The Trump regime is ratcheting up its protectionist rhetoric vis-à-vis China. If this leads to new sanctions, it would worsen the COVID-induced trade crisis rather than help the U.S.
Author Archive | Jayati Ghosh
Growth figures underscore economic crisis amidst COVID
Early evidence on the intensity and drivers of the COVID-induced crisis in the U.S. and Europe suggests that the official response may lengthen the recession and delay recovery
The pandemic and the global economy
Developing countries face collapsing international trade, falling remittances, sharp reversals of capital flows, and currency depreciation. Only bold policies—debt relief, international financing, planning, and more—will avert further catastrophe.
The COVID-19 debt deluge
How long the COVID-19 crisis will last, and what its immediate economic costs will be, is anyone’s guess. But even if the pandemic’s economic impact is contained, it may have already set the stage for a debt meltdown long in the making, starting in many of the Asian emerging and developing economies on the front […]
No escape from low growth
Discussions on the state of the world economy centre around the likely negative impact of the novel coronavirus epidemic and the potential positive effect of the truce reflected in the “phase 1” trade deal between China and India.
The growing threat of water wars
In 2015, United Nations member states adopted the Sustainable Development Goals, which include an imperative to “ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.” Yet, in the last four years, matters have deteriorated significantly.
Jayati Ghosh Says More…
“Economic policy globally has become heavily distorted in favor of the rich, with governments increasingly beholden to corporate interests, and thus highly resistant to progressive policies.”
The IMF’s latest victims
In 2013, the International Monetary Fund produced a report acknowledging that it had “underestimated” the effects that austerity would have on Greece’s economy. Yet the Fund has made the same mistakes in its subsequent deals with Argentina and Ecuador.
The exploitation time bomb
Worsening economic inequality in recent years is largely the result of policy choices that reflect the political influence and lobbying power of the rich. There is now a self-reinforcing pattern of high profits, low investment, and rising inequality–posing a threat not only to economic growth, but also to democracy.
Disruption in the world of trade
What is noteworthy is that the deceleration in import volume growth has been particularly marked in the emerging economies of Asia and Latin America, pointing to a loss of momentum in the countries that were expected to be new growth poles in the immediate aftermath of the 2007 crisis.
Vanishing green shoots and the possibility of another crisis
Governments and central banks that were upbeat about global economic recovery are turning pessimistic. A coordinated fiscal stimulus across nations is the need of hour.
The political roots of falling wage growth
It’s now official: workers around the world are falling behind. The International Labor Organization’s (ILO) latest Global Wage Report finds that, excluding China, real (inflation-adjusted) wages grew at an annual rate of just 1.1% in 2017, down from 1.8% in 2016. That is the slowest pace since 2008.
Global instability and the development project: is the twenty-first century different?
Ever since the global financial crisis of 2008–2009, the trajectory of the world economy has been hesitant, unstable and prone to many risks. Output recovery has been limited and fragile; and, more significantly, even in the more dynamic economies, it has not increased good-quality employment or reduced inequality and material insecurity.
Why clubbing employment and work in India is misleading
This lack of distinction explains the decline in women’s workforce participation rates. The decline reflects a shift from paid to unpaid work.
Did developing countries recover from the global crisis?
A decade after the Global Financial Crisis, developing countries still bear the scars in the form of lower growth and investment rates.
Has Donald Trump already changed U.S. trade?
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.
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?
