| Nancy Birdsall & Arvind Subramanian: Reduce verbal emissions first | 21-NOV-09 |
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| The emerging consensus is that no agreement on climate change — at least not one with specific commitments — will be reached at next month’s summit in Copenhagen. Environmentalists and policy-makers in many countries are dismayed and discouraged. But, in fact, now the world has an opportunity to fix the problem which has stymied successful cooperation on climate change. |
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| Deepak Lal: The anarchical society | 14-NOV-09 |
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| Ever since Gunnar Myrdal’s Asian Drama, which castigated India as a “soft state”, western observers, as well as many members of the Nehruvian wing of Macaulay’s children, have failed to understand the anarchical society which has existed in India for millennia. A recent review (Journal of Economic Literature, September 2009) by Lant Pritchett (a former World Bank official in Delhi) of Financial Times’ former India correspondent Edward Luce’s book In Spite of the Gods, reflects a similar unease of both with the Indian reality. Both find it puzzling why a country with a firmly-established democracy and many world-class institutions and firms, and which is an emerging superpower growing rapidly, should in many dimensions of human well-being have a worse record than many sub-Saharan African countries. |
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| Satyajit Das: Rising fiscal insecurity | 03-OCT-09 |
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| Strong rallies in equity and debt markets have confirmed the recovery for the “true believers”. The Global Financial Crisis (“GFC”) is over! It is useful to remember Winston Churchill’s observation after the British expeditionary force’s escape from Dunkirk: “[Britain] must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory.” There may be confusion between “stabilisation” and “recovery”. |
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| Dani Rodrik: The Tobin tax lives again | 19-SEP-09 |
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| Something happened in late August that I never thought I would see in my lifetime. A leading policymaker in the Anglo-American empire of finance actually came out in support of a Tobin tax — a global tax on financial transactions. |
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| Pranab Bardhan: Economics to blame? | 29-AUG-09 |
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| Economists can serve their profession (and the policy world) better if they don’t take their findings and formulae too seriously or lose sight of the big picture. |
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| Fred Bergsten & Arvind Subramanian: Resolving global imbalances | 22-AUG-09 |
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| The Obama administration is increasingly signalling that the US will not continue to be the world’s consumer and importer of last resort. The clearest statements came last month from Larry Summers, White House economics director, in a speech at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and in an interview with the Financial Times. |
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| Rajeev Malik: Good idea, bad timing | 08-AUG-09 |
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| “The fiscal consolidation achieved so far has encouraged us to take the first step. Accordingly, I propose to set up an autonomous DMO and, in the first phase, a Middle Office will be set up to facilitate the transition to a full-fledged DMO. |
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| Frank Sieren & Andreas Sieren: A spark for growth | 11-JUL-09 |
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| Lao Jiang’s old boat could use some fresh paint. But he doesn’t have the money. Jiang cruises on the Yangtze, the longest river in Asia, almost 200 kilometres north of its mouth near Shanghai. Jiang sells razor blades, Harbin beer and Chinese snacks to crews on big ships. Jiang has little understanding of economics but he has a good nose for business opportunities: “There are fewer big container ships with products bound for America. |
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| Alok Sheel: Of economists and historians | 13-JUN-09 |
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| As an erstwhile keen graduate student of history who stumbled into finance and economics as a professional hazard, I was not a little bemused by the recent spat between Paul Krugman and Niall Ferguson, first in public debate, and subsequently spilling over onto the pages of Financial Times. Unsurprisingly, the Nobel Laureate and Princeton economist faulted the Harvard historian for his shallow understanding of economics, in this case the theories of John Maynard Keynes. |
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| Rajiv Kumar: India & WTO - Rethink needed | 06-JUN-09 |
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| The future of the Doha Development Round (DDR) and strengthening the multilateral trading regime (MTR) in the context of rising protectionist sentiments globally should be the top priorities for the incoming commerce minister. |
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Content Guide
