Jayati Ghosh’s Blog

Because a pandemic can be overcome only when it is overcome everywhere, embracing an every-country-for-itself approach would seem irrational. And yet, as the unseemly competition for vaccine doses indicates, that is exactly what many countries have done. The American pharmaceutical company Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech have announced that the COVID-19 vaccine they are jointly developing was more than 90% effective in early clinical trials. The news raised hopes around the world that life may soon return to pre-pandemic normal..... For full article Click Here (This article was originally published in Project Syndicate on November 16, 2020)

The past year has brought into sharp relief the significant differences between China and the rest of the world. The experience of the pandemic is probably the most extreme and definitive expression of that: the ability of China to contain the spread of the virus and prevent a renewed outbreak of any substantive nature is unmatched by almost all other countries, with the exception of a few outliers. The reasons for this certainly deserve separate study, but what is also worth noting is how this has also been associated with a relatively rapid recovery of the Chinese economy from the…

The results of the long-awaited time use survey conducted over January to December 2019 by the NSSO have just been published. This finally allows policy makers and the general public to have some idea of the extent to which unpaid work and other activities determine the lives of people across India. Of course, there are some concerns with the survey methodology, which must be borne in mind while considering the data. To begin with, the survey was based on the recall method, asking respondents about their activities for the previous 24 hours. Where time use is concerned, this is known…

As India faces the biggest economic crisis since Independence, it is being led by a central government in denial about the severity of the impact on lives and livelihoods, and spreading false hopes about the immediate future. The Monthly Economic Report of the Union Finance Ministry claims that already the economy “is witnessing a sharp V-shaped recovery” suggesting that nothing drastic needs to be done by the government to return to a stable and positive economic growth trajectory. This may just be yet an exercise in perception management that the current government excels in, but it presents a misleading picture…

Now it is official: India has managed to become the global leader in the number of new daily cases of COVID-19 and the worst performing of all major economies during the pandemic so far. How did we manage this double feat? Not through ‘acts of god’, but because of the incompetence and apathy of our current leadership. Data on the decline The estimated 24% GDP contraction in April-June 2020 compared to the previous year is the worst performance among G20 economies, and even compared to other South Asian countries. But these numbers are likely underestimates because they are based on…

It’s truly a delight for me to be able to address the UNCTAD-YSI Summer School. This is not only because these are two groups that I have huge respect for and sympathy with. It’s also because the theme of this Summer School is something very close to my heart, something I and some of my colleagues have been grappling with for decades. It’s really quite energising to realise that there are so many young people willing to engage in this project. So I am going to treat this as an opportunity for me to think through some of the concerns…

Now that India has already overtaken Brazil among countries with the most number of Covid-19 positive cases and is on the verge of even beating the USA, it’s worth trying to understand what has led to this inability to control the pandemic in India. One of the arguments often made is that India, being a developing country with a large poor population engaged in informal work, the standard containment measures are less likely to work. The state also has fewer resources, both financial and real (in terms of health infrastructure and health workers), to combat the disease. All this is…

In February, 12-year-old Jamlo Makdam left her home in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh to work as a farm labourer in the chilli fields of Telangana, earning 200 rupees (about £2) a day. But on the morning of 23 March, she – along with hundreds of million others across the country – suddenly discovered that they were not allowed to work. The Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, had announced India’s draconian lockdown the previous evening, stopping all economic activity, even all movement, with just four hours’ notice. No public transport, no people allowed on roads, no shops or workplaces open; and…

The most destructive effects of Covid-19 in India have not been the result of the disease, but the nature of the government response. The most stringent lockdown in the world destroyed the economy and forced millions into poverty and hunger, but did not control virus transmission. The resurgence of disease as restrictions were lifted and the continued economic distress point to ten major features of state response that ensured these unfortunate outcomes. For full article Click here (This article was originally published in the Journal of Industrial and Business Economics which was published on line on 11 July 2020)

There has been much discussion about how external debt concerns are likely to weigh heavily on developing countries in their attempts at economic recovery in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Most of this discussion has centred on emerging markets in Latin America and developing countries in Africa, some of which are already experiencing severe problems of debt servicing. Argentina and Ecuador are both currently trying to restructure some of their external debt; other countries (particularly in Africa) are also seeking debt relief and some have benefited from moratoria on interest payments. There appears to be less concern about external…