Indian growth: Pro-business or pro-market?

Arvind Subramanian, 5 December 2011The Indian growth miracle, including the experience of the 2000s, continues to confound. This column examines the numbers across states and establishes four facts: growth was faster in the 2000s than the 1990s in most states, divergence in the growth performance across states continues, faster growing and more globalised states took a bigger hit during the crisis, and the demographic dividend seems to be disappearing. Full Article: India’s growth in the 2000s: Four facts

Rob Marchant thinks Labour should become more pro-business. I’m not sure. We should make two big distinctions here.

In the past several years, people worldwide are slowly beginning to shed the web of deceit woven by the banking elite and learning that many topics that were mocked by the mainstream media as conspiracy theories of tin-foil hats have now been proven to be true beyond a shadow of a doubt. First there was the myth that bankers were upstanding members of the community that contributed positively to society.

Shekhar Aiyar, Ashoka Mody, 5 April 2011When an economy's working-age population rises, so can its growth rate – a result known as the “demographic dividend”. Using state-level data from India, this column finds that its demographic dividend has already been substantial. It played a key role in India's accelerating growth since the 1980s and will add 2% to annual income growth for the next two decades. Full Article: How big is India’s demographic dividend?

Bank executives from 16 Chinese public banks reported decrease in their incomes by 3.13% compared to a year ago. China’s National Bureau of Statistics reported that country’s value added output increased by 9.3% in April. India’s annual consumer price inflation has slowed for second consecutive month in April to 9.39%. Jaguar and Land Rover, owned by Indian Tata Motors, announced the opening of a new engineering test plant in Dubai.  

Sanghamitra Das, Kala Krishna, Sergey Lychagin, Rohini Somanathan, 30 May 2011Since the late 1990s, India has liberalised its economy to an extent unthinkable even 20 years ago. This column looks at the effect that private sector competition can have on the country’s still large public sector. Using plant-level data from the main provider of steel for India’s railways it finds that when the publicly-owned company faced the risk of closure, productivity dramatically increased.