The financial crisis in South Asia: From jobless growth to jobless slump?
textabstractThis chapter explores the impact of the global financial crisis on South Asia in terms of qualitative and quantitative aspects of employment. South Asia hosts a quarter of the world’s population and a fifth of the global workforce – as well as 40 percent of the global poor (World Bank 2010). This paper therefore contributes to an assessment of the current crisis on the livelihoods of inhabitants of one of the poorest regions in the world. It also provides more general insights about how volatilities in globally increasingly integrated markets translate into opportunities for decent work – or the lack thereof.
The costs of ‘coupling’: the global crisis and the Indian economy
The view that the Indian economy would be less adversely affected by the global economic crisis because of limited integration and other inherent strengths has proved to be wrong. The economic boom in India that preceded the current downturn was dependent upon greater global integration in three ways: greater reliance on exports particularly of services; increased dependence on capital inflows, especially of the short-term variety; and the role these played in underpinning a domestic credit-fuelled consumption and investment boom. These in turn made the growth process more vulnerable to internally and externally generated crises, as is now becoming clear. Copyright The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society. All rights reserved., Oxford University Press.
Complexity, Network-Decisions And Alternative Risk Premia: Some New Theories Of Structural Change And Portfolio Decisions.
Structural Change is the basis for many decisions such as government fiscal and monetary policies, government interventions, corporate-expenditure decisions, corporate strategic decisions, portfolio management decisions in finance; household allocation decisions, etc.. Structural change in industries and national economies is increasingly more difficult to detect partly because of the growth and dominance of Complex Systems and “Networks” in modern industries and economies – such Networks and Complex Systems include GVCs (global value chains), retail store networks; franchising networks; internet networks; services networks; credit-chains in industries; online social networks; etc.. The relationship between Complexity and Structural Change is well established in the physics, applied math and economic dynamics literatures. Traditional definitions and modeling of structural change have erroneously focused on changes in labor, technological progress, market share, and or capital – which are grossly inadequate in the new economy and post- global financial crisis (as confirmed by changes in the global retailing and housing industries and other industries). Also the modeling of structural change seems to be constrained by the availability of data, and often omits the relationship between structural change on one hand, and globalization, financial stability and international financial contagion. This article: i) introduces the Operations Strategy Model of structural change, explains how it differs from the Lewis Model of Structural Change; and explains the often omitted relationship between operations strategy (of companies and government agencies) and structural change; ii) introduces other new Complexity-based models/theories of Structural Change in industries; iii) reviews the relationships among Operations Research, Complexity and Structural Change; iv) explains the symbiotic relationship between structural change on one hand, and economic growth, financial stability, financial contagion and globalization; v) discusses the significant gap between academic research and practice and explains some issues and factors that should be considered in the development and testing of structural change models; vi) explains how alternative risk premia can be generated from new models of Structural Change.