Nirvikar Singh
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Indians in America: the othered 1%
The threatened narrowing of what it means to be American, going beyond any individual, no matter how prominent, will adversely affect Indian Americans, whatever their social status or income level.
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Why India needs better management
The financing of firms and the skilling of workers are both activities that can be done more efficiently with better management, catalysing the relaxation of other constraints on the performance of the economy,
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India is failing at creative destruction
Supporting development of private sector initiatives in training and skilling ought to be an urgent focus of government policy, rather than trying to create an overall taxonomy of jobs and skills.
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Looking ahead for India
The next general election is less than a year away, and this is a good time to take stock of where India’s economy might be headed. Recent academic research seems to support the hypothesis that democracies do better than authoritarian regimes in economic growth, but in India’s case that is not always clear.
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Boosting exports: Beyond formalisation – reforming MSME financing
Access to working capital is a major problem for smaller firms, and they habitually get squeezed by their big-company customers.
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Coastal Economic Zones: India must learn from China
Talent, finance and innovation are relatively neglected in the Indian policy framings on CEZs.
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Job creation: Here’s a development mantra for India
Indian economic policy has not allowed firms to be created and to grow and prosper at the levels required for adequate job creation.
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Investing in creating good jobs
Financial sector reforms have to be governed by the goal of increasing the flow of funds to productive and efficient firms, those which can create good jobs by investing well.
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Job growth in India: Development means creating good jobs
Job growth in India that accompanies output growth is anaemic, although not absent. We need to focus on the process of creating jobs in which workers are more productive.
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Does Sagarmala need to be garland at all?
In my last column, on “good jobs” for India, I noted the importance of scale and complementarities in creating such jobs, and the possibility of focusing on coastal economic zones (CEZs), an idea from Chinese experience that has been articulated by Arvind Panagariya, the former vice-chairman of the NITI Aayog.
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Creating good jobs for India: Why economic policy has to involve a detailed implementation plan
The basic economic insights are obvious, but tend to get lost in discussions of formal versus informal sector and self-employment versus employment by another person or organisation.
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Budget 2018: Reintroduction of LTCG tax on equities may dampen some froth
Budget 2018: The reintroduction of the long-term capital gains (LTCG) tax on equities may dampen some froth, but if the real economy stays strong, the impact of the tax may just be a little extra revenue for the government.
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Why there are not enough Indian firms that are serving India’s middle class
Recently, The Economist magazine featured a prominent article on India’s missing middle class. One point made in the piece was that income distribution in India has become more unequal, and the gains from economic growth have gone disproportionately to the richest 10% of the population.
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Why India needs to grow faster
Else, it will grow slower, as the current rates are not an equilibrium. With the lack of enough good jobs, conflict will derail present growth
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How to get India’s macroeconomic, microeconomic policies right
An experiment in a single school in a poor area of Delhi showed that the right software can aid learning dramatically. Software can be customised and adaptive to a student’s level and even transitory states.
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Keeping Richard Thaler in mind, here is how to make sound economic policy in India
Behavioural nudges may be a part of good economic policymaking, but much more will be involved. Tweets, even if it is a Thaler that sends them, will add nothing.
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From toilets to household finance, this is what successful reform really requires
Economic reform in India has to be about much more than freeing up the market, or getting prices right. Clearly, a horrendously inefficient indirect tax system and inordinately restrictive labour market regulations are two examples where the usual themes are relevant.
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Household finance in India: What a shift from informal to formal sector borrowing requires
Finance occupies an awkward place in present-day economic thinking. Much of economic analysis abstracts away from the role that financial intermediation plays in the allocation of resources.
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Renewables vs coal power: Why that is a diversion from the real issue
India is now enthusiastically on board with this effort, and has promised to ramp up installation of capacity for electricity generation from renewable sources such as solar and wind.
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What are key drivers of economic growth in India: what you really must know about the major tools at work
Last month, the Center for International Development at Harvard University made news with its prediction that India will be an important future growth pole for the world economy.
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For real financial inclusion, JAM is important, but here is why focus should be on reforming PSBs
Institutional innovation is just as important as technological innovation; so while JAM is important, focus on reforming PSBs.
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India and US ties: Here is how to target larger payoffs than just investments
The recent US visit of India’s prime minister Narendra Modi garnered an unusual amount of media attention, perhaps because US president Donald Trump himself is more of a media celebrity than a working politician.
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Modi-fied growth vision: Current reforms model is still pro-business than pro-market, albeit with touch of inclusiveness
The current government has controlled the worst excesses of corruption that flourished in the last years of the UPA, also a type of “pro-business” orientation, but a damaging one of crony capitalism.
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Political economy structures perpetuate myopic understanding of agriculture sector
A half-dozen years ago, I participated in a conference on water resource challenges in India. I remember Upmanu Lall, professor at Columbia University, graphically and bluntly making the point that Punjab’s water table was not far from collapse.
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State finances: If GST successful, demonetisation effect wears off, optimism of RBI report will be borne out
If GST is as successful as is hoped, and if the demonetisation shock also wears off quickly, it is possible that the relative optimism of the RBI report will be borne out.
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Global conditions rife for rise of 2 nations as superpowers – India, China; here’s is what we must do
In George Orwell’s dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, the world is dominated by three “super-states,” Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia.
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Supply chain finance: The Indian approach is outdated
A rapid increase in options for small firms, and intermediaries willing to take on risk will put pressure on the large firms that abuse the smaller suppliers.
