASSESSMENT AND RISK

2026-06-01T00:00:00Z

Title: ENVIRONMENT AND FINANCIAL MARKETS: ASSESSMENT AND RISK Authors: GUPTA, ADITYA; Malhotra, Priya (supervisor) Abstract: This dissertation examines how climate risk, decomposed into transition risk and physical risk, is priced across G7 equity markets and the US fixed income market over the period February 2016 to May 2025. Using a Transition Risk Index (TRI) and a Physical Risk Index (PRI) as the primary explanatory variables, alongside monthly benchmark equity index returns for all seven G7 countries and monthly US 10-year Treasury yield data, this study conducts six empirical analyses: pooled and fixed effects panel OLS regressions, a time-series OLS of climate risk on bond yield changes, 24-month rolling regressions to capture time-varying sensitivity, individual country level regressions, portfolio level Climate Value at Risk (Climate VaR), and an analysis of bond-equity correlation dynamics under climate stress. The results show that transition risk exerts a statistically significant and negative effect on G7 equity returns in pooled OLS (beta = −0.312, p < 0.001), a finding that is robust to the inclusion of country fixed effects. In the bond market, higher transition risk is associated with rising yields, significant at the 5% level. Physical risk, by contrast, does not show significant pricing in either market, a finding consistent with the hypothesis that markets are slow to incorporate gradual climate trends. The Climate VaR analysis reveals that equity tail risk increases meaningfully during periods of high transition risk. Rolling regressions reveal that the sensitivity of equity returns to both risk indices is not stable over time, with notable shifts around the COVID-19 period and the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Taken together, these findings suggest that while transition risk is increasingly priced into G7 financial markets, physical risk remains systematically underweighted, a market inefficiency with implications for portfolio construction and climate-related financial regulation.

QUALITY OF EMPLOYMENT AND SKILL DEVELOPMENT IN INDIA

2026-06-01T00:00:00Z

Title: QUALITY OF EMPLOYMENT AND SKILL DEVELOPMENT IN INDIA Authors: ISHA; Jain, Neha (SUPERVISOR) Abstract: The quality of employment has emerged as a central concern in labour market analysis, particularly in developing economies such as India, where a large share of the workforce remains engaged in low-quality, informal and precarious work. While aggregate employment figures have improved over the decades, they mask significant disparities in job quality across dimensions such as social-security coverage, wage adequacy, regularity of employment and working conditions. Simultaneously, skill development has been recognised as a critical policy instrument for upgrading the quality of labour supply and enhancing workers' capacity to access and retain good-quality employment. This dissertation examines the relationship between skill development and quality of employment in India using unit-level data from the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) 2022–23. Quality of employment is defined as a binary outcome, distinguishing high-quality from low-quality employment on the basis of the nature of the employment contract, social-security entitlements and regularity of work. A probit regression model is employed as the primary estimation strategy, given the binary nature of the dependent variable, with robust standard errors throughout. The empirical analysis incorporates key socioeconomic determinants including training type, education level, gender, work experience and its quadratic term, location and caste category. The findings reveal that formal skill training and higher education are both strongly associated with a significantly higher probability of accessing high-quality employment. Gender-based disparities are pronounced, with female workers facing substantially lower probabilities of high-quality employment than their male counterparts. Urban location is strongly associated with better employment quality, reflecting the structural concentration of formal-sector jobs in urban areas, while caste-based differences, though statistically significant, are relatively modest in magnitude. The results underscore the importance of investing in skill-development infrastructure, particularly formal vocational training, as a lever for improving employment quality. Policy recommendations include strengthening the coverage and vi quality of formal training programmes, addressing gender gaps in labour-market access, and enhancing the reach of formal-sector employment in rural areas. The findings are associational rather than causal, given the cross-sectional design, and this limitation is acknowledged throughout.

ACCESS TO HEALTH INSURANCE UNDER AYUSHMAN BHARAT (PM-JAY): COVERAGE VERSUS ACTUAL UTILISATION — AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS

2026-06-01T00:00:00Z

Title: ACCESS TO HEALTH INSURANCE UNDER AYUSHMAN BHARAT (PM-JAY): COVERAGE VERSUS ACTUAL UTILISATION — AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS Authors: SATYAM; Arora, Rajiv (SUPERVISOR) Abstract: India a large part Of its health bill straight out Of the s own pocket, and for households a single hospital stay can wipe out years of savings. Ayushman Bharat (PM-JAY) was launched in 2018 to soften that blow by giving more than 50 crore a Of {5 lakh per Elmily each year for hospital treatment. On this is one of the biggest health schemes in the world. But having a card and actually using it are two different things. Illis dissertation asks a simple question: when the govemment gives a family insurance cover, does that cover turn into real treatment, and if not, why not? I study the distance (how many people hold an Ayushrnan card) and utilisation (how many actually use it) using mainly state-level data from the PM-JAY dashboard, the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5), the NSS 75th Round, and the National Health Authority's annual rem)rts. The work is built around objectives and uses ordinary least squares (OLS) regression with robust standard errors, sup1Mted by a qualitative reading of how different run the scheme. Three findings stand out. First, PM-JAY coverage is somewhat higher in lxmer states, which suggests the scheme is reaching the people it was meant for, but rural and hilly areas still lag l*hind. Second, the coverage—utilisation gap grows åstest exactly where enrolment grows fastest — in other words, handing out mre cards does not by itself mean n»re treatnrnt. Third, the single factor that most reliably tums a card into actual hospital care is the density of empanelled hospitals: where there are n»re PM-JAY hospitals near Ikople, utilisation rises. Interestingly, a state having large general health infrastructure does not high PM-JAY use, that infrastnrture is not always plugged into the scheme. The clear is that the success of PM-JAY should not judged by how many cards are printed, but by how many cards are used. Expanding and prolRrly paying empanelled hospitals, cutting administrative friction, and pushing awareness through frontline workers are likely to do more for the than enrolment alone.

DO EXPENDITURES ON SOCIAL OBLIGATIONS PUSH INDIAN HOUSEHOLDS TOWARD DEBT CYCLING? EVIDENCE FROM A CORRELATED RANDOM EFFECTS ANALYSIS

2026-06-01T00:00:00Z

Title: DO EXPENDITURES ON SOCIAL OBLIGATIONS PUSH INDIAN HOUSEHOLDS TOWARD DEBT CYCLING? EVIDENCE FROM A CORRELATED RANDOM EFFECTS ANALYSIS Authors: VISHWAKARMA, RIYA; Kumar, Virender (SUPERVISOR) Abstract: The practice of debt cycling is incurring new debt to pay back existing debt obligations which has emerged as a pervasive and structurally embedded feature of Indian household finance, yet the role of culturally mandated social obligation expenditure in initiating and perpetuating this debt cycle remains scarcely understood. While existing literature documents the scale of ceremonial and social expenditure among Indian households and its association with indebtedness, the empirical evidence of causality using rigorous panel data econometrics is less. Using the longitudinal data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy’s Consumer Pyramids Household Survey (CPHS) spanning 2020 to 2024, covering more than 1,80,000 households, we examine the effect of social obligation expenditure on the probability of debt cycling by estimating a Correlated Random Effects Probit model with the Mundlak device, which controls for the time-invariant unobserved household heterogeneity while retaining the full sample and all the time-invariant regressors. The study finds that social obligation expenditure significantly and robustly increases the probability of household debt cycling, with the effect operating primarily through a delayed repayment stress mechanism. Thus, expenditure on social obligations create large and unavoidable liquidity shocks that are structurally incompatible with fixed loan repayment schedules, particularly for households with volatile incomes, triggering new borrowing to service existing debt in the following period. This calls for community level interventions to reduce the arms race in social obligation spending and broader income stabilisation schemes targeting the high income-volatility that the study identifies as the dominant proximate driver of household debt cycling in India.