The FRBM Act; Global defence production; A new deal for judgment creditors; Diagnosing the problems of arbitration; Everything is everything Ep15,16,17
The problem with the FRBM Act
Economists in India have long pondered the design of a fiscal rule. It is felt that once the right rule is embedded into the FRBM Act, we would solve the long-standing excesses of Indian public finance. The FRBM Act reflects the efforts of a generation of thinkers and reformers. The results have been disappointing.
Pratik Datta, Radhika Pandey, Ila Patnaik and I looked under the hood, at the legal mechanisms through which such a Parliamentary law works. In a recent paper, Understanding deviations from the fiscal responsibility law in India, we argue that the difficulty lies not in economics but in the Indian constitutional arrangement. Because the budget is enacted through a `money bill', it can readily contain clauses that amend the FRBM Act.
Surging global defence production
The Ukraine war was the first high-intensity war after the Second World War. It has created requirements for military supplies of the kind which have never been seen before. In July 2022, I had written More ammo: Improving resilience against extreme surges in demand, on how government contracting can obtain better peak capacity of military production at the lowest cost.
With the conflict between Hamas and Israel in the Gaza strip, there is a concern that this will create additional demand for military equipment at a time when availability is tight. In an article in the Business Standard, Surging global military production, I analyse the global problem of military production.
A new deal for judgment creditors
In India, you can win in court but the losing side may not pay you. Karan Gulati and Anjali Sharma, in a new article on The Leap Blog, Improving judgment enforcement: Let judgment creditors file insolvency resolution applications, offer a nice solution to this problem: The judgment creditor should be able to file for bankruptcy using the IBC when the payment is delayed.
Diagnosing the problems of arbitration
In India, you can win in arbitration but the story does not end there. Madhav Goel, Akshay Jaitly, Renuka Sane and Anjali Sharma, in a new article on The Leap Blog, Reducing challenges to arbitration awards: lessons from court data, build a novel dataset about reopening arbitration awards in court. This offers new insights for practitioners and policy makers.
Episodes 15,16,17 of Everything is everything
Episode 15, Math Is Better Than the Brigadier's Girlfriend. 06:44 Chapter 1: We Will Not Let Down CR Rao 29:42 Chapter 2: The Unusual Mind of Abraham Wald 35:31 Chapter 3: How Many Lives Does It Take to Kill a Factory? 40:53 Chapter 4: Professor Mahalanobis 48:50 Chapter 5: The Sadhus and the Planning Commission 50:51 Chapter 6: Chintaman Deshmukh, the Sanskari Romantic.
Episode 16, The China Model is Broken. 01:23 Introduction: Do We Have to Stop Beating Our Wives? 05:37 Chapter 1: The Soviet Backdrop 19:43 Chapter 2: The China Model 54:16 Chapter 3: China Through the Decades
Episode 17, The Three Globalisations. 00:58 Introduction: Friendship and Evolution 05:17 Chapter 1: The Expanding Circle 10:28 Chapter 2: What is Globalization? 16:17 Chapter 3: The First Globalization 32:44 Chapter 4: The Second Globalization 38:09 Chapter 5: The Third Globalization 58:46 Chapter 6: Bravo, Babysitters!