Here is Inter-Ministerial Group’s (IMG) first paper on inflation. IMG on inflation (apart from several other committees like E-GOM, GOM etc) has been constituted in Feb-11. The first two meetings focused on food inflation and in particular to marketing and retail prices.
This paper says India needs to fix two things to ease food inflation – APMC reform and Allow Multi Product retail.
Superb article from Douglas Eliott of Brookings with the same title. He looks at this perplexing question most people are asking.
He says the answer is the cruel set of constraints a European politician faces. The choice is between doing something for Europe and losing the next elections or preferring to make domestic policies which are fine with electorate but damages Europe as a whole. They end up being lost between the two and keep postponing the solutions for their problems. Then problem of coordination of decisions in 17 economies adds further fuel to the fire.
He says the best bet for Europe is to float its Eurobond or Blue Bond which will be guaranteed by the governments and help fund its debt troubles. It is the weakest form of fiscal integration which will not require permissions from electorate and provide market confidence.
This is a superb piece from Tony Wrigley. A brilliant take on economic history.
He says both Smith and Ricardo were pessimistic on sustained growth. There are 3 factors of production – land, labor and capital. While last two were capable of indefinite expansion, the first was limited. Land was limited and so was output that came from land – wool. Cotton, food etc. Then to get things from land like iron, we need huge energy sources which were again limited to wood and animal energy. Even energy from wood was based on process of photosynthesis (it didn’t really occur to me that photosynthesis could be a factor in growth as well) which was limited as well as it captures less that 0.5% of energy in sunlight.
This speech from BoK Governor Choongsoo Kim is very interesting. I have not seen any central bank branding itself as a Global Central Bank. BoK in its 61st anniversary has made an agenda to make itself a world class central bank – from BoK to global BoK.
He says Korea has moved great strides since 60 years from poverty stricken to a G-20 member developed economy. Central bank has played a great role in this transition and also needs to change itself with changing Korea. It needs to become world class bank of Korea as well along woth world class Korean economy.
It has made changes to its monetary policy framework to look at both price stability and financial stability in a global economic set-up. Along with new framework it is looking at international policy coordination, efficient conduct of currency issuing and payments and settlement systems.
For foreign capital flows, it is implementing Macroprudential stability levy on non-core foreign currency liabilities in coordination with government.
It is also revamping its research department to help it become a world class central bamk. Research forms the core of all this change.
Nice stuff.
Most central banks are introspecting and trying to figure ways to stimulate domestic economies and becoming more domestic. Bernnake defends his policies saying his policies are for US economy and if other countries getting effected by it, they need to make their own policies.
BoK on the other hand is trying to make itself more global. This is a reality and Korea is a small open economy. So making changes accordingly…
https://www.intelligenteconomist.com/economics-blogs/
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