There’s no doubt that the election of Donald Trump as the next President of the United States sets the stage for further expansion of fossil fuel production in the US, especially of natural gas, of which the US has emerged…
For some time now, global economic news reporting has been dominated by the growth slowdown in China. The tone of that reporting is conflicted. On the one hand, there is a barely suppressed sense of satisfaction or “schadenfreude” (pleasure derived…
The latest World Employment and Social Outlook Report (update for September 2024) from the International Labour Organisation highlights some disturbing trends. Importantly, it identifies a significant decline and then stagnation in the share of labour income in GDP, for the world as…
The financial media in India and abroad are flagging the likelihood of a meltdown in India’s financial sector, resulting from large scale defaults on personal loans. Even the Financial Times of London has chosen to devote considerable column space to an article…
The recent meeting of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) held in Beijing in the first week of September was an important indicator of a new phase in Africa-China economic relations. These reflect both the changing internal dynamics in China…
It is more than a year since China, reportedly in retaliation to US-driven restrictions on exports of advanced semiconductors and related manufacturing equipment, imposed export controls on two crucial materials—germanium and gallium—that enter into the production of semiconductors and military…
The “demographic dividend” that was so eagerly anticipated in India more than a decade ago has already become a demographic disaster. India’s burgeoning youth population is achieving higher levels of education, and then entering a labour market that simply does…
In the past three years, global food prices have been on a roller coaster, rising rapidly especially in the first half of 2022 due to a speculative bubble and then falling from July 2022 onwards (Figure 1). The phase of…
A renewed focus on retail lending, or the provision of personal loans, by India’s banking system (and the non-bank financial companies they support), is giving the otherwise confident Reserve Bank of India some cause for concern. That the period after…
The recently released report from the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Evaluation, the ‘Statistical report on value of output from agriculture and allied sectors (2011-12 to 2022-23)’ provides some estimates of how the value of agricultural output has changed since…
