Policy reversals and private investment; Strategy for debt management; episodes;

Policy reversals and private investment

My column in the Business Standard on Monday (2 September) thinks about how the tactics and the strategy of the policy process influences private investment.

Strategy for debt management

Public finance researchers in India have paid great attention to debt and deficits. By now, the main messages of the field have started sinking into common knowledge: that it is good to run primary deficits in most years, so as to create space to surge the deficit once in a while when faced with a crisis. There is an adjacent field of public debt management that is equally important. Here, the strategic question is: How should the government borrow? From whom? Debt management strategy has not received the required level of interest.

In this context, the question Who lends to the Indian state? attains importance. A recent paper by Aneesha Chitgupi, Ajay Shah, Manish Singh, Susan Thomas and Harsh Vardhan examines this question, establishing new facts, and placing them in the context of the overall questions of strategy for debt management.

Episodes

23 August: Episode 61 of Everything is Everything with Amit Varma, The outlaws.

30 August: Episode 62 of Everything is Everything with Amit Varma, How to write a paper.