V Anantha Nageswaran
A table of inflation rates in many countries around the world is beginning to reveal a disturbing picture. The lowest rate is found in Germany – at 3.0%. Many emerging countries that seem to be doing a truthful job are reporting inflation rates in excess of 10% and some in excess of 20%. […]
Long-time reader Joydeep Mukherji sends us this (via email)
This article talks about a program for Jains to donate money to help teach Jain students for free. It seems like a nice idea. Perhaps other groups (Patels, Jats, Chettiars) can follow their example. However, it may be a bad idea if you think […]
Should foreign law firms be allowed into India?
No, says Cyril Shroff, Managing Partner of Amarchand Mangaldas, one of India’s largest law firms.
Amarchand and other large Indian law firms have benefited immensely from liberalization in India. However, when it comes to opening up the legal sector, here’s Mr Shroff touting shibboleths like a […]
Chandra Kochar, joint managing director and chief financial officer of India’s largest privately owned bank, $80 billion ICICI Bank, is bullish on India growth story. She contends that the growth in India is shifting from consumerism to manufacturing and infrastructure.
In the last five to seven years, India has grown on the basis of its knowledge […]
The relevant question is not Who are we going to trust but What are we going to trust?
Arnold Kling wrote a freewheeling essay last year Should You Trust the Government? in which he points out
In the case of government, there is good trust and there is bad trust. Good trust is trust in […]
A new research paper titled Trading Population for Productivity: Theory and Evidence by Oded Galor and Andrew Mountford focuses on a novel Unified Growth Theory. The paper argues that the -
differential effect of international trade on the demand for human capital across countries has been a major determinant of the distribution of income and population […]
Raj Chetty, an associate professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, is the winner of the The American magazine’s 2008 Young Economist Award, a research grant of $100,000 provided by the Searle Freedom Trust.
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To be eligible for the award, economists have to be featured in the magazine’s bimonthly column entitled “The Young Economist,” […]
The Indian Finance Ministry has launched an internship programme.
More details available here - link
Sounds fascinating. If you’re interested, apply soon, since the deadline is nigh — 15 Jan.
A courtesy salaam to Ajay Shah.
Q) Is this the first such internship programme in the Finance Ministry?
How many jobs have the new retailers actually created?
The Wall Street Journal, in an article last month, writes that jobs in India’s booming retail industry are a ticket out of the slums for many. The article, titled Humble Jobs at the Mall Are Lifting Legions of Indians Out of Poverty and told from […]
As another year draws to an end, extracts from two speeches delivered this year — one by an ex-finance minister (who happens to be the current Prime Minister) and another by the current Finance Minister. Both the speeches were delivered to a foreign audience and the extracts reproduced here cover only the hard facts, […]
Renowned Australian author and economist Stewart Klegg brings a new angle to the India and China debate. He is scathing in his criticism of the Chinese state apparatus while claiming that there are enormous distortions in the Indian growth model due to a small oligarchy atop the system.
India is often compared with China. But […]
Russell Roberts says
We should be realistic about politicians. George Stigler used to contrast his theory of politics with Ralph Nader’s. In Nader’s view, all of the ugly aspects of government were caused by the wrong people getting elected. If we could just elect better people, then we’d get better policies. Stigler argued that it didn’t […]
Removing corruption in India entails a look at ultimate reasons, not proximate causes
Here’s a supposedly novel approach to corruption, the legalization of bribery, courtesy Ajay Shankar Pandey, the Municipal Commissioner of Ghaziabad [Chicago Tribune].
Today, contractors being paid after finishing long-delayed construction projects write the municipality a check for the 15 percent bribe that once […]
While as an army Jawan fighting militants in Kashmir gets a monthly pay packet of Rs 14,000 and host of other benefits including allowances in the form of disturbed area allowance his counterpart in the CRPF draws a meager pay of Rs 7,500
An answer, that is.
Discovered two very cool sites.
– Dr Econ from the the Federal Reserve Bank of San Fransico (one of the regional Feds that makes up the Federal Reserve in the US) and
– Personal Financial Education from the Fed system as well.
Q) Are there any sites like this in India? My […]
While declaring the emergency on 3 November, the Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf lamented -
I am observing that Capital and Business that was flowing into the country is now stopped - they are now questioning whether to invest here or not Pakistan will remain stable. Our economy, the livelihood of our nation which improved over the […]
…how the Indian elite is not paying the burden and cost of its status
There are linkages between the larger society and its military subsystem. The military is always in a dilemma - how much to converge so as to absorb the social and political values and pathologies of the civil society and how far […]
Everyone talks of the Kerala model, but to the north of Kerala lie two districts called Dakshina Kannada (headquarters: Mangalore) and Udupi, which, if I am not wrong, are doing just as well as, if not better than, Kerala. Actually, they used to be one district before Udupi seceded, so let’s just combine them into the […]
Praising Dweep’s post, Pragmatic asks “Where will the demagogues [sic] of right and left seek refuge? Bravo!”
I don’t know about the demagogues of the right or left, but this ideologue of the right seeks refuge in logic and data - and he doesn’t cherrypick data to find what suits him.
First, Dweep has managed to confuse economic […]
A report in the Khaleej Times highlights the unattractive nature of a military career in India; not only for the young aspirants, but also for those who have already served for a significant period in uniform.
Officers and men are deserting the Indian armed forces — the second-largest in the world after China — in droves. […]