The Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham MBA Programme and the Center for Economic Fragility & Governance (CEFg), Amritapuri campus, jointly organized a Seminar on Diet Quality, Child Health, and Food Policies in Developing Countries on 18th June, 2016, in Amritapuri. The invited speaker for the event was Dr. Alok Bhargava, Professor, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, USA.
Dr. Alok Bhargava spoke on the roles of environmental factors and the absorption of nutrients for children’s physical growth and morbidity, which have not been adequately integrated into a policy framework. He further emphasized the role of diet quality reflected in the intake of nutrients such as protein, calcium, and iron for children’s physical growth. He also stated, from extensive research, that children’s growth and morbidity affect their cognitive development, which in turn is critical for the future supply of skilled labor and economic growth.
Dr. Bhargava is an Indian-American econometrician. He studied Mathematics at Delhi University and Economics & Econometrics at the London School of Economics. He received his Ph.D. in Econometrics from the London School of Economics under the supervision of John Denis Sargan in 1982. His thesis “The Theory of the Durbin–Watson Statistic with Special Reference to the Specification of Models in Levels as against in Differences”, led to many tests for unit roots that were used in co-integration analyses. Bhargava also worked on econometric methods for longitudinal data.
