As a doctoral student, I specialised in development economics. My doctoral dissertation argued that the growth of the middle class in a developing country might alter resource allocation patterns in a way that is detrimental to the welfare of the poorer sections of the population. Little wonder therefore that part of my research continues to be on issues that lie at the heart of classical development economics.

I have also worked in an area that can broadly be called household economics, with emphasis on intergenerational transfers.

However, much of my work since early this decade has been in three different areas:

v      Impact of ownership and market structure on firm (or bank) performance

v      Banking and finance

v      International business

My research is empirical in nature, and India is the context of a significant proportion of the studies on firm behaviour. It is my native country, large, developing, and one of the fastest growing in the world. Further, since 1991, it has experienced very significant structural changes and hence it is a fertile ground for natural experiments encompassing a variety of policy issues that impact behaviour and performance of economic agents. Finally, it allows me to leverage the knowledge of the country's economy and its financial-corporate sectors that I had acquired during the three and a half years that I spent there as an economist.

Increasingly, however, I am developing an interest in a comparison of India with its larger (and faster growing) neighbour China which has successfully pursued a very different strategy for economic growth and development. I have taken my first step in that direction, by comparing the trends and determinants of earnings growth among Indian and Chinese wage earners since the late eighties.