Arvind Subramanian

With US protectionism and China's mercantilist push reinforcing each other, developing nations are caught in a global trade squeeze that threatens growth, jobs, and convergence

Instead of listing reforms, A Sixth of Humanity by Arvind Subramanian and Devesh Kapur identify necessary conditions that would give India a fair shot at solving important challenges ahead. An excerpt

If China truly aspires to global leadership, it must vacate the low-skill manufacturing space in favour of developing countries

This article visually summarises, in two tables, how not-simple the GST is, which leads to serious but under-recognised problems of arbitrary and coercive implementation

To ease utility opposition and win approval, renewables are framed as captive generation-meant to meet the developer's own energy needs

What made the traditional development model so successful was its reliance on exports, which enabled countries like South Korea to tap into virtually unlimited global demand

Using GST data could help correct inflated real growth figures

The country should convert the Trump threat to an India opportunity, re-embracing a more liberal trade regime as a way of reviving manufacturing output and exports

India's exporters are already under dire threat from the US. That only makes it more important that they should not be attacked from the domestic side. QCOs must be eliminated immediately

The RBI must come out with an official explanation, but until it does, we can only guess. But there are a few reasonable hypotheses

India now holds about $650 billion in reserves, enough to finance nearly a year of imports. The problem is that global financial markets have even more firepower

In our earlier piece in these pages, we highlighted the unwelcome consequences of the exchange rate policy adopted under the outgoing Reserve Bank of India (RBI) regime

A more principled response would be to initiate talks with the US on a bilateral deal or free-trade agreement. India stands to gain from trade liberalisation

Ever since the liberalisation in 1991, the RBI has pursued a flexible exchange rate policy

Why Colonial Origins of Comparative Development is Nobel-worthy

One of the most intriguing and relatively undocumented developments of the last 20 yrs has been "multi-plants," whereby a single firm operates not one but multiple production facilities within a state

In multi-plant units, flexibility in hiring & firing labour comes from fact of having many plants. In single plants, there is no such flexibility, which renders use of contract labour more important

US and Europe should understand the issues and discuss them with China, tailoring responses to the underlying diagnosis, rather than taking knee-jerk protectionist measures that only stoke tensions

Why is consumption soft, employment growth weak, and core inflation low, when the economy is apparently growing strongly?

There's no reason for the cess to be retained in its current form. That's because the cess rates themselves are monstrously complicated, varying not only in magnitude but also according to end-use