Jayati Ghosh’s Blog

There has been much excitement recently at the supposedly significant recent increase in work participation rates in India, which is being heralded as a sign of the success of the current government’s economic policies. How significant is this increase in employment? The data from the NSSO (from the Employment-Unemployment Survey of 2011-12 and the Periodic Labour Force Surveys of 2017-18 and 2022-23) provide some indication, as shown in Figure 1. Figure 1. Of course, these figures suggest that work participation rates in India are still very low by global standards, or even compared to countries at similar levels of development.…

Current account imbalances have been blamed in the past for creating external vulnerabilities that can lead to financial crises. In the run-up to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008, for example, the large current account deficits of the US—matched by current surpluses of China and Germany—were widely seen as proximate reasons for the fragility that generated the crisis. The recovery thereafter was associated with smaller current account deficits, although the recent period has once again seen an increase. However, newer forms of imbalance are worth noting—most of all, the increasing values of the “discrepancy” in current account data, which…

Mientras Argentina se prepara para la segunda vuelta de la elección presidencial este domingo, la economía y la política económica han estado bajo los reflectores. Con el fin de comprender mejor algunos de estos temas de actualidad, el equipo de Comunicación y Participación de IDEAs sostuvo una charla con un eminente miembro de la red, el profesor Jayati Ghosh. A continuación presentamos la transcripción de esa conversación: Tema 1: Dolarización: La tasa de inflación anual en Argentina ha subido a casi 140% y la tasa de pobreza alcanzó 40,1% en el primer semestre. En ese escenario, para muchas personas resulta…

It has long been known that the very wealthy are able to shift their assets abroad and stash them away in tax havens and other jurisdictions. There are various reasons for doing this: to hide ill-gotten gains, to avoid or evade taxation, to insure against currency depreciation and otherwise hedge bets about likely economic performance in India. Much of this knowledge, however, was just based on anecdotal evidence or the occasional release of data provided by leaks like those of the Panama Papers. Now, however, we finally have more systematic attempts to measure and assess the extent of such illicit…

The many ways in which rich people and global companies can avoid tax have been quite widely known for some time. Periodically, information from leaks, such as the Panama Papers, creates public outrage and some (albeit often halfhearted) attempts by tax authorities to deal with at least some of the disclosures. But the full extent of such evasion and its global spread have been hard to assess, given its insidious nature, due to lack of data. Matters have though recently improved, with more information becoming available and more researchers willing to sift carefully through it. A landmark new Global Tax Evasion report from…

The latest Annual Report of the Periodic Labour Force Survey, covering July 2022 to June 2023, has some interesting results. On the face of it, there seems to be some improvement in the labour market, as expressed in the declining unemployment rate. Figure 1 shows that the unemployment rate has fallen from a high of 6 per cent in 2017-18, to 3.2 per cent in 2022-23, which is much closer to the historical norm for India. Figure 1. Source for all data: NSSO, Periodic Labour Force Survey Annual Report 2022-23. The unemployment rate reflects the difference between labour force participation…

India has a robust and admired statistical system. But the government is suppressing data to suit its narrative. It is perilous not to know the reality of the governed No government in India has been as adept in shaping the political narrative as the Modi government since 2014. This has been accomplished through a domination of most of the mainstream media, significant control over social media, ruthless intimidation and repression of dissident voices, and reliance on a web of disseminators on the ground. A critical aspect of this has been the ability to control, manipulate and suppress official data in…

Regulating financial activity in global commodities markets, while important, is not enough to stave off rising food insecurity. Policymakers must also take measures to help developing countries build up reserves of essential items and cope with price fluctuations, possibly through a publicly administered virtual reserve mechanism. Among the multiple crises that have erupted around the world, the avoidable tragedy of growing hunger receives only fleeting mention. And any attention that it does attract is apparently not enough to prompt global policymakers to act. Yet a new report from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations makes for…

The sovereign debt crises confronting many low and middle income countries is now common knowledge and is frequently referred to by global policy makers—even though remarkably little is being done by the international powers-that-be to resolve these crises. The general presumption is that many of these countries experienced dramatically increased sovereign (external) debt stress because of the Covid-19 pandemic. This is seen to have inevitably caused public revenues to fall because of lockdowns and the impact of the disease, even as public spending had to increase for the very same reasons. Low and middle income countries are then seen as…