Abstracts

The Reserve Bank of India Occasional Papers is a tri-annual periodical which contains contribution by the professional staff of the Bank on a wide range of topics such as agriculture, industry, banking, monetary policy, international trade and finance. The latest issue of "Occasional Papers" is Summer 1999 and an abstract of each of the articles in this issue is given below :

Residency in Money Supply

DEBA PRASAD RATH AND INDRANIL SEN GUPTA

The paper analyses the concept of residency introduced in the money supply compilation by the recent Working Group on Money Supply in line with the best international practices. Empirical exercises show that the new broad money (NM3) aggregate, compiled on residency basis, performs better in terms of information efficiency in respect of the goal variable of inflation vis-a-vis the existing broad money(M3) aggregate.

Core Inflation in India: Measurement and Policy Perspectives

G.P. SAMANTA

In recent years, the concept of core inflation has come into the forefront of discussions on issues relating to monetary policy. This paper proposes four measures of core inflation and their suitability in the Indian context is examined. Empirical results show that some of exclusion-based core inflation measures are superior to the measured inflation for the purpose of monetary policy.

Profitability of Public Sector Banks: A Decomposition Model

ABHIMAN DAS

With the use of a sequential decomposition model for profitability analysis, this paper evaluates inter-bank variability of profit among public sector banks during 1992-98. A reduction in the burden of raising working funds in the post reform period due to a gradual shift away from traditional banking, a distinct risk aversion indicated by the preference for investments over advances in bank portfolios and increased competition reflected in convergence in bank-wise performance in the reform period are among the principal findings.

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