The fiscal deficit and expenditure composition in terms of revenue and capital expenditure in a pre-election budget capture the net effect of the compulsion of reducing taxes and levies, and spending more, particularly on welfare measures, partly to attract votes. An analysis of the 2023–24 budget before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections shows that the current National Democratic Alliance government has managed such compulsions better than not only the two previous United Progressive Alliance governments but even the preceding NDA government.
Paired with the borrower score/ rating, a credit resilience score would better equip the fi nancial institutions to account for borrower resilience and make credit decisions accordingly. The requirement for CRS in India helps credit to fl ow uninterruptedly during good and bad times. Recognising the parameters used in the existing credit score for individuals and corporate credit rating, a framework for the development of CRS is suggested.
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.
Whether or not the Indian economy is going into recession remains debatable. But without a correct diagnosis, measures to counteract the problems will be ineffective.
A near-unprecedented turn to negative interest rates to trigger a recovery has characterised the monetary policy in several developed countries and in Europe. This is the result of a shift away from fiscal policy to an almost exclusive reliance on monetary policy, involving quantitative easing and low interest rates, in macroeconomic interventions across the globe. The failure of this macroeconomic stance has led to the phenomenon of negative rates in countries other than the United States, and the first sign of even a partial recovery in that country has been enough to set off a reversal.
The International Monetary Fund's World Economic Outlook of April 2016 bodes that emerging market economies, including India, are at risk of sudden capital outflows. The IMF once again makes a case for its conventional, much-discredited tools to manage this risk. To repeat these recommendations, that on many occasions have only worsened crises, is to encourage complacency.
The nexus of housing boom-busts, banking crises, and economic cycles is not unique to the last crisis and has been increasingly present in each of the major banking crises since the break-up of Bretton Woods in the early 1970s. Housing is a politically charged issue. A safer housing market, via planned fiscal intervention to steady supply, would do more to make the financial system safer than all of the other recent initiatives put together. Cheaper finance without cheaper homes only deepens housing inequality.
This article argues that the IT wave never constituted an exception to the conventional laws of economics and uses traditional economic concepts to explain why the bust that followed the boom was only to be expected and how it does not invalidate the (actual as well as potential) benefits associated with IT.
The economic recession, which threatens to be long-lasting, is the product of the recession of political and cultural ethos; countrymen, we have rediscovered the bliss of colonialism, at least a new version of it, and cannot quite stop admiring it.
Notwithstanding the attempts made to undo the budget deficits initiating the fiscal reform process, the art of budget making in India is far from salutary both in terms of content, and macroeconomic and social implications. Given the political economy fundamentals (institutional constraints), the adherence to fiscal rules may, at best, contain the overall public expenditures through fiscal pruning measures, but may fail in addressing (i) the distributional effects of public expenditure policies, and hence, (ii) the composition of public expenditure.
Among the major macroeconomic issues concerning the Budget for 2002-03 and the related economic policies of the government discussed here are whether there is a demand recession in the Indian economy, engineered lower interest rates and their consequences and the probable course of the price level during 2002-03.
