Statistical Endeavors

The Tax Reform India Needs

Image: Tizi A version of this article also appeared in the South China Morning Post's Young Post on Thursday, May 5. http://yp.scmp.com/news/features/article/103398/india%E2%80%99s-economy-taking-right-steps-goods-and-service-tax India’s current prime minister, Narendra Modi, was elected in 2014 on his economic credentials and the promise that he would bring to the nation the same prosperity he brought, as chief minister, to his home state of Gujarat. The keystone of Modi’s economic policy is a nationwide goods-and-service tax (GST), intended to streamline the myriad state and central-government levies currently encumbering business in the country. Under the prevailing tax regime, multiple layers of tax are imposed on the same good, and interstate trade is complicated by varying tax rates between states. Transporting goods across state borders can entail long waiting times to resolve tax matters, and the plethora of obscure charges leaves ample r...

The State and the Stock Market: Risky Business

Image: Washington Post Up, up, and up, with not a glance below. In just 12 months, the frenzied Chinese stock market gained a staggering $6.5 trillion in value. Many sold their homes, quit their jobs, and took loans in a manic effort to join the invincible bull run. Less than 12 weeks since, trillions of dollars in stock market value has evaporated in a precipitous slide that is spooking investors around the globe. Following close to half a decade in the doldrums, the Chinese stock market took off spectacularly in the summer of 2014. Shares were being traded higher and higher with unrelenting pace. Nascent companies with paltry profits staged wildly successful equity offerings. One tech company, Beijing Baofeng Technology, saw its shares rise 17-fold in just 26 trading days. Worryingly, the rally showed no signs of slowing even as the economy progressed sluggishly. With the steep ascent looking excessive, the government should have made an attempt to h...

Harmony in the Middle Kingdom

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...

Bardonomics

Search This Blog