India is experiencing high rate of economic growth in the last two decades but the growth has been coupled with high rate of food price inflation. The growth has been very uneven across sectors with agriculture remaining very sluggish. The increase in per capita income has significantly increased the demand for food but agricultural production has failed to keep pace with the growing demand. The theoretical explanations and time series econometric results establish that increase in per capita income and shortage in supply are responsible for price rise. There is no long run relationship between money supply and agricultural price. Increasing public expenditure and unfavorable foreign exchange rate have some effects on price although the results are not robust.

In this paper we analyze how the government in a democratic setup of the developing world manipulates the fiscal instruments to maximize its political gain so that it can retain power. The government and the voters in low income countries are generally selfish and myopic in the sense that the electorates prefer to get direct and immediate benefits from the government while the government in turn tries to seek majority support in the election by adopting short term and distributive policies instead of going for long term growth. Using the theoretical structure of the existing literature and making modifications therein this study demonstrates that the optimal tax rate public expenditure shares and growth rate are determined in terms of technological and behavioral parameters. The simulation results show that if political gain from distributive policies is high the government will allocate...

India is experiencing high rate of economic growth in the last two decades but the growth has been coupled with high rate of food price inflation. The growth has been very uneven across sectors with agriculture remaining very sluggish. The increase in per capita income has significantly increased the demand for food but agricultural production has failed to keep pace with the growing demand. The theoretical explanations and time series econometric results establish that increase in per capita income and shortage in supply are responsible for price rise. There is no long run relationship between money supply and agricultural price. Increasing public expenditure and unfavorable foreign exchange rate have some effects on price although the results are not robust. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jefas.2015.01.005

In this paper we analyze how the government in a democratic setup of the developing world manipulates the fiscal instruments to maximize its political gain so that it can retain power. The government and the voters in low income countries are generally selfish and myopic in the sense that the electorates prefer to get direct and immediate benefits from the government while the government, in turn, tries to seek majority support in the election, by adopting short term and distributive policies instead of going for long term growth. Using the theoretical structure of the existing literature, and making modifications therein, this study demonstrates that the optimal tax rate, public expenditure shares and growth rate are determined in terms of technological and behavioral parameters. The simulation results show that if political gain from distributive policies is high, the government will a...