Category: Economies
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A World Full of Workers but Short of Labour
The global economy is entering a strange period. Millions of young people are searching for stable work in South Asia and Africa, while employers in Europe, Japan, South Korea and other ageing economies are struggling to find workers. One part of the world has people without sufficient jobs. Another has…
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The African Demographic Opportunity
The Continent Growing Younger in an Ageing World The twenty-first century may be remembered as the period when the centre of the world population slowly shifted towards Africa. Europe is ageing. China’s workforce has begun to contract. Japan is already struggling with labour shortages. Several countries in East Asia are…
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The Fertilizer Vulnerability: When a Gas Shock Becomes a Food Crisis
The Hidden Energy System Beneath Every Farm Agriculture still looks natural from a distance. There is soil, rain, sunlight, seed and human labour. But modern farming is also an industrial system built on natural gas, mined minerals, global shipping, credit and government subsidy. A farmer may sow wheat in India,…
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A World That Distrusts the Dollar but Still Needs It
The world is searching for an alternative to the US dollar. Governments worry that excessive dollar dependence exposes them to American interest rates, financial sanctions, asset freezes and political pressure. Central banks are buying more gold. Countries are settling some bilateral trade in local currencies. New payment systems are being…
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The Economic Security Doctrine
When Dependence Becomes a ThreatFor much of the last four decades, economic policy was built around a comforting belief: countries that traded more would fight less. Supply chains would cross borders, capital would move freely, technology would spread, and mutual dependence would make conflict too costly. The factory, the container…
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The Death of the Cheapest Supplier
For nearly half a century, modern procurement was built around a deceptively simple question: who can supply this product at the lowest possible price? Corporations searched the world for cheaper labour, cheaper land, lighter regulation, lower taxes and larger production economies. Suppliers were compared through spreadsheets, purchase prices were negotiated…
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The Global Economy of Strategic Redundancy
When Inefficiency Becomes a Form of Insurance For nearly four decades, the global economy was organised around a powerful idea: remove every spare cost. Companies reduced inventories, concentrated production in the cheapest locations, relied on a small number of highly efficient suppliers and moved goods through tightly timed logistics networks.…
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India’s Next Export Revolution Will Be Built Between Industries
The age of the self-contained sector is ending For much of the twentieth century, industrial policy was organised into separate boxes. Agriculture belonged to one ministry, automobiles to another, electronics to a third and energy to a fourth. Each sector received its own incentives, institutions, research facilities, regulations and export-promotion…
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When Opportunity Knows Your Name Before It Knows Your Ability
The Market Has a Hidden Entrance Modern economies claim that talent, hard work and innovation determine success. But economic opportunity rarely moves through an open marketplace alone. It also travels through introductions, recommendations, alumni groups, professional associations, family relationships, business communities and informal circles of trust. A capable entrepreneur may…
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Quality Enforcement Is Quietly Redesigning the Pharmaceutical Industry
From medicine scarcity to the pharmacy of the worldAt independence, India depended heavily on imported medicines and foreign pharmaceutical companies. The expansion of domestic scientific capacity, process innovation and generic manufacturing gradually changed this position. India became a major supplier of affordable medicines to developing countries and an important source…
