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More than 100 Years of Ambedkar鈥檚 The Problem of the Rupee: Insights, ideas and intellectual rigour still awaiting discovery

Srihari ChikotiLeave a comment

It has been more than a century since Ambedkar鈥檚 second disquisition in the discipline of economics was published; The problem of the rupee: its origin and its solution was published in the year 1923. Ambedkar was awarded a Doctor of Science (D. Sc) upon completion of the aforementioned dissertation from the London School of Economics. Later, during the same year, it was published as a book (Jadhav 2015, p. 39).

This essay is fundamentally a tribute to The problem of the rupee; it aims to serve as a primer by discussing the theoretical gravitas and intellectual depth that Ambedkar鈥檚 second disquisition entails. While it is well-recognized that Ambedkar was trained in economics鈥攈olding two doctoral degrees[1]鈥攁nd made significant contributions to law and politics, this essay sheds light upon a few interactions with different economists and economic conditions that Ambedkar鈥檚The problem of the rupee engages with and subsequently invites for more extensive and nuanced engagement with the monograph.

Earlier, there have been multiple scholarly contributions that engaged with The problem of the rupee. However, they present only the overarching arguments i.e., the arguments are void of the details that explain the intellectual brilliance that is present in Ambedkar (1923). For instance, Jadhav claims that, after evaluating the Indian monetary system and operations, Ambedkar was in favour of a gold-standard rather than a gold-exchange standard (1991, p. 980). In a rudimentary sense, what gold standard and a gold-exchange standard mean is that the former indicates a monetary practice where gold is the direct form of currency that would be available for circulation. On the other hand, the latter i.e., the gold exchange standard is a condition where gold would not be a medium of exchange, but another form of currency would be the medium of exchange as gold would be held for reserve exchanges.

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Facing a liquidity tsunami? Profit, risk, and discipline in emerging markets

Ilias ALAMI1 Comment

moneypower

In April 2012, at the White House on her first visit to the United States since her election in 2010, Brazilian president Brazil Dilma Rousseff scolded advanced capitalist economies for unleashing a 鈥�tsunami de liquidez鈥�, a 鈥榣iquidity tsunami鈥�, onto the developing world. The expression liquidity tsunami suggests that the sheer scale and volume of financial capital flows to developing and emerging markets had become an issue. It indicates that these quantities were overwhelming and could trigger devastating damages.聽

This in itself is puzzling. Have we not been told by development economists and practitioners that financial capital flowing into the poorer areas of the world economy is something good and desirable? That one of the main causes of underdevelopment is actually the lack of capital and domestic savings in developing countries, and that this should be compensated with foreign capital inflows? Following this line of reasoning, vast swathes of financial capital flowing into emerging markets surely should be seen as a boon.

And there was some truth to that. The capital flow bonanza from the mid-2000s to late 2013 (coupled with the primary commodity super-cycle) did deliver some benefits to emerging markets. It helped governments fund themselves at better conditions. It provided the material basis for significant redistribution via a number of social policies. It contributed to economic growth performances much higher than over the previous decade. It also made a minority of people much richer in a very short period of time. In sum, the capital flow boom temporarily helped deliver some economic and social gains, and this was instrumental in consolidating social contracts between governments and their populations.Read More »

An Alternative Economics Summer Reading List, 2019

Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven2 Comments

pasted image 0.pngThis summer, we take stock of the most interesting economics-related books that have been released over the past year. Every year, Martin Wolf of the Financial Times makes a similar list. However, by his聽, he only reads within the tradition of his own training in mainstream economics. While聽聽includes several excellent books, such as聽聽by Frances Coppola and聽聽by Victoria Bateman, we are still struck by the strong white-male-mainstream-Western bias in Wolf鈥檚 list, with the books almost all written by white (20/21) men (18/21) about topics mostly focused on the US and Europe.聽

To complement Wolf鈥檚 list, we have put together an Alternative Economics Summer Reading list with authors from across the world, with more varied backgrounds 鈥� and writing about more wide-ranging topics, and from a wider variety of critical perspectives. Our alternative list also reflects our belief that issues such as structural racism, imperialism, ideology and the philosophy of science are central to understanding economics.聽

It is not that we think that Martin Wolf is in particular responsible for the lack of diversity and monism in our reading decisions: other curators such as the Economist (for example,聽) also perpetuate the myth that the books worth reading about economics are mostly those written about the US and Europe, by white men trained trained in mainstream economics.聽Read More »