-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...

-The Hindustan Times With UPA 2 having carried the day on the motions disapproving foreign direct investment (FDI) in India’s multi-brand retail trade sector, the crescendo for a fresh round of GenNext reforms has reached a higher pitch. The editorial in this newspaper titled The slog overs have begun (Our Take, December 10) states, “Now that FDI in retail is through, the UPA must push ahead with other reforms.” The Congress-led coalitions...

-Live Mint High growth hasn’t led to more jobs  The years between 2004-05 and 2009-10 saw some of the highest rates of gross domestic product (GDP) growth for India. The problem, however, is that this high growth hasn’t led to more jobs. Employment elasticity—which is a measure of how employment varies with economic output—has come down dramatically. The Planning Commission says that employment elasticity has come down “from 0.44 in the first half...

-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...