“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.”
Author Archive | Jayati Ghosh
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?
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 […]
