The Unassuming Economist

From Devdiscourse:

“The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has urged for employment-centered initiatives in the upcoming FY26 budget to enhance job creation and foster inclusive growth across India. Notably, the CII has proposed a comprehensive seven-point strategy to harness India’s demographic potential effectively.

Among the key recommendations, CII suggests establishing an integrated national employment policy and bolstering labour-intensive sectors. It proposes creating new short-term employment through government internships for the youth in rural areas to bridge the gap between education and job skills. It also emphasizes boosting female workforce participation through dormitory construction and the formalization of sectors like the care economy.

Moreover, there’s a call for an international mobility authority under the Ministry of External Affairs to help young Indians access overseas employment opportunities. This authority aims to collaborate on skill development aligned with global prospects, including language and cultural preparation. CII underscores the need for enhanced productivity alongside job growth, urging for strategic measures to lower India’s Incremental Capital Output Ratio (ICOR).”

From a paper by Prince Mensah Osei, Johnny Lo, Ute Mueller, Steven Richardson, and Ebenezer Afrifa-Yamoah:

“Time-frequency domain analysis of housing prices can provide insights into significant periodic patterns in the pricing dynamics for modelling and forecasting purposes. This study applied wavelet and information entropy analyses to examine the periodic patterns and evolution of housing prices in Australia’s eight capital cities from 1980 to 2023, using quarterly median house pricing data. Our findings revealed consistent patterns of higher variability in housing prices at high frequencies across all cities, with Melbourne exhibiting the highest variability. This indicates that short-term price fluctuations were higher than long-term changes. Perth and Brisbane demonstrated notable cyclical patterns with recurring periods of growth and decline. Coherence analyses revealed dynamic lead–lag relationships, both positive and negative, between housing prices of various cities, suggesting interconnectedness but not always synchronisation. Some cities’ housing prices dominated the information sharing, indicating varying degrees of influence within the national market. These findings highlight the complex, dynamic interdependencies among Australia’s major city housing markets, providing valuable insights for policymakers, investors, and stakeholders in economic forecasting, policy development and strategic planning within these markets.”

From a paper by Khoja Akhmet Yassawi, Mukhtar Auezov, and Miras University:

“The investigation delved into the dynamic interplay between oil price fluctuations and their ramifications on the pricing of agricultural products, employing the Vector Autoregression methodology. The dataset spanned 3 months, commencing from January 2010 and concluding in December Upon subjecting the data to an in-depth analysis, it was ascertained that it possesses a unit root, indicating an integrated order of one (I [1]), and achieves stationarity subsequent to the first-order differencing. The findings of the inquiry revealed that the paramount driver influencing agricultural product prices is the inherent volatility within the agricultural sector itself. Contrary to initial expectations, the impact of oil price fluctuations on agricultural prices was discerned to be comparatively modest. Intriguingly, the outcomes underscored that the preeminent factor contributing to fluctuations in agricultural product prices is the influence wielded by oil prices. This implies that alterations in oil prices exert a more pronounced effect on the variability in agricultural product prices as opposed to the overall revenue generated from agricultural endeavors.”

From a paper by Sohei Kaihatsu, Shogo Nakano, and Hiroki Yamamoto:

“This paper examines the impact of shifts in long-term inflation expectations on economic activity and price dynamics in Japan using a time-varying parameter vector autoregressive (TVP-VAR) model. Our empirical findings demonstrate that exogenous positive shocks to long-term inflation expectations improve the output gap and generate upward pressure on inflation rates. These results suggest the existence of an “expectations channel” in Japan, whereby higher inflation expectations stimulate private sector spending through mechanisms such as reducing real funding costs. Looking at the analysis by period, it indicates that during the deflationary phase of the 2000s, declining long-term inflation expectations likely contributed to persistent downward pressure on prices, potentially serving as one factor that hindered Japan’s exit from sustained deflation. However, following the introduction of the “price stability target” and Quantitative and Qualitative Monetary Easing (QQE) in 2013, this contribution reversed, appearing to exert upward pressure on inflation rates. In this respect, the findings suggest that the “management of expectations” intended by monetary policy during this period demonstrated some effectiveness. Nevertheless, as inflation rates subsequently declined, the upward contribution of inflation expectations to the inflation rate diminished, failing to anchor expectations to the price stability target. This outcome suggests the inherent difficulty in maintaining a sustained influence on long-term inflation expectations.”

From a paper by Bello Dalhatu:

“In an effort to provide policy recommendations for Nigeria’s transition to full-fledged inflation targeting, this study examines Ghana’s monetary policy frameworks (monetary aggregates targeting and inflation targeting) using ARDL bounds test for cointegration and Error Correction Mechanism (ECM) on annual time series data spanning 1965 to 2022 obtained from the Bank of Ghana database and the World Bank database on World Development Indicators. The results demonstrate that monetary aggregates targeting has not been successful in both the short-run and long-run periods in moderating and stabilizing inflation; however, inflation moderated under inflation targeting in both the short run and the long term. This indicates that inflation targeting proves to be a superior monetary policy framework for inflation control.”