Indian economy witnessed significant transformations in the postreform period both in terms of change in policy paradigm adopting greater market orientation and overall macroeconomic performance with development of a broad-based financial market and increasing global integration. Guided by the fact that domestic savings play a critical role in augmenting capital accumulation and contributing to achieve and sustain high economic growth, an attempt to review and reassess the role of various factors influencing domestic savings under the changed environment is quite relevant for sustaining the growth momentum. In this backdrop, the present study empirically analyzed the role of various determinants of household savings in India with the latest available data. It employed ARDL approach for this purpose due to its suitability for estimating an equation with a mix of stationary and nonstationary variables of order I(1) and address potential endogeneity problems. The estimated results revealed that GDP, dependency ratio, interest rate, and inflation have statistically significant influence on household savings in India, both in the long run and short run. As regards policy implications, we suggest that ensuring price stability and avoiding any disruption to the growth process will be useful for augmenting savings and sustaining the savings-growth spiral in India.

The present study attempts to analyse whether the VAT efficiency has improved after its implementation. Further, we examine the major determinants of VAT efficiency for 17 non-special category Indian states for the period 2000-01 to 2014-15. Using random effect model (as suggested by Hausman test), the urbanization ratio, billing and collection efficiency, bank credit ratio and share of agriculture sector are found to have a favourable effect on VAT efficiency while the share of the unregistered manufacturing sector and share of services sector have an adverse impact on VAT efficiency. Besides, the study also reveals that tax efficiency has come down in the aftermath of the implementation of the VAT in India. As regards policy implication, initiatives by the government for the high level of urbanization, raising billing and collection efficiency, providing more bank credit and encouraging agricultural activities would enhance the VAT efficiency. Since the coefficient of the VAT dummy is negative in the model, the government may revise the existing tax system and adopt a suitable taxation system that solves the problem in the current tax structure.

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A plethora of literature has been undertaken to study the validity of the Feldstein–Horioka (FH) puzzle. However, divergent views continue to persist in the FH puzzle literature. This study explores the empirical validity of the FH puzzle in the case of South Asian countries using annual data from 1960 to 2017. Both panel data approach and Markov‐switching regression approach are used to empirically analyze the FH puzzle. The results of the cointegration test confirm the long‐run relationships between saving and investment in the selected South Asian countries. The results of Markov‐switching regression confirm that the saving‐retention coefficient has shifted from high to low values and also from low to high values. Thus, the FH puzzle exists for a particular time period and mostly depends on the regime shifts in the South Asian countries. The results of panel fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) and dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) methods also confirm that FH puzzle holds for the South Asian countries. Therefore, the study suggests that any saving promotion policies are desirable for enhancing investment among the South Asian regions.

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