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Today my guest is Ruchir Sharma, who is the Chairman of Rockefeller International, a columnist with the Financial Times, and the author of the recent book, What Went Wrong with Capitalism.
We talked about American debt levels, US monetary policy, regulation and cronyism, industrial policy, the Indian economy under Modi, and much more.
Recorded July 31st, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:00:59) - Capitalism in America
(00:07:48) - Problems in Monetary Policy
(00:17:07) - Elite Consensus and Capitalism
(00:21:13) - Crisis and Course Correction
(00:27:14) - Credit and Bond Markets in the US
(00:33:07) - Industrial Policy in the US
(00:38:46) - Misunderstanding Systemic Risk
(00:48:18) - Declining Birth Rates and Economic Growth
(00:51:00) - Technology versus Regulation
(00:58:12) - India’s Economic Future
(01:00:30) - Modi Government’s Economic Policies
(01:16:25) - Alternative Ways out of Fiscal Crisis?
(01:18:04) - Outro -
Today my guest is Amol Agrawal, who is the author of History of Private Banking in South Canara District (1906-69). He teaches economics at Ahmedabad University and blogs at the excellent blog Mostly Economics.
We spoke about the colonial and post-colonial history of banking in India, the unique features of the South Canara district, and its bankers, inclusive banking by state and private banks, bank nationalization, and much more.
Recorded July 26th, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:21) - History of Private Banking in India
(00:12:06) - Lending and Deposits
(00:16:17) - Industrial Development and Banking
(00:21:24) - Bank Runs in India
(00:25:54) - Success of South Canara Banks
(00:28:38) - Systemic Risk in South Canara
(00:36:16) - Banking Castes?
(00:40:29) - What was the RBI so wrong about with South Canara banking?
(00:47:50) - Pigmy Deposit Scheme
(01:05:28) - Why Were India’s Banks Nationalized?
(01:23:35) - Outro
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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Today my guests are Amartya Lahiri and Devashish Mitra who are joining me to discuss their latest paper for the 1991 project titled India’s Development Policy Challenge. Amartya Lahiri is the Royal Bank Research Professor in the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Devashish Mitra the Gerald B. and Daphna Cramer Professor of Global Affairs at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. We spoke about structural transformation and increasing total factor productivity, manufacturing versus services led growth, industrial policy, export led growth, how to employ India’s youth in more productive sectors, and much more.
Recorded July 29th, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:27) - State of India’s Structural Transformation
(00:08:28) - Has India’s Growth Peaked?
(00:15:39) - Trade-, Export-, and Manufacturing-Led Growth
(00:27:50) - Manufacturing-Led or Services-Led Growth Model?
(00:47:16) - Scaling Manufacturing
(00:59:38) - Labor Productivity in India
(01:06:41) - Rising Protectionism
(01:19:44) - Monetary Policy and Trade Policy
(01:35:26) - Outro
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Today my guest is Anirudh Burman. He is an associate research director and fellow at Carnegie Endowment India, and prior to that, he worked at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy and the Centre for Policy Research, both in New Delhi. He has his master’s in law from Harvard Law School. We spoke about the dysfunctional land markets and the kinds of reforms required in land use policy, land sale and land transfers. We also talked about the various experiments with land pooling and leasing in India, how to think about eminent domain law, land titling, land title insurance and much more.
Recorded July 15th, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:02:46) - How does India’s Land Market work?
(00:15:23) - Why do we have such bad regulation?
(00:23:519) - Land Transfer and Consolidation
(00:40:35) - Transitioning to an efficient land regulation system
(00:45:25) - Eminent Domain
(01:05:35) - Land Leasing(01:11:01) - Land Pooling
(01:28:37) - Outro -
Today my guests are Shreyas Narla and Kadambari Shah, who are my colleagues at the Mercatus Center and research scholars working with me on the 1991 Project.
We spoke about the kinds of policy change we would like to see in the coalition government led by Modi’s in his third term. We talked about the research Shreyas, Kadambari and I have been working on in the areas of competition policy, regulating India’s digital marketplace, labor law reforms, scaling India’s manufacturing, streamlining GST, and much more.
Recorded July 1st, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:31) - Past Budgets Announcements and Upcoming Budget
(00:09:38) - Restarting reforms
(00:22:56) - The Tinkering of Government
(00:27:08) - Regulation of Big Tech Companies
(00:51:35) - India’s Labor Regulations
(01:10:33) - Solutions to India’s Regulatory Environment
(01:20:27) - Outro -
Today my guest is Sajith Pai, who is a partner at Blume Ventures and he is a long-time media executive turned VC. At Blume, Sajith supports investments in media, ed tech and e-commerce, while simultaneously helping Blume building a research and knowledge platform.
We spoke about the 2024 Indus Valley Annual Report. written by Sajith and his co-authors, Anurag Pagaria, Nachammai Savithiri both at Blume Ventures; the many countries that make up the country of India; bifurcated between India1, 2, and 3; gross fixed capital formation, fintechs, the consumption led boom that India is experiencing, the space industry, and much more.
Recorded June 25th, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:09:16) - Private Consumption and Fixed Capital Formation(00:14:15) - Gross Fixed Capital Formation
(00:22:39) - Regime Uncertainty
(00:26:51) - The Indian Consumer
(00:35:10) - Bottlenecks and Reforms
(00:42:18) - Mutual Funds Savings Model
(00:47:33) - Path from Seed to IPO
(00:55:40) - India's Foreign Investors(01:00:57) - India's Fintechs
(01:11:09) - Space Tech in India
(01:17:36) - What's on Pai's Bookshelf?
(01:23:39) - Outro
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Today my guest is Anne O Krueger. She is a Senior Fellow at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, and the Herald L. and Caroline Ritch Emeritus Professor of Sciences and Humanities in the Economics Department at Stanford University. She served World Bank’s Chief Economist from 1982 to 1986, and the first deputy managing director at the IMF from 2001 to 2006. We talked about her famous 1974 paper “The Political Economy of a Rent Seeking Society” on its 50th anniversary, her experience understanding the license permit raj system in India, the 1991 trade liberalization, the Washington consensus, decline of the WTO, the new protectionism in the US, reforming Argentina and much more.
Recorded May 17th, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:24) - Rent-Seeking in Turkey and India(00:10:49) - Professional Influences
(00:15:35) - South Korean Miracle
(00:18:53) - Korea vs. India
(00:26:19) - Import Substitution and Rent
(00:29:15) - Turning Around the World Bank
(00:38:59) - The Krueger Consensus
(00:42:18) - Africa(00:45:39) - India's 1991 Reforms
(00:50:52) - World Trade Organization
(00:53:53) - United States and Free Trade
(01:02:14) - License Permit Raj in the US
(01:04:36) - International Monetary Fund
(01:06:47) - Hope for Milei and Argentina
(01:11:30) - Looking Back on Success
(01:13:31) - Outro
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Today my guest is Karthik Muralidharan. He is the Tata Chancellor's Professor of Economics at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of the recent book Accelerating India’s Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance.” We talked about the lacking state capacity in India, about improving the quality of public expenditure, fiscal federalism, methods to improve the hiring process for government, better ways of staffing and using the Indian bureaucracy, randomized control trials and development and much more.
Recorded May 15th, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:07:46) - Quality of Public Education
(00:17:59) - Decentralization vs. Federalism
(00:31:58) - Welfare Expenditure
(00:41:30) - Personnel for the Indian State
(01:09:08) - Better Approach for Skilling
(01:17:26) - Empanelment
(01:34:32) - The Backdrop of the Field of Economics
(01:56:52) - Outro
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Today my guests are Tom Easton and Arjun Ramani from The Economist. Tom Easton is Mumbai bureau chief. He joined The Economist in 2000 at the New York bureau and was appointed the Asian business editor in 2007. Arjun Ramani is on an extended stint in Mumbai and Delhi bureaus covering the Indian economy. Before this, he was the global business and economics correspondent in the London office. We spoke about various aspects of covered in a recent six-part special report on India’s economy written by Arjun and Tom.
Recorded May 2nd, 2024.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:03) - The India Express and its Future
(00:01:57) - Reasons for Optimism and Pessimism Over India’s Future
(00:14:45) - Long-Run Economic Growth
(00:18:51) - Is India Prepared to be a Capitalist Country?
(00:29:37) - Unemployment vs. Informal Labor Market in India
(00:47:17) - India and Education
(00:51:21) - State Capacity Problems
(01:02:11) - Concrete Ceilings for Indian Businesses
(01:08:24) - The Binding Constraint
(01:13:30) - Industrial Policy
(01:31:53) - Future of Economic Journalism
(01:44:50) - Outro -
Today my guest is Rohit Lamba, an assistant professor of economics at Pennsylvania State University and a visiting assistant professor of economics at New York University Abu Dhabi. We spoke about his recent book Breaking the Mould: Reimagining India’s Economic Future which he has coauthored with Raghuram Rajan.
We spoke about their argument to shift the focus from industrial and trade policy towards a services and education policy, how India can and should decentralize, if India can scale education and health, India’s growth rate numbers, and much more.
Recorded April 19th, 2024.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.
Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:05:21) - Zooming into Indian States
(00:20:25) - Why not Decentralization?
(00:26:28) - Scaling Education
(00:51:14) - Educating the Global South
(00:53:22) - Picking Winners and Losers
(01:10:22) - India's Growth Rate
(01:18:44) - Outro
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Today my guest is Rasheed Griffith, who is the CEO of the Caribbean Progress Studies Institute, the host of the podcast the Rasheed Griffith Show, and one of my favorite writers on Substack. He also directs the Emergent Ventures Africa-Caribbean grants program at the Mercatus Center.
We spoke about whether the former colonizers owe reparations to the Caribbean people, economic divergence in post-colonial Caribbean countries, Caribbean music, homophobia, VS Naipaul, West Indian cricket team, and much more.
Recorded April 4th, 2024.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.
Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:09:37) - Do Former Colonizers Owe Reparations to the Caribbean People?
(00:22:29) - The Counterfactual for Caribbean Colonies
(00:35:48) - India, Caribbean and Scale
(00:40:52) - Is Saint Lucia the Best at Spotting Talent?
(00:49:37) - Caribbean Civil Rights Movement
(00:58:01) - Innovation in Caribbean Music
(01:03:59) - Homophobia
(01:13:10) - Most Underrated Caribbean Island?
(01:19:05) - V.S. Naipual
(01:30:57) - Outro
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Today my guest is Pranay Kotasthane who is the deputy director of the Takshashila Institution and chairs the High Tech Geopolitics Programme.
Pranay co-writes Anticipating the Unintended, a newsletter on public policy ideas and frameworks, and co-hosts Puliyabaazi, a popular Hindi-Urdu podcast on politics, policy, and technology. He is the co-author of - Missing in Action: Why Should You Care About Public Policy, and the graphic nonfiction narrative We, the Citizens. He has co-edited India’s Marathon: Reshaping the Post-Pandemic World Order.
Today we are discussing his most recent book, When the Chips Are Down, coauthored with Abhiram Manchi. We spoke the evolution of the semiconductor industry, industrial targeting, Moore’s law, Rock’s law, Taiwan’s Comparative advantage, whether India can lead in semiconductor chips and more.
Recorded March 12th, 2024.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.
Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:08:35) - Moore's Law
(00:14:08) - Rock's Law
(00:21:41) - Geopolitics of the Semiconducter Industry
(00:27:46) - Metacritical Technologies
(00:38:49) - Geographical Concentration
(00:48:34) - Zelenograd
(00:59:44) - Unease of doing Business in India
(01:09:45) - Industrial Targeting in Taiwan
(01:30:57) - Outro
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Today my guests are M. Krishnan and Badri Narayanan Gopalakrishnan. M. Krishnan is an economist based in Chennai and Singapore, and specializes in agriculture education systems, fisheries, and aquaculture research. He is currently an advisor at Infinite-Sum Modeling Inc and was a distinguished scientist of the Agricultural Research Service of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. Badri Narayanan Gopalakrishnan is an economist specializing in trade and international policy. He is a Fellow at the (NITI) Aayog, Government of India, where he formerly led the institution’s sections on Trade and Commerce, Strategic Economic Dialogue, International Cooperation, and Vision India@2047.
Today we are discussing their recent coauthored paper titled Indian Fisheries in the Context of WTO Regulations, published by the Mercatus Center in collaboration with Center for Governance and Markets at the University of Pittsburgh. We spoke about the big issues concerning fisheres, in particular, India’s interests in at the 13th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) recently held in Abu Dhabi.
Recorded March 13th, 2024.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.
Timestamps
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:01:50) - Fisheries in India
(00:13:46) - Overfishing and Illegal Fishing in India
(00:19:59) - Overfishing Negotiations
(00:22:01) - Subsidies
(00:26:27) - At the Negotiating Table
(00:28:24) - IUUs
(00:33:01) - Seasonal Fishing Ban
(00:37:33) - Leading the Global South
(00:45:17) - Measurement
(00:48:47) - Domestic Politics
(00:53:35) - The Future
(00:59:38) - Outro
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Aparna Chandra is a constitutional scholar and associate professor of law at the National Law school in Bangalore. She is the coauthor, along with Sital Kalantry and William Hubbard of the recent book Court on Trial: A Data-Driven Account of the Supreme Court of India. We spoke about the problem of pendency across all courts in the Indian judiciary, whether the Supreme Court is truly a people’s court, the problem of special leave petitions, potential ways to reform the judiciary, and much more.
Recorded February 16th, 2024.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.
Timestamps
(00:01:12) - Function of the Supreme Court
(00:07:05) - Special Leave Petition (SLP)
(00:13:57) - A People’s Court?
(00:35:56) - Fast tracks and VIP Culture
(00:48:25) - Malice, Incompetence or Compassion?
(00:52:03) - People Like Us
(01:04:41) - Ending SLPs
(01:23:15) - Too Cool for Rules
(01:29:51) - Chief Justice as First Among Equals
(01:33:50) - Outro
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This is our 100th episode and I want to thank our listeners, the guests who have been exceptionally generous with their time and insights, the fantastic team at Mercatus that helps me produce and disseminate the podcast, and to all our donors and supporters.
Today my guest is Douglas Irwin, who is the John French Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College. He is the author of dozens of books and papers, most recently, Clashing over Commerce, which is a magisterial history of US trade policy. We spoke about India’s liberalization moment in 1991, the five phases of globalization, British repeal of Corn laws, premature deindustrialization, the relevance of the WTO, absolute versus comparative advantage, the future Argentina, and much more.
Recorded January 23rd, 2024.
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Today my guest is Rahul Matthan, a technology lawyer and partner at Trilegal. He assisted the Indian government in developing India’s data privacy law and he is the author of the recent books Privacy 3.0 and The Third Way. We spoke about India’s digital public infrastructure revolution, India’s unified payments system, AI, blockchain, the design issues around India’s NCPI, Aadhaar, privacy, and much more.
Recorded January 22nd, 2024.
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Aditya Balasubramanian is a Senior Lecturer in History at Australian National University. His research focuses on various aspects of the history of modern South Asia. And he is the author of the new book, Toward a Free Economy: Swatantra and Opposition Politics in Democratic India. We spoke about the history of a conservative and ideological opposition politics of India, influence of BR Shenoy and more generally the Austrian economists on Swatratra party, about C Rajagopalachari, other members, and much more.
Recorded December 22nd, 2023.
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Today my guest is Nasreen Munni Kabir, a documentary filmmaker, TV producer and director, author, biographer, translator/subtitler, and an absolute authority on all things Hindi cinema. We spoke about her biographical conversation series of books with artists like Javed Akhtar, Gulzar, Lata Mangeshkar, Waheeda Rahman, Zakir Hussain, AR Rahman. We also spoke about her documentary films on Guru Dutt, and television series Movie Mahal chronicling the history of Hindi cinema, how she chooses her subjects, the difficulty of subtitling Hindi films, her favorite films, songs, artists, and much more.
Recorded December 12th, 2023.
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Today the roles are reversed. In the 2023 end of the year review episode, producer Dallas Floer asks Shruti questions from our listeners about Shruti's ideas of India, how Shruti prepares for the podcast, various guests, the most listened to and the most underrated episode picks of the year, and much more.
Recorded December 12th, 2023.
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Our last scholar in the series this year is Rajat Kocchar, a post-doctoral scholar at University of Chicago’s Energy and Environment Lab. He has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Southern California, and his research lies in the field of environmental economics, in particular, on the understanding the factors that incentivize adaptation to climate shocks. We discussed his paper, “Does Market Power in Local Agricultural Markets Hinder Farmer Climate Change Adaptation?” We talked about the impact of distortionary policies and regulations on farmer’s ability to cope with weather shocks in India, the agricultural produce market system, the choice of crop mix, and the effectiveness of water audits in the UK and much more.
Recorded September 21st, 2023.
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- Visa fler
