Research at ICRIER’s long standing emphasis on South Asian ICRIER has addressed the challenges of improving economic integration has provided key policy inputs to the competitiveness of the Indian economy through governments in the South Asia region – particularly in domestic policy reform, stabilising the macroeconomic the bilateral trade dialogue between India and Pakistan. [...] policy reform and competitiveness, focus on measuring competitiveness of Indian agriculture, estimating the Research under the G20 programme has continued compliance cost of direct taxes in India and assessing to constitute a major part of ICRIER’s international the implications of rationalising fossil-fuel subsidies economic research agenda during the year. [...] Rajat Kathuria represented ICRIER in the ICRIER will also host the annual Neemrana conference Think-20 meetings in Moscow held on the sidelines of jointly with the National Bureau of Economic Research the G20 Leaders Summit in December 2012. [...] This year a closely related research programme devoted to the “Urban Challenges of the In the area of strategic economic relations, Ambassador 21st Century” was also added to the growing list of Hemant Krishan Singh as the Wadhwani Foundation research studies at ICRIER. [...] The programme has three main components: (i) a seminar The Japan Project at ICRIER, established in 2007 with the series on urbanisation and the competitiveness of cities; support of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation (SPF), Tokyo, (ii) research on a subset of urban issues; and (iii) thematic completed Phase II under the leadership of Ms.