Economics & Financial Systems

Indian Trade Data Visualized

Click here to open the dashboard to visualize India's trade data

Inflation Targeting in India

Is inflation targeting framework appropiate for Indian context?

India Fuel Price Pass-Through Dashboard

Upload Delhi retail petrol/diesel prices, USD/INR, Indian Basket crude, and optionally petrol/diesel FOB product prices. The dashboard converts every series to a common unit and shows how international prices are—or are not—passed through to retail prices.

How GDP Captures the Economy We Cannot Directly Observe

GDP is not simply the sum of economic activity directly reported through surveys, tax records, or company accounts. A substantial amount of production may remain non-observed because businesses are informal, transactions are deliberately hidden, activities are

Double Deflation and GDP Estimates

Read my deeper understanding about risks and impact of deflation on GDP estimations

Methodology of Compiling Quarterly GDP Estimates

Read my review of the methodlogy shared by MOSPI India

Portfolio and Risk Management

Academicians from the University of Geneva and professionals from UBS aids us to gain an understanding of the theory underlying optimal portfolio construction, the different ways portfolios are actually built in practice and how to measure and manage the risk

July 2026 FOMC Review

Rate Hold, Inflation Resolve and Warsh’s Reduced-Forward-Guidance Strategy

How Financial Shocks Propagate

A balance-sheet network model of banks, NBFCs, mutual funds, firms and households. Why the same financial system can absorb one shock, cascade under another, and collapse slowly under a third.

Exploring Banks Balance Sheet

Exploring deeper into a balance sheet of a prominent Indian Bank

Understanding Economy Through Double Entry Bookeeping

Exploring Nbfc Balance Sheet

Exploring NBFC's balance sheet in detail

Economic Outlook & Monetary Policy: Key Takeaways from Vice Chair Philip N. Jefferson

At the start of 2026, Vice Chair Jefferson strikes a cautiously optimistic tone on the U.S. economy, emphasizing stabilization in the labor market, gradual progress on inflation, and a monetary policy stance that is now closer to neutral.

Building GDP Step by Step: A Simple Excel-Based Walkthrough

Build an Excel file that models GDP starting from a simple economy and gradually introduces complexity

How do Central Banks actually move interest rates

Trying to understand how in reality CB move interest rates

What do Central Banks do ?

My review of The Debunking Economics podcast with Steve Keen that delves into these functions, providing clarity on how central banks operate and their profound impact on the economy.

Takeaways from the FED's MPC speech Nov 24'

Chair Powell addressed the Federal Reserve's commitment to achieving its dual mandate: maximum employment and stable prices. The economic landscape and policy measures discussed include significant progress toward these goals, coupled with cautious adjustments

OECD's Inclusive Framework on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS)

Takeaways from the FED's MPC speech Sep 24'

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell addressed the current economic conditions, monetary policy decisions, and future outlook. He emphasized the Fed's commitment to its dual mandate of maximizing employment and stabilizing prices, noting significant progress over the past two years.

Takeaways from the FED's MPC speech Jun 24'

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell addressed the current economic conditions, monetary policy decisions, and future outlook. He emphasized the Fed's commitment to its dual mandate of maximizing employment and stabilizing prices, noting significant progress ov

Takeaways from the FED's MPC speech May 24'

In a press conference on May 1, 2024, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell addressed the economic outlook and monetary policy decisions. Here's a breakdown of key points delivered by Powell:

Takeaways from the FED's MPC speech Mar 24'

In-Depth Summary of Federal Reserve Chair Powell's Press Conference (March 20, 2024)

Instant payment systems and competition for deposits

Read my summary of the paper

Takeaways from the FED's MPC speech Nov 23'

FED chair Powell gave the MPC speech on 1 Nov 23'. Here are some crucial points from his speech.

Takeaways from the FED's MPC speech March 23'

FED chair Powell gave the MPC speech on 23 March 23'

Banks Credit and Investment Dynamics assessing portfolio rebalancing vs crowding-out

Summarizing the paper ( click here ) titled “ Banks’ Credit and Investment Dynamics: Assessing Portfolio Rebalancing and Crowding-out ” under the Reserve Bank of India Working Paper Series.* The Paper is authored by Sanjay Singh, Garima Wahi and Muneesh Kapur.

Glimpse of inter-connections between Banks and NBFCs - a balance sheet view

Shadow banking system fascinated me, especially post-2008 crisis when I realised their importance in the system. NBFCs are not allowed by the central banks, to operate in the same way as the regular banks, e.g., while banks are allowed to accept deposits (like

How do banks create money, and why other firms cannot do the same?

Read the summarized Richard Werner's paper titled " How do banks create money, and why other firms cannot do the same? An explanation for coexistence of lending and deposit taking ".

Money creation in the modern economy

Read my review

Dollar Debt in FX Swaps and forwards: huge, missing and growing

Read the summarized BIS paper titled " Dollar Debt in FX Swaps and forwards: huge, missing and growing ".

Learnings from JP's speech at Brookings Institute on Economic Outlook

Read my review

Politics and Economics of Rupee Depreciation

There has been a lot of politics behind the recent rupee depreciation, although not surprisingly! As expected, the opposition targets the party in power, trying to defend their superior performance under their purview. Likewise, the ruling party has been tryin

Moral Hazard and Operations of Shell Companies

In 2012, Jason Sharman presented a paper on "Financial Secrecy, society and vested interest" in Norway. The paper discussed whether the FATF laws to counter the anonymity issue of the shell companies effective?

Neuroeconomics: Review and Future Research Directions in the Arena of Marketing and Economics

The paper conducted a literature survey to provide perspicuous comprehension into the development of nexus between neuroscience, marketing, economics over the past decade.

Role of monetary policy on CO2 emissions in India

The study investigates the impact of monetary policy on CO2 emissions while controlling for income, trade, foreign direct investment (FDI) and accounting for structural breaks using annual data from 1971 to 2014.

Impact Evaluation Methods with Applications in Low and Middle Income Countries

The course by IMF provides an overview of empirical methods and analytical techniques for assessing the impact and effectiveness of development innovations at product and policy levels and the way to measure what's working.

Macro econometric Forecasting

The course by IMF focuses on the application of econometric techniques for modeling the dynamic behavior of macroeconomic variables, like, consumption, investment etc. and their response to policy changes.

Types of Technical progress and its implications in Solow model

My Notes based on the lecture by Prof. Alwyn Young discuss types of technical processes, Uzawa's theorem and its implications.

Intermediate Quantitatives for Economists

Read my notes

Bronze Medalists are happier than Silver Medalists - Basic Prospect Theory

Today Indian hockey team won the bronze medal, re-writing history after having won an Olympic medal after 41 years. It indeed is a time to rejoice for the entire nation. Consequently, the Prime Minister of India, Mr Modi dialled the Indian hockey team's captai

Practical aspects of growth accounting and the issue of double deflation

Here the notes discuss how TFP calculations are actually done in practicality. It also discusses sectoral output functions and uses them to derive aggregated GDP for the economy, introducing the idea of Domar weights on the go.

Economic Growth Calculations - National Accounts vs PWT

Notes based on the lecture by Prof. Alwyn Young discusses the problems of growth accounting

Growth Accounting and TFP

Notes discuss the basics of TFP. Referenced to Prof. Alwyn Young.

Behind the Penn World Table's

Notes based on the lecture by Prof. Alwyn Young discusses the math described in the paper on PWT construction (Feenstra, Inklaar and Timmer). We also discuss the older and the newer PWT's, their differences and issues.

Solow's model and the golden rule

Notes based on the lecture by Prof. Alwyn Young discuss the basics of production functions, their connection with Solow models and the golden rule.

Price Indices and Gerschenkron effects

Notes based on the lecture by Prof. Alwyn Young discuss prices and quantity indices - Laspeyres and Paasche and analyzes their behaviours. It does it for both consumption and production Gerschenkron.

Interest Rate Models

This course is the advanced level course offered by Ecole Polytechnique discusses interest rates and many related contracts like floating, fixed bonds, zero-coupon bonds, swaptions, caps, floors, swaps, forwards and futures.

Fundamentals of Quantitative Modelling

This Wharton's course teaches about the fundamentals of quantitative modelling. It is beneficial because these fundamental blocks could be added to form a more complex model at a later stage to solve various business issues.

Introductory Brownian Motion

These notes would be beneficial to individuals to understand the very basics of the Brownian Motion, which eventually would aid in understanding stochastic calculus. The notes have been made from the lectures of profbillbyrne.

Introductory Ito's Calculus

Notes have been made on the basis of lecture BEM1105X - Caltech. The course playlist can be found here

National Income Accounting

National Income Accounting is a way to measure the economic activity of a nation. However, it is quite a bit complex in nature as the data required to measure different components are not directly available.

Securing Investment returns in the long-run

Academicians from the University of Geneva and professionals from UBS discuss the famous dichotomy between active and passive investing, how to measure and analyze investment performance and the future trends in the investment management industry.

Confusing "yields" in the bond market

Now retail investors can invest in G-Secs and T-bills. Personally, I feel it is a win-win situation and a very important market gap being filled. Until now if we needed to invest in these securities, we had to go through mutual funds as individual investors.

Financial derivatives: Options

These financial instruments are not just interesting for traders and to deepen pockets but even from economics and research point of view, these instruments are fascinating.

Financial derivatives: Forwards and Futures

A derivative instrument is a contract which specifies the conditions under which a transaction will take place in the future. The price of the derivative depends on the price of another asset called as the underlying asset.

Understanding Financials of a firm

As we know, the share price of a firm, at least theoretically, are the discounted values of expected future cash flows. This method to value stock price, as discussed in the article, understanding financial markets, is called the discounted cash flow method. K

Meeting Investors Goals

Academicians from the University of Geneva and professionals from UBS dive into the concepts of rationality and irrationality and understand how they impact our investment decisions and what the consequences can be at the market level.

Understanding Financial Markets

Read my notes based on UBS's course

Behavioral Finance

Behavioural finance is the study of the effects of psychological effects on decision making on financial investors, thereby effecting market outcomes. So, basically, it studies the psychology of financial decision making

Corruption, economic growth and relative size of such leakages under UPA

Two theories are prevalent regarding the relationship between corruption and economic growth

Global Financial Crisis

Read here my notes

Modern Trade Agreements: its implications for long-run development policy

Read my summary of paper based on Rachel Denaie Thrasher and Kevin P. Gallagher paper, Boston University, September 2008, The Pardee Papers,-No.2

Trade Policy

Read my notes

Specific Factors Model

Click here to read my notes

Ricardian Trade Model

Read my notes

Heckscher Ohlin Model

Read my notes

Dynamics of External Adjustment

Dollar currency paradigm means that dollar matters a lot in global trade. So suppose, India and Brazil are involved in a bilateral trade whereby India buys oil from Brazil while Brazil buys pharmaceutical drugs from India.

Evolution of Top and Bottom CO2 emitters 1961-2010

Click here to read the analysis

Impact of COVID in developing Asian economies

- Summarised from Asian Development Bank's authors A. Abiad, M. Arao, E. Lavina, R. Platitas, J. Pagaduan, C. Jabagat's chapter in COVID in developing economies

Impact of COVID in Middle-East and North Africa

- Summarised from World Bank's authors Rabah Arezki, Rachel Yuting Fan and Ha Nguyen's chapter in COVID in developing economies

Impact of COVID in Sub-Saharan Africa

Click Here to read

Economic Risk from COVID-19 in Developing Countries

Click here to read

Non-stationarity and Unit roots - Time Series Metrics

Read my notes here

How dynamic are fuel prices?

Petrol prices were market-linked in 2010 and diesel later in 2014 for retail consumers. Although I do encourage and support this move as they would improve fiscal balance, make energy usage more sufficient and would be better for the environment as well. With

COVID in Emerging Economies

- Summarised from Constantino Hevia and Andy Neumeyer's chapter from COVID-19 in Developing Economies

Macroeconomics of Flu

The macroeconomic flu is a temporary negative supply and demand shock, that is a temporary decline in output followed by a quick recovery.

Policy Responses of Countries to COVID-19

Click here to read the compilation by the IMF containing summarized timeline and policy responses - Fiscal, Monetary etc

Rebuilding Investor Confidence in Times of Uncertainty

FDI would play an important role in the post-COVID revival of the developing world. World Bank's Global Investment Competitiveness Report 2019-20 discusses the FDI scenario before COVID and during the COVID times. It then goes ahead to suggest some possible wa

Introduction to Business Cycles

Outline:

Business Cycle Models with Labor market friction

Outline:

Business Cycle Models with Financial Market frictions

Outline:

Is Government Debt Burden for Future Generations

Read the discussion

New-Keynesian Models

Read my notes here.

Fiscal Policy and Financial Crisis Implication

Read my notes here

Dynamic Macroeconomic Models - RBC

Read my notes here.

Diamond, Mortensen, Pissarides Search Model

Read my notes here.

Health, Height and Development

My review of the paper by Angus Deaton

Vector Auto-regression

Read my notes here

Stationarity, Spectral Analysis, Asymptotics Time-Series Metrics

Outline:

Linear Regression with Panel Data: Fixed effects, First Differences

Click here to access notes.

Economics of Alternative Fuel - Biofuel

At the alarming rate with which our non-renewable resources are depleting, leaving behind the poisonous smoke, the need of the hour is to find sustainable sources of energy. I researched to understand and propose an economical way to produce one of the probabl

South Asian Financial Crisis - South Korea

Southeast Asian experience of the 1970s and 1980s consisted of high growth based on export competitiveness, low debt combined with low and stable inflation. Most of the East Asian countries were running budget surpluses. Macroeconomic fundamentals seemed well

Forecasting Dividend Yield using Stock Indices

The work examines whether it is possible to accurately forecast dividend yield using aggregate stock returns in S&P500, AfricaTop40 and CAC40 indices using weekly data from 2007 week 1 to 2016 week 47

Intro to Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence for metricians

There's no clear demarcation between ML, AI, statistics and econometrics. But there are some techniques under ML/AI that are not present in econometrics and could be quite beneficial to adopt.

Consultants to a Campaign Group - Applied Metrics

Problem Statement: A local council is planning to build a rubbish incinerator on a piece of the English countryside that is much loved and used by local residents. A neighbourhood action group that is campaigning against the planned incinerator finds some data

Panel Standard Errors and Clustering

Click here to access notes.

Instrumental Variables with applications to LATE and Dynamic Panel Models

Click here to access notes.

Differences in Differences

Read my notes here

Bootstrap

Click here to access notes.

Nash eqm vs Subgame perfect eqm

This post is especially for the new-comers to the game theory. When I had started studying these topics, I remember being struggling to properly understand the differences and get an intuition of what's happening and I had seen my friends struggle as well. The

Particle Scale Liquid Spreading in Trickle Bed Reactors

Read it here

Impact of Aadhar on Welfare in Welfare Programmes

Read here

Modern Business Cycle Model with Search Friction

The big picture in this model is that markets do not clear instantaneously to make everyone happy. There are frictions in the labour market. This Diamond, Pissarides model has real unemployment. In RBC models we witness that unemployment is voluntary in nature

Monetization of Govt Debt

There is a lot of concern in some quarters about central banks printing money to finance large budget deficits. And in other quarters there is concern that central banks are doing too little of it. Some worry that central banks are lending directly to the gove

Micro-Economics Models of Imperfect and Incomplete Information

Outline:

Impact of Openness on CO2 emissions in China

Read here

Impact of Diesel Price Deregulation on asymmetricity of Exchange rate Pass-through to inflation

India is a net importer of energy, with High-Speed-Diesel playing a central role in India’s energy dynamics. Due to this, diesel prices were passed in a controlled manner and distributed asymmetrically between favourable and unfavourable shocks. Exchange rates

Conflicts on the Optimal Umbrella Size - the Issue of RBI Fund transfer

Read it here

BoE: Understanding the central bank's balance sheet

Read here

Federal Reserve and Financial Crisis

This lecture explains what central banks do, the origin of central banking in the United States, and the experience of the Fed during the Great Depression.

Cut the clutter - The Ascent of Money

Read here

Case Study: Money Market Funds and the Commercial Paper Market

Money market funds (MMMFs) are investment companies that sell shares and invest the proceeds in short-term assets. MMMFs historically has almost always maintained stable 1 dollar share prices, so they act very much like a bank. They are usually used by institu

Government Debt, deficit and Policy Issues - Macroeconomics

Read it here

Expectations in Macroeconomics

Read it here

Long-Run Model in Macroeconomics

Read it here

Static Model for Macroeconomics in Medium Run

Read it here

Dynamic Model for Macroeconomics in Medium Run

Read it here

Intertemporal trade and Current Account balances (Model Without Investment)

Read it here

Intertemporal trade and Current Account balances (Model With Investment)

Read it here

2nd Generation Currency Crisis Model - May 04, 2019

Read here

Mundell's two country model for macroeconomic interdependence

Read here

1st Generation Currency Crisis Model

Read here

Dornbush Model of Exchange Rates

Read here

Mundell Fleming Model of Exchange Rates

Read here

Monetary Model of Exchange Rates

Read here

Understanding the basics of Applied Econometrics

Click here to view the concise self-made notes.

Stages of Economic Integration - the European Perspective

European Communities were basically three internal organizations that were governed by the same set of institutions i.e. European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC) and the European Economic Community (EEC).

Source of money creation: Out of thin air!

The Monetary Institute's "Our Money, Our Banks, Our Country - Money Creation in the Modern Economy" conference was held in Zurich, Switzerland on February 5, 2018.

Purchasing Power Parity

Law of one price says that if two goods are identical, they must sell at the same price. This happens due to arbitrageurs. If prices differ arbitrage tries to close the gap. If transaction costs are small then the prices become identical, however, if transacti

Overlapping Generations Model (OLG)

In our models so far we had assumed that agents live infinitely, which everybody knows is unrealistic. So, in this model attempt was made to relax this assumption. Also, we try to look that if generations overlap and have to trade with one another then how wil

Optimal Monetary Policy - NK model

There are two main distortions in the New Keynesian model:

New Keynesian Model (NK)

NK model takes the RBC model backbone and adds to that the price stickiness. To incorporate price stickiness we assume that firms are price-setters and thus move away from the perfect competition assumption. In the NK model we assume goods heterogeneity i.e. f

Game theory, Strategies and the convoluted triangle - India, Pakistan, Kashmir

Read here

Economic Inequalities- Catastrophe for the western civilisation?

Read it here

All you need to know about BREXIT

Read it here

Schools of Economic Thought

1. Mercantilism

Review Of Worlds Economics Growth

Read here my review

Monetarism and the Quantity Theory of Money

Monetarist school of thought gained a reputation during the 1970's when the US was battling high inflation and slow economic growth period to which the Keynesian's had no answer. According to this school of thought, the money supply is the chief determinant of

Keynesian and Monetarists business cycle models and the Investment Savings Liquidity preference Money supply curves

​According to the Keynes theory, the source of fluctuations in the aggregate demand.

Incorporating Money - Money in Utility (MIU) and Cash in Advance (CIA) models

The Real Business cycle model, as discussed in another article, does not include monetary components in its analysis. This is because in the RBC models neither holding money gives utility nor it earns interest, thus there is no motivation to hold the same. How

Demonetisation in India and its Effect on Growth

Abstract: Many questions have been raised regarding the need & efficacy of demonetization. Different sceptics have different speculations related to the impact of the move on the growth of the Indian economy, with general perception supporting the quantity the

Currency depreciation: UPA vs NDA

Ironically as the Rupee started to weaken, the politics started to heat up with politicians restarting their age-old blame game. I have witnessed several people commenting on the currency depreciation issue and linking it with UPA and NDA in some way or the ot

Business Cycles and the RBC model

This plot of log Real GNP shows the growth of real GNP in time. What we see is that the GNP has grown smoothly and consistently on average (red line) however, with some fluctuations (blue line). When the GNP deviates above the average the growth is more and ev