This article evaluates the impact of trade liberalisation on the informal economy in the BRICS countries, which have significant unorganised sectors and trade policy changes. The article uses panel data from 1996 to 2015 to measure informality based on the method of Kaufmann and Kaliberda, which estimates the size of the informal sector as the difference between official GDP an...

Sovereigns borrow money like other economic actors – and sometimes they borrow too much. Given the critical role of sovereigns in their national economies, this means the effective management of government debt is crucial. Over the past 20 years, sovereign debt has often increased in response to shocks like the Global Financial Crisis, euro crisis, Brexit and the COVID-19 pande...

Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) have rapidly emerged as a complement to physical cash. Motivations include maintaining central bank money as a monetary system anchor, addressing digital payment reliance, and promoting financial inclusion. CBDCs aim to improve digital payment arrangements. While only three countries have formally launched CBDCs, 35 others have initiated ...

This paper aims to add to the literature on intellectual property protection by creating an index/database to reflect the strength of copyright and related rights for 109 countries for 2023. The index is primarily based on a range of factors like coverage of the law, membership in copyright conventions and its duration, copyright applications and enforcement mechanisms. The e...

The article criticizes modern money theory (MMT), which is a macroeconomic policy that aims to achieve full employment by using money-financed fiscal deficits, without using any formal modelling. The article claims that MMT policy would not work in an open and internationally highly financially integrated economy, because it would either cause the money stock to grow unsustaina...

There is a growing concern among economists that the trade policy reforms resulting from India’s growing participation in various multilateral and bilateral agreements has not benefitted all workers engaged in the manufacturing sector. As per existing literature, reform-led reallocation of workers from contracting to expanding sectors will be relatively less costly, if intra-in...

This article presents research findings that support adding ‘affordable healthy diet’ as an indicator in the ‘Long and healthy life’ dimension of the Human Development Index (HDI). The article also aims to link the Sustainable Development Goal 2 (End Hunger, Achieve Food Security and Improved Nutrition and Promote Sustainable Agriculture) with the HDI, by showing the importance...

The economic slow-down and COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted India’s extreme crisis inequality. India is an unequal country: 84% of household sector income declined in 2021, at the same time that the number of billionaires went up from 102 to 142. According to the World Inequality Report, the income of the top 10% of the population is 20 times that of the bottom 50% and this g...

Governments widely manipulate official economic and social data—but the public tends to disregard this fact. There is extensive empirical evidence that governments extensively manipulate official data. National statistical offices should be independent of their government to fight such manipulation, and alternative data producers should be supported. The public should be aware ...

Economic growth, as a leading macroeconomic objective, is supposed to be determined by different types of variables and indicators, including legal ones. Therefore, through panel data analysis of the 20 EU countries for 2013-2021 years, this research article came across legal determinants that impact economic growth. Data covered in the examination were from secondary sources,...