The Economic Times

Original sin, once just a Christian doctrine, has now become an economic concept too thanks to economists like Barry Eichengreen, Ricardo Hausmann, Panizzi and Roberto Rigobon. It refers to the inability of developing countries like India to raise foreign loans […]

An important contribution to the ongoing debate on the fiscal deficit has been made by Brian Pinto and Farah Zahir in a recent article in Economic and Political Weekly. They do not cry wolf about high fiscal deficits causing another

Finland 1 Singapore 5 UK 11 USA 18 Uruguay 33 China 66 Malawi 83 India 83 Russia 86 Argentina 92 Pakistan 92 Indonesia 122 Haiti 131 Nigeria 132 Bangladesh 133 Source: Transparency International We all know that corruption is bad

Harvard don Dani Rodrik and IMF economist Arvind Subramanian are writing a revisionist paper on the Indian growth experience over the last two decades. The standard story is that India blundered along the socialist, inward-looking path till 1991. Then came

Few Indian observers have commented on the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement. Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) are becoming a dime a dozen, and most yield only marginal changes. So why should we pay particular attention to the newly-signed AUSFTA? Because it

The Democratic Party primaries in the US have once again shown that too many Indian foreign policy analysts are victims of wishful thinking. Many of them hoped Afghanistan would prove another Vietnam. This was soon exposed as wishful thinking. The

One of my favourite posters says “Some people see the world as it is, and ask why. But I think of things that never were, and ask, why not? “ Management gurus may wax eloquent over sticking to the knitting

Projecting a profit and sales growth of 15% annually does not look wildly optimistic even after allowing for sundry stupidities, errors and accidents, says Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar . Now that the Sensex has risen at dizzying speed to cross

Projecting a profit and sales growth of 15% annually does not look wildly optimistic even after allowing for sundry stupidities, errors and accidents, says Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar . Now that the Sensex has risen at dizzying speed to cross

Our poverty line was created way back in the early 1970s on the assumption that human beings needed a minimum of 2,400 calories per day in rural areas and 2,100 calories per day in more sedentary urban areas, giving an