Tag Archives: India

I always like looking at the data for other countries than the US — laziness and the ease of accessing FRED data are big reasons for most of the models being tested on US data. Additionally, the political economy of the US tends to bring up more US-centric questions.I'm also not very well informed about a lot of the political economy and economic history of other countries. This is both good and bad. It's good because it means I don't go modeling the data with a preconceived economic...

Guest Post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. Alex Tabarrok summarizes the story from the new book on RCTs, Randomistas, about how TOMS shoes invited an external evaluation of their program giving away shoes and discovered it wasn’t helping recipients very much. This isn’t that unusual in development, but faced with the evidence, they agreed to be named in the paper and be public about it, and tried to figure out how to use the insights to do better. (See study author Bruce...

US sanctions on Iran are poised to drastically cut the profit margins of Indian oil companies that have already committed huge future imports. Moreover, India cannot afford to turn its back on its engagements with Iran, considering the recent headway made by China in enhancing ties with the oil-rich country, according to analysts. Sputnik InternationalUS Sanctions on Iran Puts India in Catch-22 Situation

India has for more than a decade had a rural jobs guarantee program in place, for unskilled workers. If India can succeed in designing and implementing such a policy, why can’t the US? Economist Jayati Ghosh wrote this assessment of The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005 (MGNREGA) in The Guardian in 2015: Naked CapitalismWhat India Can Teach the US About a Federal Job GuaranteeJerri-Lynn Scofield

This is a big deal. Rural electrification made huge difference in the US less than a hundred years ago. We now take for granted.This is a sine qua non for becoming a developed country.India rising.While the West has a class system,  India has a caste system. The class system is insidious since it is invisible, but the caste system is highly visible and structured in long standing tradition with scriptural roots. This obstacle cannot be address by throwing money at it.ReutersIndia says...

Donald Trump has proved the skeptics wrong, it seems that the American people stand to be big winners as a result of his trade war. The Chinese government announced a major initiative to promote the manufacture and use of generic drugs.... This can matter hugely for people in the United States since if China joins India as a mass producer of high quality generic drugs it will become increasingly difficult for the U.S. drug companies to maintain an island of protected prices in the United...

India is the most vulnerable country to climate change, followed by Pakistan, the Philippines and Bangladesh, a ranking by HSBC showed on Monday.... Pakistan was ranked by HSBC among nations least well-equipped to respond to climate risks.... Not that prior to the partition of India after independence, Pakistan and Bangladesh were part of India. This area of the subcontinent is most vulnerable.ReutersIndia most vulnerable country to climate change - HSBC report

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. First, the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy has a new Obama Scholarship, which will pay (full tuition plus, travel costs and living stipend) for professional policy folks from anywhere in the world to get a 1-year mid-career masters there. It’s open to people from all sectors working for the public good with 3-5 years of work experience and a strong track record. Please forward to colleagues and friends who...

Income disparity in India has become even more stark, showing that efforts to alleviate poverty and achieve more inclusive growth have had little success. A survey carried out recently by international rights group Oxfam revealed that the richest 1% in India cornered 73% of wealth generated in the country last year, Press Trust of India has reported. A similar survey last year showed that India’s richest 1% held 58% of the country’s total wealth — higher than the global figure of about...

JG at work. In 2015, [neoliberal] Prime Minister Narendra Modi had described the programme as a "testimony to the failures of previous governments". The Telegraph (India)Job scheme swells farm yieldsBasant Kumar Mohanty