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Why next-generation economic reforms are crucial for reviving investment
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Macroeconomics
Covid-19 and MSMEs: The ‘identification’ problem
A recent survey of 5,000 micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) found that 71% of them could not pay salaries to their workers in March 2020 due to the Covid-19 lockdown in India. The government has announced that a stimulus package focused on the MSME sector is in the offing. In this post, Pandey and Pillai explain the issue of identification of beneficiaries in the absence of a comprehensive dataset on MSME units, and suggest potential mechanisms for targeted relief delivery.
Covid-19: The infected economy
India, along with much of the world, is now in a lockdown. But the cost of locking down the country is particularly high for the urban poor in India. Besides, the reality of urban living reduces the efficacy of a lockdown in containing the spread of Covid-19. In this post, Amartya Lahiri explains why a bigger fiscal package is needed to approach the direct cost of the lockdown, and how it can be financed.
Only germs this time, no guns and steel (yet)?
The first round of globalisation over the previous centuries was associated with a transmission of diseases between continents. With Covid-19, history seems to be repeating itself, but this time in the form of a global pandemic fuelled by increased human connectivity. Chakrabarti and Chatterjee discuss how globalisation may itself be set back by Covid-19, as countries have stopped production, and supply chains have been disconnected, disrupting the gains made by mankind over the past two centuries.
Financing of fiscal response to Covid-19: A red herring?
Governments around the world are frenetically announcing an expanding slew of rapid response measures to address the fallouts of Covid-19 pandemic. The fiscal price tag on these measures is massive and growing rapidly. In this post, Datt and Bajaj argue for an alternative way of financing the fiscal response in India: the Reserve Bank of India could directly buy government bonds to the tune of the fiscal response, offering money to the government account, and then write it off.
Age composition of population and Covid-19
The novel Covid-19 is affecting the advanced countries in the Western Hemisphere disproportionately more than developing countries. In this post, Basu and Sen show that Covid-19 casualty is higher in countries where there is a large ageing population, and therefore question whether a draconian lockdown is a practical policy for India going forward, where the proportion of elderly population is low.
We need a Marshall Plan to fight Covid-19
There are still a lot of unknowns in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, but two robust lessons are clear: we need to pull out all stops to strengthen our healthcare capacity and reinforce social-safety nets on a massive scale. In this post, Parikshit Ghosh argues that if the fight against the virus is given the metaphor of war, we need a Marshall Plan while we fight that war, not after it is over.
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