Bardonomics

Image: Wikimedia Commons The four decades since Deng Xiaoping spearheaded “Reform and Opening Up” in China have seen growth on a scale unparalleled in modern history. Where hundreds of millions were once destitute, extreme poverty has been all but cast into the annals of history; the world competes to attract the wealth of China’s burgeoning middle and upper classes. Analyses of the country's explosive growth are aplenty. Real GDP has grown 64-fold, literacy is above 95%, and in a once Communist country the private sector, at least on paper, now accounts for 60 percent of economic activity. This piece, however, will look more at the stability of the country—while analysing potential economic factors underpinning this. A number of scholars predicted political and economic instability in China as nation rapidly became prosperous. Yet, in a country transformed, political and economic durability remain. The Chinese Community Party continues to enjoy high levels of popular leg...

Image: Wikimedia Commons Established as East Pakistan after India’s independence and partition, Bangladesh’s two decades prior to independence were marked by neglect and discrimination. Of the two parts of Pakistan, the East was more populous, but it remained politically and economically dominated by West Pakistan. Over 1,600km of Indian territory separated the two Pakistans. Liberation activists charged that the central government in West Pakistan engaged in the ethnolinguistic discrimination against the majority Bengali East Pakistanis. Only the West Pakistani native tongue, Urdu, was recognised as an official language in the, and Bengalis were also largely underrepresented in the Pakistani bureaucracy and army. Economically, the government of West Pakistan was accused of appropriating surpluses from the East to fund the West’s imports, and the West withheld the allocation of funds for development in the East.   As maltreatment and mismanagement grew, calls for freedom ...

Image: Wikimedia Commons Modi has “robbed India of its economic prowess,” writes Rahul Gandhi, leader of the opposition Indian National Congress, in the Financial Times. Prime Minister Narendra Modi does not much care for such comments. He does not much have to: his party maintains firm control of India’s lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha, as well as a commanding majority in state legislatures. Mr. Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stormed to power on a promise to galvanise India’s economy with a series of wide-ranging reforms. The two most controversial actions were demonetisation and the institution of a nationwide Goods and Services Tax (GST). This article will analyse the controversy surrounding those reforms, and will also examine a few other key reforms. Demonetisation, Mr. Modi’s dead-of-night decision to take high denomination notes out of circulation, has unexpectedly become a central political pillar of his economic policy. The government’s objectiv...

Photo: SCMP Optimism flows freely through the markets today. Asset prices are at record highs: investors are happier than ever to throw money at barely profitable technology companies, debt issuances from dubious companies and volatile governments, and anything blockchain related—from Bitcoin to Ethereum to Insanecoin, which does actually exist.     Most observers think that the coin mania is a bubble waiting to burst. But bears have been calling the whole market a bubble for a while, predicting an end to the years-long economic recovery and stock market boom. The old joke goes that economists have called seven of the last two recessions. It still rings true. Doomsayers have been convinced of a market crash since the post-recession recovery had barely gotten on its legs. But with things as they are today, are we on a path toward crisis?   I will not engage in the perilous business of trying to predict when the next economic downturn or market tumble will occ...

Photo: Reuters/SCMP It was a pivotal moment in Myanmar’s history, and one that was watched with full hearts across the globe. On November 13, 2010 democracy and human rights activist Aung San Suu Kyi was released after years under house arrest. Her political party, the Nation League for Democracy, won a resounding majority in legislative by-elections in 2012, and eventually came to power in 2015. Her release and subsequent election were highlights in the wave of democratic reforms carried about by Myanmar’s junta, which had imposed on the country a repressive, authoritarian regime.   To the people of Myanmar, and to observers around the world, it appeared that these reforms indicated the inception of genuine, lasting democracy and economic growth in the country. The unforgiving march of reality has tempered the early idealism that surrounded outside observers’ impressions of the country. Myanmar remains in a promising condition, but the country is fraught with potentially...

Photo: Singapore Tourism Board In the mid-1960s, they were overrun by poverty and hopelessly underdeveloped. Within 25 years, their citizens ranked among the wealthiest in the world, and their cities buzzed with life. Among the most stunning economic growth stories in modern history is that of the Four Asian Tigers: South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong.   All four economies are today robust and highly developed, and although serious economic inequality inevitably persists, extreme deprivation has long since been cast into the annals of the past. How did these four East Asian countries generate such astounding growth? For much of the 1980s and the 1990s, there persisted a consensus view among economists that the growth of these economies could overwhelmingly be ascribed to open economic policies and a minimal role for the government.   With regard to manufacturing—particularly relevant in the East Asian context—neoclassical economists, those with an ideo...