-The Indian Express FDI in retail will bring competition to non-tradable services, and make Indian firms globally competitive India removed barriers to trade in goods in the 1990s. Removing protection brought global competition and raised productivity. But introducing global competition in services is harder. In certain services that are tradable, like legal or financial services, the removal of trade barriers can introduce competition and increase productivity. But these often involve complicated and...

-The Indian Express Too many of our economic prescriptions are based on dogma, empirical half-truths It has become fashionable to say, following the conclusions of Michael Spence’s Growth Commission, that there is no single recipe for growth, only some common ingredients. Such a claim brings a due degree of modesty to what we do or do not know about growth. And at the very least, such a claim has the virtue of...

-Live Mint Decline came as labour productivity grew 7.6%; wage growth remains far below pre-crisis levels globally  India’s real wages fell 1% between 2008 and 2011, while labour productivity grew 7.6% in the same period, International Labour Organization (ILO) data showed on Friday, indicating that the benefits of the country’s economic growth didn’t translate into better pay for workers in the aftermath of the global economic crisis. In contrast, China’s real wage growth...

-The Hindu Private companies get loansat 6.5% with additional cash refunds; for farmers it is 7% The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), which is dedicated to promoting rural development by providing soft loans to State governments for social sector projects, has given hundreds of crores as loans to corporates on concessional terms. In the Union Budget of 2011-12, Rs. 18,000 crore was allocated by the Centre to NABARD’s Rural Infrastructure...

-The United Nations Global wages remain far below pre-crisis levels, says a new United Nations report, which points to a continuing slowdown in developed countries alongside increases in emerging economies. The Global Wage Report 2012/13, released today by the International Labour Organization (ILO), shows that global monthly wages grew by 1.2 per cent in 2011, down from three per cent in 2007 and 2.1 per cent in 2010. It also cites huge...