A Small Challenge to the RBI’s Governor Subbarao

April 21, 2010 — drsubrotoroy

The Hon’ble Gov of the Reserve Bank of India Shri D Subbarao

Dear Governor Subbarao,

You said yesterday, April 20 2010, that the Reserve Bank of India has a macroeconomic model which it uses but which you had personally not seen.

I have given two lectures at your august offices, one by invitation of Governor Jalan and Deputy Governor Reddy on April 29 2000 to address the Conference of State Finance Secretaries, the other on May 5 2005 to  address the Chief Economist’s Monetary Economics Seminar.  On both occasions, I had inquired of the RBI’s own models by which I could contrast my own but came to understand there were none.

If since then the RBI has now constructed a macroeconomic model of India’s economy, it is splendid news.

May I request the model be released publicly on the Internet at once, so its specifications of endogenous and exogenous variables, assumed coefficients, and sources of time-series data all may be seen by everyone in the country and abroad?  Scientific scrutiny and replication of results would thus come to be permitted.

I would be especially interested to know the demand for money function that you have used.   I well remember my meeting with the late great Sukhamoy Chakravarty on July 14 1987 at his Planning Commission offices, when he signed and gifted me his last personal copy of the famous Reserve Bank report by the committee he had chaired  and  of which he told me personally Dr Rangarajan had been the key author – that report may have contained the first official discussion of the demand for money function in India.

With cordial regards

Subroto Roy

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