A spike in Overseas Development Assistance flows from OECD members is not a departure from a long history of ODA levels that have fallen far short of a 1970 promise. It is a revelation of what "aid" really is.

The India Employment Report points to worrying tendencies in terms of structural change in the Indian economy, especially in recent years.

Discussions on macroeconomic policy in the US and other high income countries tend to focus overwhelmingly on central banks' interest rate adjustments, with little clarity on what impact those changes have domestically.

Even though the latest consumption survey is not comparable with earlier surveys, and the full data have not yet been released, some preliminary results point to significant inequality in consumption.

Maldives is vulnerable to debt distress as the IMF suggests, but that is not a problem to be resolved only by the Maldives government but by an international community that has aggravated the island nation's vulnerability.

A decade of decline and stagnation in investment rates is at odds with the official narrative of a resurgent and buoyant economy, which is held back by the demand effects of rising inequality.

As fears of inflation recede, the prospect of a medium-term slowdown in the global economy looms. The problem is that global leaders have lost control of both macroeconomic policy and the economy.

A significant part of the recent increase in work participation rates is actually because of more unpaid workers being included in the category of "employed". The true increase in paid employment is marginal, and still bellow the rates of more than a decade ago.

The claim that COP28 marked a significant step forward in the battle against climate change is not corroborated by the willingness of the developed countries to commit the needed finance.

Financial imbalances that impact on countries' net international investment positions are now much more important than current account imbalances, in determining debt stress.

The focus on fossil fuel phase out and net zero target dates is geared to diverting attention from the responsibility of developed countries to provide higher climate finance flows to developing countries.

New estimates of offshore wealth held globally allow for a more granular examination of wealth held abroad by India residents. The results are disturbing—and raise questions about why Indian tax authorities are not doing more to prevent this.

The IMF's stance on modes of financing the climate mitigation and adaptation effort amounts to a call to absolve developed countries of their historical responsibility.

The apparent fall in the unemployment rate shown by recent data hides major areas of concern in India's employment pattern.

Despite recording chronic and rising trade deficits, India's balance of payments looks stable and resilient. But that stability may prove to be the source of new problems.

Many low and middle income countries face sovereign debt crises even though they have been much more fiscally prudent than advanced economies through the Covid-19 pandemic and after.

A bad monsoon and possible decline in agricultural production threaten to accelerate ongoing inflation in India, particularly because of increased speculation in the market for food.

When food prices in global trade rise, they go up across the world. But the opposite movement of falling trade prices does not necessarily lead to falls in low and middle income countries. We show how this plays out with wheat prices.

To address the debt crisis in the LMICs and prevent its recurrence, it is necessary to address the failure of the international order to provide space for poor countries to earn the foreign exchange needed to service external debt.

Without urgent and effective action on debt relief, fiscal pressures of debt service will cause low and middle income countries to regress on important social and economic indicators.

The decision to allow banks to settle with willful defaulters and fraudsters reveals the actual stance of the government on ‘rescuing’ corporate debtors. The hype around the IBC conceals that.

In the past few years, global wheat prices have moved far away from "fundamentals" of demand and supply. This can be explained by other factors like market concentration and financial activity in commodities markets, which take advantage of temporary or perceived supply shocks.

In its efforts to boost India's underdeveloped manufacturing sector, the government has been emphasising the role of foreign direct investment. But the strategy is not working.

Official survey data on employment suggest that recent processes of rural employment diversification could already be reversing because of the lack of other viable employment opportunities beyond farming.

The practice of making much of any small increase in aggregate GST collections only serves to divert attention from the fact that this tax regime has not delivered and precipitated a fiscal crisis in many states.

Recent changes in some Latin American tax regimes, especially in Colombia, provide useful pointers for taxation strategies in other developing countries.

The world economic outlook released in time for the recently concluded spring meetings of the World Bank and the IMF presents a gloomy picture. Global GDP growth is expected to fall from 3.4 percent in 2022 to 2.8 percent in 2023, and recover only marginally to 3.0 percent in 2024.

Self-employed workers in India—more than half the workforce—have suffered especially badly in the last few years. The official labour force survey data reveal that, even after overall economic activity has supposedly "recovered", their real incomes are generally lower than they were just before the Covid-19 pandemic.

The differences in performance between less developed economies have tended to blur the North-South divide in the global distribution of balance of payments surpluses and deficits. But for most, that divide remains a reality.

Real wages of casual workers were already declining before the Covid-19 pandemic, and fell sharply during the pandemic. While they have recovered thereafter, quarterly average wages in April-June 2022 were only slightly above the pre-pandemic peak.

The IMF cannot resolve Pakistan's debt crisis, though it is influencing policy on the grounds that it can.

The official Economic Survey ignores real economy trends which need to be urgently addressed, as is the case with emerging balance of payments fragilities.

While the resilience of inwards remittance inflows during the pandemic is a source of comfort for India balance of payments, the sharp shift in the share of different sources in 2020-21 is a cause for concern.

Tight monetary policies in rich countries obviously affect people in the countries where they are applied, but they also cause ripple effects across the world. We were already in a very unequal world before the most recent global price increases.

The preponderance of the self-employed in the labour force in many countries makes conventional schemes for ensuring social protection impossible to implement. Innovative ways of ensuring a universal social protection floor are required.

The Ukraine War and rising global prices of fuel have had major effects on the external trade of many developing countries. But how much of India's poor trade performance and growing trade deficit since January 2022 can be attributed to such factors?.

A spike in India's imports from China and a widening of the trade deficit it records with that country points to fundamental weaknesses in India's industrial development trajectory.

Coping with the adverse fallout of tighter monetary policy in the advanced economies will require developing country governments to shift from openness that increases their own vulnerability to a more creative and flexible approach that provides greater policy autonomy.

The Indian tax system is heavily weighted in favour of large corporations, and has become even more so in recent times.

The major food crisis now emerging in much of the world is not about supply shortages. It reflects ologopolistic and speculative behaviour in global food markets, along with falling purchasing power and currency depreciation in low and middle income countries.

The rush of sovereign bondholders to less developed countries was seen as an opportunity by many governments. But increased dependence on those bonds has not only contributed to a debt crisis but made resolution near impossible.

At the end of the five-year period in which states were being compensated for shortfalls in GST revenues relative to targets, they are on the verge of a fiscal crisis. That could spell the end of the GST regime.

Exchange rates have behaved very differently from what many pundits predicted at the start of the Ukraine war. This requires careful reconsideration of the various factors that determine their movement.

The recent exit of portfolio capital from emerging markets reveals the vulnerability built up over the years when excess liquidity originating in the developed countries spilt over into global markets.

Food and fuel price increases have wreaked a lot of damage and generated inflationary pressures in many economies. However, the current debt problems of so many developing countries cannot be blamed on these higher prices.

Over the last three years the Indian rupee has experienced continuous decline, with bouts of sharp depreciation influenced by multiple factors but led principally by capital outflows.

The FAO's recent wheat production and utilization forecasts indicate that the focus on the war in Ukraine as the sole driver of explosive global price trends is misplaced and ill-advised.

The government's celebration of record levels of FDI inflows in 2021-22 as indication of the strength of the Indian economy misreads the numbers that point to several underlying weaknesses in India's external account.

The concentration of technology and tacit knowledge related to renewable energy can emerge as an additional constraint to its wider adoption in many low and middle income countries.

Having embraced neoliberal reform in the late 1970s, Sri Lanka had privileged access to large borrowing from the IMF and private financial markets. Exploiting that privilege has proved to be a poison pill.

Governments of rich countries are the ones showing the greatest panic in responding to rising global oil prices, but the relative price of petrol is already much higher is low and middle income countries with bigger poor populations.

The complacency generated by India's low external debt exposure and large foreign reserves ignores the composition and character of that exposure.

The inflation rates according to the Wholesale Price Index and the Consumer Price Index have diverged substantially in the recent past. In addition to weighting differences, this could reflect underlying macroeconomic changes in the Indian economy.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has roiled energy markets. All sides lose. The US and its allies because of energy shortages and inflation; Russia because oil is crucial to its economic performance.

Claims of a robust recovery are undermined by the quarterly national accounts data, which show weak recovery in major sectors and levels of consumption and investment still below pre-pandemic levels.

According to the government's own report to the IMF, central government spending declined in the pandemic year 2020-21.

Despite the collection of substantial information on household asset holdings through the official Debt and Investment Surveys, India still lacks an official source of data that allows for reliable and meaningful assessments of trends in the levels and distribution of household wealth.

The unjustifiable conservatism that characterised the central government's fiscal stance in the first pandemic year has persisted, worsening the impact of the health emergency and imposing long-term costs on the Indian people.

Subject to a fiscal squeeze even before the economic contraction that accompanied the Covid-19 pandemic, state governments are now facing a fiscal crisis that is bound to drag down the economy.

Current measures of climate responsibility understate the emissions created by final demand, especially in the advanced countries, because they ignore how countries can "export carbon emissions" through imports. But measures to address this through trade protectionism will be counterproductive.

Global commodity prices are rising, driven by the revival in economic activity as the pandemic wanes, supply constraints and new demand stemming from sources such as the energy transition. The question is whether the surge will be transitory or persist for a long time.

Inter-country economic inequalities have been greatly accentuated by the pandemic, to a level that is likely to become unsustainable and generate significant geopolitical tensions.

While the world grapples with inflation, September 2021 figures from India seem to suggest that consumer prices are in deceleration mode. But this may just be a lull before an impending storm.

Three decades of financial globalization have led to massive income and asset inequalities in the US and Europe, and have had worse impacts in the developing world. This inequality is not a bug in the system, but a result of how global financial markets have been allowed to function.

The US-China trade war has not affected the continued increase in the US trade deficit. But the real purpose is control of frontier technologies.

Despite its many shortcomings, the minimum support price-based procurement regime is gaining in terms of farmer, crop and geographical coverage. The benefits from the regime that underlie this tendency explain why fear that it may be dismantled triggers protest.

Capitalism is conventionally portrayed as a dynamic system driven by private investment sustained by forces of competition. However, evidence from the globalisation years suggests that neither growth nor the levels and pattern of investment support that view.

The gendered division of labour in India creates much greater involvement in unpaid labour for women, which in turn has pervasive implications for their involvement in paid work. Indeed, the interlinkage between the two is so profound that it is impossible to understand trends in one without assessing trends in the other.

With Vodafone-Idea threatening to throw in the towel, India's telecom business is headed for a private sector duopoly that shares the market with an emaciated public sector. But matters may not stop there.

Millions of urban Indian residents are struggling without livelihood opportunities, especially younger workers. A national urban employment scheme needs to be put in place immediately.

One thing most economists agree on regardless of their ideological persuasion, is the importance of productivity increases. Yet, of all economic concepts widely in use, that of aggregate productivity may be the most problematic and full of conceptual and measurement holes.

A spike in India's foreign exchange reserves is a surprising feature of the period since March 2020 when the economy has been reeling under the damaging effects of the pandemic. But that trend is no cause for celebration.

Financial liberalisation that was meant to mobilise more resources for domestic investment in emerging markets in the 'dynamic' East Asian region has led to exactly the opposite.

The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code has been officially hailed as a powerful instrument to resolve defaulted corporate debt quickly and efficiently. But five years after the code was enacted, the evidence establishes that claim to be just a myth.

The impending debt crisis in several developing countries is spread across low- and middle-income countries, and complicated by the growing role of private players. Yet global leaders show few signs of urgency or adequate action to deal with it.

The major plank of the Centre's safety net during periods of lockdown necessitated by the Covid pandemic has been the provision of free foodgrain to targeted beneficiaries. But both in terms of need and state capacity, that effort has been limited.

A survey conducted in October 2020 shows widespread hunger across 11 states. Immediate relief measures are urgently required, since matters would have got much worse since then.

Though displaying trends similar to other Asian emerging markets, foreign portfolio capital inflows and market performance in India have distinctive features that give cause for concern.

India's increasingly open capital account is facilitating large gross and net inflows of foreign capital into the country. But while this does not translate into increased real investment, it imposes a large foreign exchange cost on the economy.

After the 1997 Southeast Asian crisis, the region recognized the need for a regional financial safety net independent of the United States and the IMF to mitigate future crises. The emergence of China as a regional and global power, with its independence from the US, improve the prospects for it.

China's transformation, from being the manufacturing hub of the world to being a global hub for R&D and innovation, poses a challenge that attracts adverse attention from the rest of the world.

Supply side disruptions combine with stockpiling and speculation to drive up global food prices. With low income earners still to recover from the Covid-induced crisis, the trend is a cause for concern.

Blatant vaccine grab by rich countries; protection of patent rights by governments in advanced countries and the use of vaccine distribution to promote 'soft power' have exposed and intensified global inequalities; but a pandemic can be overcome only when it is overcome everywhere.

Even before Covid-19, global hunger was increasing and the world was no longer on track to meet the SDG of eliminating hunger by 2030. Matters have got much worse since then.

Defying all logic, India's equity market has been experiencing a heady and prolonged boom in a year when the real economy contracted. A correction is inevitable.

The central government's cynical and expropriative attitude to the states has meant the wrecking of fiscal federalism, with worrying consequences for India's future.

The differential ability, resulting from preexisting global inequality, to address the Covid crisis with increased government spending is likely to substantially worsen those inequalities.

Weakness in India’s external sector cannot be used as an excuse for the lack of increased fiscal spending by the Indian government.

China's use of yuan-denominated central bank swaps, while enhancing its influence, is a source of support for developing countries in an unequal international order.

An official survey reveals how education spending has gone up sharply in India, forming a huge financial burden on households and excluding the majority of the population from higher education.

Jayati Ghosh discusses the forms of discrimination and bias that are rampant in economics and enlists some networks that are challenging the rigidities and power structures within the mainstream discipline.

Dependence on remittances is proving to be an additional source of vulnerability among low and middle income countries in Covid times. But not all are affected to the same degree: and those more dependent and facing larger losses are badly hurt.

Growing divergence in economic performance between China and the rest of Asia indicates both reduced regional integration and setbacks in some of China’s Asian neighbours.

In the aftermath of the Covid-19 crisis government debt has been on the rise in countries across the world. When the crisis recedes, recovery would depend on the extent to which governments choose to finance repayment with new taxation of the rich.

The results of the time use survey of the NSSO reveal expected but nonetheless striking results about how men and women in India spend their time very differently, with women hugely burdened by unpaid work.

The emergence of a trade surplus in India's balance of payments over the first five months of 2020-21 does not signal what it would in normal times. A closer analysis of the trade data traces the surplus to the behaviour of an economy in recession.

Fiscal policy in India has been very timid during the period of the most brutal and inefficient (in terms of public health outcomes) lockdowns in the world. Unless this is changed, the economy may plummet further.

To treat the divergence in the performance of stock markets and the real economy as purely externally driven and only capable of self-correction is to avoid taking much-needed action.

A comparison with India's South Asian neighbours points to significant shortfalls in the management of the Covid pandemic in India. This is also the result of the relative long term neglect of health provision in India.

Three years after introduction of the GST, there are no clear signs that this is a regime that can deliver revenue growth of a kind that can justify persisting with it.

Developing Asia's external debt can emerge as a major vulnerability not so much because of the volume of debt, but because of its composition, especially the greater reliance on short term debt and foreign holders of debt securities.

Continuing to welcome FDI without qualifications will further weaken the domestic capabilities and sovereignty of India. The government instead extend the new rule for FDI screening to all countries defined in terms of livelihood and data security.

In a three-dimensional crisis, of migrants, of pandemic and of the Indian Economy, the sudden visibiliy of migrants is due to the threat they pose to public health. What remains to be seen is whether the voice of the most vulnerable section will be heard or not.

The Modi government is pushing the Indian economy into further contraction through its completely inappropriate conservative fiscal stance.

In April 2020, while 'emerging market economies' remained steeped in the Covid-induced crisis, in a paradoxical turn, equity markets in some of these countries experienced a recovery. That may not be a good sign.

Lack of planning and preparation by the Central government for tackling the COVID-19 pandemic has dealt a massive blow to India’s rural economy, causing enormous hardships to working people and further aggravating food insecurity in the country.

There is a huge demand for employment generation because of widespread loss of rural livelihoods under lockdown. Yet, for about two months, most MGNREGS workers have not been provided any employment due to poor fiscal situation of the State governments.

Disruptions caused by the lockdown have resulted in considerable additional economic burden on farmers because of higher costs, increased debt burden, inability to sell the produce at reasonable prices and crop losses. Yet the government’s response to such agricultural distress has been nothing short of a mockery till now.

As the world grapples with the fall-out of the Covid-crisis, the Trump administration is ramping up its protectionist rhetoric vis-à-vis China. If this leads to new sanctions it would not help the US but worsen the Covid-induced trade crisis.

Aware of its own inaction, the government has outsourced a large part of sorely needed stimulus to RBI and public sector banks. But the latter's aversion to risk is creating multiple roadblocks and it is time the government directly steps in.

The sharp and rapid increase of inequality due to the Covid-19 pandemic is driving home the urgency of internationalism. Jayati Ghosh explains how we can change the global economic architecture to enable a Global Green New Deal.

Early evidence shows that official response to the Covid-induced crisis in the US and Europe may lengthen recession. If the needed fiscal effort is not put in place even a delayed recovery may prove elusive.

Monetary policy can only make credit cheaper, it cannot bring money into the hands of workers. It cannot compensate for a fiscal stimuli, especially when India is in a liquidity trap. For such an unprecedented crisis, fiscal spending has been highly inadequate.

India has betrayed the developing world by blocking a proposal for the IMF to issue new SDRs, which would have provided much-needed liquidity at a time of crisis.

The flight of footloose portfolio capital from India has attracted attention because of its impact on stock indices and the value of the rupee. But the bigger danger is of a debt shock that can be more damaging for the corporate sector.

As the pandemic unfolds, the Indian economy is falling off a cliff. There is an immediate need for massive public spending beyond conventional fiscal standards. There is also a need for a global plan for significant debt reduction, massive increase in global liquidity, more aid and moratoriums to survive this crisis.

State policies to deal with the economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic tend to address financial losses of companies. But the material impact is much worse for informal workers who constitute the bulk of the global workforce.

The recent labour force survey points to declines in all forms of work performed by women, including unpaid labour! Women are the worst casualties of the employment crisis in India.

Although unresolved trade tensions and shocks like the coronavirus epidemic are valid concerns for the world economy, the low growth syndrome that policy has not addressed predates these new concerns.

After last years' experience of fudged fiscal statements, Union Budget numbers are suspect. The fear is that falling revenues will once again lead to reduced public spending, a disastrous trend for the economy.

Even while the effort to resolve the crisis of NPAs was underway, India's financial sector was overwhelmed by failures of large non-bank financial companies. Apart from poor financial management and downright fraud, there were structural reasons why these institutions accumulated bad assets, which are often ignored.

In an interview with The Hindu, Jayati Ghosh talks about her life experiences, her views about global economic slowdown and the role of fiscal deficit in resolving demand scarcity, and the importance of JNU within a system of crony capitalism.

Labour force and work participation rates are low among young women across India, but the 2017-18 labour force survey shows that rates in almost all states have fallen even further, pointing to particularly adverse women labour market conditions.

The slowdown in registered manufacturing draws attention to the structural crisis afflicting the Indian economy, which is both generalised and deep.

Faced with dwindling revenues in 2018-19, the government chose to discreetly slash expenditure, with burden of the cuts falling disproportionately on sectors of social and developmental importance and on the states.

The government's decision to hold back results of the official consumer expenditure survey is another move on its part to suppress information indicative of poor economic performance under its watch.

"Financial uncertainty and slowing income growth are driving household savings out of bank deposits and increasing reliance on borrowings from NBFCs. With NBFCs under stress this can lead to a recession unless measures are taken to stimulate demand."

Indian labour force surveys indicate an increase in public employment, but very little of this is increase in good quality jobs. Instead, most new jobs are of underpaid women workers without proper conditions.

The 2016 Report of the Haque Committee has proposed liberalization of tenancy market on grounds of efficient land utilization in favour of small landowners. But leasing is seldom done by small to big farmers and owning even a small piece of land provides economic security to the rural poor. Such provisions will only facilitate grabbing of land of the poor by resource-rich landlords and capitalist farmers.

In the absence of strategic policy support that help build up indigenous capabilities and create the incentives for localisation, extensive liberalization through RCEP will only worsen domestic production, lower export and FDI flows and compromise national security for India.

"Central governments' tightening control on fiscal resources is preventing state governments from undertaking the much-needed public spending which have recently propped up economic activity."

Demonetisation further added to the problems of Indian banking in the medium term.

The Goods and Services Tax regime appears to have reduced the resource generating capacity of the states and contributed to worsening inter-state inequality.

Despite recognising the damaging effects of austerity on Greece's economy, the IMF has made the same mistakes in its subsequent deals with Argentina and Ecuador.

Developing Asia would be a major beneficiary of a Global Green New Deal based on an extensive role for public investment. Trying to incentivise private investment, as proposed by OECD and G20, is unlikely to work.

External debt is emerging as a potential concern for many Asian developing countries, even for those whose aggregate external debt to GDP ratios do not appear to be large. This is because of the growing importance of private bond holders in such debt, even as capital flows to the region turn more volatile.

Government's strategy of leaving public employment posts vacant to save on the potential wage bill is deeply irresponsible and unjust.

The self-reinforcing pattern of high profits, low investment, and rising inequality poses a threat not only to economic growth, but also to democracy, argues Jayati Ghosh.

New flow-of-funds data point not to a change in financing pattern of the corporate sector but to the depressed investment environment in the economy.

Prabhat Patnaik points out that while the debate over inequality has become hotter elsewhere in the world, in India, there is very little noise about it despite a massive rise in inequality after economic liberalisation.

Which emerging markets have seen significant depreciation of their exchange rates? And should “currency manipulation” be blamed for that?

World trade is slowing. While the US triggered trade war with China is part of the explanation, the real driver is a loss of momentum in the world economy.

C.P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh points out that India's rising gold imports are primarily responsible for its growing trade deficit; so far no action has been taken by the Modi government to prevent these unnecessary imports.

Jayati Ghosh discusses how social constructions of gender affect macroeconomic processes, for example through varying work participation rates and migration patterns.

The decision of the US government under Trump to end the waivers from sanctions on imports of oil from Iran that were given to eight countries could trigger a spike in oil prices. That can have adverse implications for India's balance of payments stability and inflation trends.

China's trade with Asian developing countries is more significant than ever - but not always in ways that benefit them.

Governments and central banks that were upbeat about global economic recovery are turning pessimistic, making this one more episode of a green shoot that died young.

High inequality in the South Asian region is a crucial factor responsible for the region's poor performance on the SDGs.

The gender distribution of migrant workers has a macroeconomic impact - it affects both the level and the volatility of remittance inflows, as the Asian experience shows.

The NDA regime has been characterised by a steep rise in NPAs and frauds, and a misguided view of ‘corrective action’.

In trying to deal with large volumes of bad debt, especially corporate debt owed to the banking system, measures to activate the corporate debt market are being pushed. But experience suggests that investors are unlikely to bite.

In a period of upsurge of fascism, narrow nationalism and parochialism, Issa Shivji calls for the social responsibility of intellectuals to construct a counter-hegemonic project that would resonate with the lives of the vast majority.

Attempts by the Modi government to avoid scrutiny on employment generation by suspending or delaying official statistics and trying to use inappropriate and unreliable indicators are bound to fail. Independent assessments point to the dismal job situation in the country.

Remittances from non-resident Indian workers, especially in the Gulf, have helped to conceal the failure of liberalization to deliver the promised export boom.

The world capitalist crisis of reduced aggregate demand and the protectionism of the U.S. has resulted in a reduced export demand for world economies. Third world countries face enlarged trade and current account deficits, to overcome these deficits, countries like India will have to take measures on their own level.