Jayati Ghosh

NEW DELHI – Around the world, governments are succumbing to the allure of biometric identification systems. To some extent, this may be inevitable, given the burden of demands and expectations placed on modern states. But no one should underestimate the risks these technologies pose

NEW DELHI – The COVID-19 pandemic has thrust the entire world – rich and poor – into uncharted territory, prompting extraordinary policy responses almost everywhere. The looming economic fallout will be more severe than that of the Great Depression, the 2008 global financial crisis, and perhaps even the two world wars. After all, none of these previous epochal crises involved a simultaneous global collapse of both demand and supply, with little certainty of how long the sudden stop would persist

NEW DELHI – At the United Nations General Assembly meetings in New York later this month, world leaders will discuss a host of important issues – not least progress toward meeting the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. And some of the SDGs are highly topical, including those on climate action, decent work and economic growth, quality education, and partnerships to achieve the goals

NEW DELHI – The process of selecting the International Monetary Fund’s next managing director must change. In particular, the tradition of choosing a European for the post – based on an unfair and anachronistic “gentlemen’s agreement” reached with the United States when the institution was established 75 years ago – needs to be discarded. But even more important, the IMF’s longstanding approach to lending should be transformed

NEW DELHI – For some time now, multinational companies (MNCs) have been gaming the rules of the global economy to minimize their tax liability – or even eliminate it altogether. And for some time now, the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT) has argued for the unitary taxation of MNCs. Fortunately, there have been some encouraging recent signs that the idea of a unitary tax is gaining traction

NEW DELHI – Among the many inequalities revealed by the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the most striking is the dramatic divergence in governments’ fiscal responses. Economic activity has collapsed worldwide as a result of lockdown measures to contain the coronavirus. But while some developed countries have been able to deploy fiscal stimulus on an unprecedented scale, most have not

NEW DELHI – In the natural world, humans stand out for the complexity of the tools, technologies, and institutions that we have developed. According to the anthropologist Joseph Henrich, we owe this success to our ability to accumulate, share, and adapt cultural information across generations. But just as interconnection causes our “collective brains” to expand over time, isolation can cause them to shrink. Economists should take note

Confounding the grim prediction made by the British economist Thomas Malthus in 1798, the world currently produces more than enough food for a population that has increased almost tenfold since then

NEW DELHI – On January 5, masked men and women stormed the New Delhi campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), where I am a professor, and attacked the students and faculty they found there with sticks, iron rods, and scythes. The university administration, security guards, and local police not only failed to protect the innocent victims of this rampage, which included vandalism and trespassing, in addition to the violence; they watched and were complicit in the assault. This is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s India

Last year was a watershed for gender relations. The #MeToo movement rocked establishments around the world, forcing even powerful men to face public scrutiny for their behavior toward women

NEW DELHI – For some time now, multinational companies (MNCs) have been gaming the rules of the global economy to minimize their tax liability – or even eliminate it altogether. And for some time now, the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT) has argued for the unitary taxation of MNCs. Fortunately, there have been some encouraging recent signs that the idea of a unitary tax is gaining traction

Confounding the grim prediction made by the British economist Thomas Malthus in 1798, the world currently produces more than enough food for a population that has increased almost tenfold since then

Last year was a watershed for gender relations. The #MeToo movement rocked establishments around the world, forcing even powerful men to face public scrutiny for their behavior toward women

NEW DELHI – The process of selecting the International Monetary Fund’s next managing director must change. In particular, the tradition of choosing a European for the post – based on an unfair and anachronistic “gentlemen’s agreement” reached with the United States when the institution was established 75 years ago – needs to be discarded. But even more important, the IMF’s longstanding approach to lending should be transformed

It’s now official: workers around the world are falling behind. The International Labor Organization’s (ILO) latest Global Wage Report finds that, excluding China, real (inflation-adjusted) wages grew at an annual rate of just 1.1% in 2017, down from 1.8% in 2016. That is the slowest pace since 2008

NEW DELHI – The dangers of environmental pollution receive a lot of attention nowadays, particularly in the developing world, and with good reason. Air quality indices are dismal and worsening in many places, with India, in particular, facing an acute public-health emergency. But as serious as the pollution problem is, it must not be allowed to obscure another incipient environmental catastrophe, and potential source of future conflict: lack of access to clean water

NEW DELHI – The United States, Brazil, and India have surged ahead of the rest of the world in terms of the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, with no peak in sight. They (and fourth-place Russia) have one thing in common: macho leaders with authoritarian personalities

NEW DELHI – Sharp price increases for essential and life-saving medicines have generated a political backlash against the pharmaceutical industry in the United States. In February, the US Senate Committee on Finance scolded industry representatives for pursuing policies that are “morally repugnant.” Since then, 44 US state governments have filed a lawsuit against Israel-based Teva Pharmaceuticals and 19 other companies, alleging conspiracy to stifle competition for generic drugs and illegal profiteering from over 100 different medicines

NEW DELHI – Pandemics like COVID-19, alarming and destructive as they are, can serve a useful purpose if they remind everyone of the critical importance of public health

NEW DELHI – India’s capital is under siege from more than two million farmers, who are currently gathered at the city’s border in a massive protest that started two weeks ago. Old and young men, women, and even children from farming families are camping on open roads in the bitter cold of a Delhi winter. They have abandoned their concerns about viral infection and come prepared for the long haul, bringing enough food to last for several months