Whole Numbers and Half Truths: What Data Can and Cannot Tell Us about Modern India by Rukmini S, Chennai: Context, 2021; pp xv + 327, `699 (hardcover).
Public borrowing is essential to garner resources to combat the current pandemic. The ability to do so and adhere to the standard norms of debt sustainability will be harder for developing economies as compared to the developed, due to constraints, both structural and policy-induced. High food infl ation and the adoption of infl ation targeting will impose severe constraints on the ability to expand borrowing and maintain low levels of debt-to-GDP. In such a situation, governments must either rethink monetary policy and/or allow for debt ratios to rise.
Macroeconomics: An Introduction by Alex M Thomas, Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, New Delhi and Singapore: Cambridge University Press, 2021; pp xx + 234, price not indicated.
Paul Romer’s critique of modern growth theory, though important, errs in holding Joan Robinson as an early proponent of flawed methodological practices which he believes affects economics even today. This note argues that Robinson’s work on aggregate production functions highlights much of the problems that Romer calls attention to in the present. In neglecting her contributions, the discipline of economics has emerged poorer.
Notwithstanding the conventional narratives of the anti-immigrant sentiments holding sway during the referendum for Brexit, an empirical investigation of the possible factors leading to Brexit does not show any signifi cant correlation between the share of migrants from European Union countries and the regions that voted for Brexit. Share of social security transfers in income was most important in determining if a region voted leave. Decreased employment opportunities and increased hardships that necessitate reliance on welfare payments could have fuelled the anti-immigrant and anti-European sentiment.
The recent paper by Iyer, Khanna and Varshney (“Caste and Entrepreneurship in India”, EPW, 9 February 2013) investigated the representation of dalits in the entrepreneurial sphere in India.
Sinha and Chakrabarti’s "Econophysics: An Emerging Discipline" (EPW, 11 August 2012) provides not only a valuable introduction to an important alternative field of economics, but also gives the reader a comprehensive survey of the latest developments in the field.
