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Mihir Rakshit Editor

M. Govinda Rao is the Director of National Institute of Public Finance and Policy. He is also a Member of Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. His past positions include Director, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore (1998–2002) and Fellow, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia (1995–98). Besides being a Member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, he has served on several advisory panels such as Member, International Advisory Panel on Governance; Member, Expert Committee on Multilevel Planning, Planning Commission, Government of India; Chairman, Expert Group on Taxation of Services (2000–01); Chairman, Technical Experts Committee on VAT; and Member, Consultative Group of Interstate Council, Government of India. He is also a Member of the Taxation Policy Group in the Initiative for Policy Dialogue led by Professor Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University. Dr Rao’s research interests include public finance and fiscal policy, fiscal federalism, and state and local finance. He has been a consultant to the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Asian Development Bank, and the UNDP on issues relating to tax policy and reforms, public expenditure management and fiscal decentralization in Cambodia, China, Laos, Pakistan, and Vietnam. His recent books include Political Economy of Federalism in India (2005); Sustainable Fiscal Policy for India: An International Perspective (edited with Peter Heller, 2006); and Development, Poverty and Fiscal Policy (2005). Mihir Rakshit is the Director of Monetary Research Project at ICRA Ltd., Kolkata. He is the President of Annual Econometric Society. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Money and Finance. Dr Rakshit received his Doctorate from London School of Economics and went on to serve as Professor and Head of the Department of Economics at Presidency College, Kolkata. He chaired the Economics Research Unit of the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. He also served as faculty in the Delhi School of Economics, Delhi, India and the Erasmus University, Rotterdam, Netherlands. He has been an advisor to the Indian Government as well as on the Board of Directors of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Dr Rakshit’s field of expertise includes money and finance, transnational macroeconomics, and crises and recovery in developing economies. Some of his publications include Trade, Mercantile Capital, and Economic Development (1993); The East Asian Currency Crisis (2001); Macroeconomics of Post-reform India (2008); Money and Finance in the Indian Economy (2008); Studies in the Macroeconomics of Developing Countries (1989); Issues in Economic Theory and Public Policy (co-edited with A. Bose and A. Sinha, 1997); Planning and Economic Policy in India: Evaluation and Lessons for the Future (co-edited with M. Chattopadhyay and Pradip Maiti, 1996); and Essays on Public Intervention, Institutional Arrangements and Economic Efficiency (co-edited with M. Chattopadhyay and Pradip Maiti, 1999).