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Poonam Gupta
Poonam Gupta is the Director General of NCAER, and a member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. She specialises in Macroeconomics, and issues related to the Emerging Market Economies. Before joining NCAER, she was the Lead Economist for Global Macro and Market Research at the International Finance Corporation and led the policy research work on India at the World Bank. Prior to that, she was the Reserve Bank of India Chair Professor at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy; Professor at the Delhi School of Economics; and Researcher at the International Monetary Fund. Her research has been published and cited widely in scholarly journals and has also featured in leading international business dailies such as The Economist, Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal.
Dr Gupta holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Maryland, USA, and a Masters in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics
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India’s debt dilemma
In the fifth article in the Ideas@IPF2023 series, Eichengreen, Gupta and Ahmed reveal how high levels of debt in India limit the resources available for other priorities. At the same time, they predict that there is no immediate crisis of debt sustainability, as institutional factors limit rollover risk, and interest rates have not risen with additional debt issuance. However, financial stability and sustainability risks may arise in the future, and fiscal consolidation would require lower primary deficits achieved through tax revenue generation and privatisation.
Priorities for the G20 Finance Track
Considering the macroeconomic challenges faced by emerging markets, Eichengreen and Gupta outline a few key aspects of the financial agenda that G20 members could address. They discuss seven areas of improvement, including broadening central bank currency swaps, easing access credit lines, reallocating resources to low-income countries, improving the measures used and transparency of credit rating agencies, taking climate-risk into account when lending to vulnerable countries, creating hedging instruments to address currency mismatch, and establishing an effective mechanism for restructuring debts.
Inflation targeting in India: An interim assessment
Inflation targeting in India is a work-in-progress, with a five-year review due by March 2021. This article presents an interim assessment suggesting that significant progress has already been achieved to date: this is evident in the reduced volatility of a range of inflation-related outcomes and in the stronger anchoring of inflation expectations, which appears to have enhanced the ability of the RBI to respond to the exceptional Covid-19 shock.
Should emerging markets worry about US monetary policy announcements?
Emerging economies are routinely affected by monetary policy announcements in the US. This column finds that US monetary policy surprises have a significant impact on emerging economies’ exchange rates, equity prices, and bond yields. The impact is larger for surprise tightening of policy than for surprise easing, and disproportionately larger for large surprises. The spillover effects of policy announcements of other advanced economies are much weaker than those of the US.
From tapering to tightening: The impact of the Fed's exit on India
India was among the hardest hit by the Fed’s ‘taper talks’. This column argues that this impact was large for two reasons. First, India received huge capital flows before. This had made it a convenient target for investors seeking to rebalance away from emerging markets. Second, macroeconomic conditions had worsened, which rendered the economy vulnerable. The measures adopted in response were ineffective in stabilising the financial markets. Implementing a medium-term framework that limits vulnerabilities and restricts spillovers could be more successful.
What voters reward: Evidence from the 2009 Indian parliamentary elections
Do voters care about economic outcomes? This column analyses the 2009 parliamentary elections in India and finds that voters favoured parties that delivered high growth in their states and rejected those that did not. It also finds that voters preferred candidates who had served in the parliament before, were wealthy, educated, and affiliated with a large party.
How do Indian voters respond to candidates with criminal charges: Evidence from Lok Sabha elections
An alarming number of India’s politicians have criminal records or some charges against them. This column asks how they manage to get away with it. It looks at evidence from parliamentary elections in 2009 and suggests that while voters dislike crooked politicians, the amount these politicians spend on their campaigns do a good job of hiding the truth.