Trump is threatening to dismantle the current world trading system, but in his first year US trading patterns show strong continuity with the previous administration.
Author Archive | Jayati Ghosh
The true face of the global recovery
Optimistic assessments of the synchronised recovery across the world economy ignore the factors driving the weak upturn that make it fragile.
Do Purchasing Power Parity exchange rates mislead on incomes? The case of China
Ever since Larry Summers and Alan Heston produced what become known as the “Penn World Tables” comparing prices and thereby the purchasing power of currencies across countries, the urge to use some deflator of market exchange rates to compare incomes across countries has been strong.
Not with a bang but with a (prolonged) Whimper
It is probably obvious to everyone that global capitalism is in dire straits, notwithstanding the brave talking up of output recovery that now characterises almost every meeting of the international governing elite. Even so, discussions of the end of capitalism still typically seem overstated and futile, not least because those hoping and mobilising for bringing […]
150 years of Das Kapital: How relevant is Marx today?
This is a book that has been pronounced dead or obsolete many times, but it keeps bouncing back, with the latest recovery in interest and sales just after the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. So why do so many people all over the world still read (or try to read) Karl Marx’s Capital today?
After neoliberalism, what next?
We may be living through one of those moments in history that future historians will look back on as a watershed, a period of flux that marked a transition to quite different economic and social arrangements. Unfortunately, in human history a ‘moment’ can be a very long time.
The Emerging Left in the “Emerging” World
Ralph Miliband Lecture on the Future of the Left, London School of Economics, London, U.K., 28 May 2012 It is a great honour and privilege for me to be invited to deliver this lecture in the Ralph Miliband series on the future of the Left. Ralph Miliband was not just an outstanding social scientist and […]
The Dragon’s Shadow: China’s Banking System
On October 10, the Chinese government announced that it will increase its stakes in the four largest commercial banks, which are already largely public-owned. The move is designed to “support the healthy operations and development of key state-owned financial institutions and stabilise the share prices of state-owned commercial banks”. But why was this move considered […]
India: The Latest Employment Trends from the NSSO
No sooner were the results of the 66th Round of the National Sample Survey Organisation (relating to data collected in 2009-10) released, than they became the subject of great controversy. Surprisingly, the controversy was created not by critics of the government and its statistical system, but from within government circles! Some highly placed officials found […]
Global Oil Prices
There was a time when global oil prices reflected changes in the real demand and supply of crude petroleum. Of course, as with many other primary commodities, the changes in the market could be volatile, and so prices also fluctuated, sometimes sharply. More than anything else, the global oil market was seen to reflect not […]
Public Spending on Education in India
The failure of the Indian state more than six decades after Independence to provide universal access to quality schooling and to ensure equal access to higher education among all socio-economic groups and across gender and region must surely rank among the more dismal and significant failures of the development project in the country. It is […]
Michal Kalecki and the Economics of Development
In the long and impressive catalogue of Michal Kalecki’s contributions to economics, the proportion of writings devoted to what is now called “development economics” is relatively small. And most of his work in this area is concise to the point of being terse, in short articles that simply state some crucial principles, typically without much […]
India: The Growth-Discrimination Nexus
Many people, especially in India, tend to believe that the process of economic growth is likely to be mostly liberating for those oppressed by various forms of social discrimination and exclusion. The argument is that market forces break open age-old social norms, especially those of caste and gender, that have for so long denied opportunities […]
Socialist and/or Feminist?
This year, 8 March marked a century of the celebration of International Women’s Day. But aside from a few publications and websites of women’s movements, this event went largely unremarked in the mainstream press, and also in the public consciousness. The idea of International Women’s Day was born in the socialist movement in the first […]
The Cash Option
When I was growing up, several decades ago, middle-class society in India was always a little delayed in catching on to Western fashions whether in music or dress or in other aspects. The past decades of globalisation seemed to have changed all that. Modern communications technology has ensured that at least the upper income deciles […]
