Category: Economies
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When Governments Become Global Investors
From Regulating Capital to Owning It For much of modern economic history, governments were expected to create the rules while private companies supplied the capital. The state taxed, regulated, built basic infrastructure and occasionally rescued industries during crises. Private investors decided where factories, technologies and commercial networks would grow. That…
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The Low-Growth World: When 2–3 Percent Becomes the New Normal
The danger is not recession. It is normality. For much of modern economic history, weak growth was treated as a temporary problem. Economies slowed, governments responded, interest rates changed, investment returned and another expansion began. The more uncomfortable possibility facing the world today is different. What if slow growth is…
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The Price of Uncertainty: The Export Cost That Never Appears in the Statistics
The Invisible Export Loss — Trade statistics are good at counting what crosses a border. They are much weaker at counting what almost crossed it. A container that leaves an Indian port becomes an export. An order abandoned three weeks earlier because the exporter could not confidently quote a price,…
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The Developing-Country Convergence Crisis
For much of the modern development story, there was one powerful assumption: poorer countries would eventually become richer. They would industrialise, export, attract investment, acquire technology, improve productivity and gradually close the income gap with advanced economies. Globalisation was expected to make this process faster. That assumption is becoming much…
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The AI Investment Boom May Create the Next Great Global Divide
Artificial intelligence is usually discussed as a technology revolution. It may be more useful to see it as the beginning of a new economic geography. The factories of the industrial age were built around coal, steel, ports and railways. The digital economy grew around software, telecommunications and the internet. The…
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The AI Dependency Hidden Inside Free Access
A small manufacturer may soon receive an AI tool at almost no licence cost and still find that using it creates an expensive dependence. The software may be open, while the computing power, maintenance, upgrades and practical knowledge remain elsewhere. For India, this is the uncomfortable question behind the next…
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The Conditional Market: When Being Competitive Is No Longer Enough
A factory can make a good product, offer a fair price and find an interested buyer—and still struggle to secure the order. Its shipment may fall outside a favourable tariff quota. Its inputs may fail an origin requirement. Its production may depend on restricted technology. Its delivery system may be…
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When Computing Power Becomes Economic Power
For two centuries, the global economy has repeatedly been divided by access to the technologies that raise productivity. The Industrial Revolution separated countries that could mechanise production from those that remained dependent on manual labour. Electricity created another divide. Mass manufacturing created another. Computers and the internet widened some gaps…
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When Geography Returns to Globalisation
When Geography Returns to Globalisation For almost three decades, globalisation created the impression that geography was becoming less important. Goods could be designed in America, manufactured in Asia, assembled somewhere else and sold across the world. Containerisation, large ports, cheap shipping and digital supply-chain systems made distance appear manageable. The…
