Call for papers
IIT Roorkee and XKDR Forum invite submissions for its upcoming Frontiers of Public Finance and State Capability 2026 conference. The conference aims to bring together scholars, practitioners, and policymakers to engage with some of the most important questions in Indian economics and policy.
Submissions are encouraged that advance theoretical, empirical, or policy-oriented debates. Interdisciplinary approaches and comparative perspectives are particularly welcome.
Themes and Topics
The conference will focus on, but is not limited to, the following themes:
● Mobilising resources: tax design, tax administration, and public borrowing
Revenue and borrowing as institutional problems rather than rate-setting exercises: how GST credits and refunds actually flow, good taxes and bad taxes in the Indian landscape, rule of law in tax administration, how tax disputes are generated, how buoyant property tax and other local revenues really are, who lends to the state and at what cost, and whether fiscal rules bind.
● Spending well: procurement, contracting, and the delivery of public services
Allocative efficiency in public goods vs. subsidies. Technical efficiency in translating expenditures into desired outcomes. Expenditure programs that are worth discontinuing. Most of what the state does, it does through contracts and transfers. Papers on incomplete contracts and renegotiation, make-versus-buy and in-house technical capacity, delays and payment arrears, PPPs, and the evaluation of large transfer and guarantee schemes.
● Measuring the state: fiscal data, new methods, and evidence infrastructure
Public finance research in India is constrained by data, not ideas. Papers that build fiscal measurement — extracting structure from government documents, using geospatial data to observe tax bases, constructing panels and administrative datasets, and measuring what lies beyond the headline deficit. Innovations in measurement, and novel applications made possible by better measurement.
● Sub-National Public Finance
Papers on financing of the entire Indian state (not just the union), inter-governmental fiscal relations, Finance Commissions and State Finance Commissions, urban public finance.
● Debt, Deficits and Stability
Papers on fiscal consolidation, normative rules about deficits and debt at three levels of government; the case for borrowing at the sub-national level; optimal public debt management; liquidity crises, borrowing and state capability; scaling back the financial repression system.
● State capability
Measuring state capability; Metrics of complexity; Performance of the legislative / judicial / executive branch; Government HR; Public financial management; Public choice theory, the incentives of politicians and officials; checks and balances surrounding the operations of government; oversight of oercive power vs. oversight of spending power; root cause analysis of arbitrary power embedded in laws; new public management; agencification; the special problems of achieving state capability for organisations shrouded in secrecy.
Submissions beyond these themes that align with the overall scope of the conference will also be considered.
Submission
Submit your full paper at this Submission Portal.
Review Proccess
All submissions will undergo a review process by our Review Committee. Selection will be based on originality, rigor, and relevance to the conference/ workshop themes.
Review Committee
● Sudha Krishnan
● Arbind Modi
● Niranjan Rajadhyaksha
● Ajay Shah
● Manish Singh
● Susan Thomas
Important Dates
● Paper Submission Deadline: 30 September 2026
● Decision: 16 October 2026
● Conference: 14, 15 November 2026
Contact
For queries, please contact:
