Tight monetary policies in rich countries obviously affect people in the countries where they are applied, but they also cause ripple effects across the world. We were already in a very unequal world before the most recent global price increases.…
The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the urgent need for a universal social protection floor—something that has been talked about and even internationally accepted for more than a decade now, but has still received relatively little serious attention from policy makers in…
The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent war sparked rapid and dramatic increases in some global trade prices, particularly for fuel products, wheat and fertilizer for which Russia and Ukraine are major exporters. It is now clear that these…
As COP27, the climate summit at Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt, ended after a being prolonged, assessments of what it achieved were mixed. But tthe overwhelming sense was that the summit had yielded little, since on most counts it had not…
It was headline news when Chinese customs statistics at the end of September 2022 indicated that for a second calendar year, India’s trade with China would settle at well above $100 billion. That was only partly because of the positive…
The monetary policies of the major advanced economies have been obsessively nationalist for more than two decades now, with hardly any genuine international cooperation beyond some coordination among G7 economies. These policies in turn have had all sorts of impacts—often…
The IMF’s most recent World Economic Outlook, released in time for the annual meetings of the IMF and the World Bank in Washington, presents a confusing picture of what shapes the present global conjuncture. This at a time when most…
It is well known that indirect taxes fall disproportionately on the poor, and therefore a tax regime that relies mostly on such taxes is both unjust and inefficient in terms of not mopping up the excess profits and incomes of…
Among the many crises hitting low and middle income countries (LMICs) today, the emergence of extreme hunger and undernutrition is getting much less attention than it should. The cost-of-living” crisis in advanced economies gets a lot of international media attention.…
The long-standing debate on whether India’s public sector banks should be privatized has resurfaced in recent days. Two articles, besides numerous statements from advocates of ‘reform’, triggered this round of debate—one wittingly and the other, perhaps unwittingly. The contribution that…
