GVCs |Low carbon growth |Trade policy| Financial inclusion| Author of Global Cooperation & G20 Role of Finance Track & Global Value Chains & the Missing Links
New Delhi, India
Joined September 2017
- Tweets15.1K
- Following606
- Followers1.2K
- Likes10.8K
Saon Ray retweeted
#COP31: New network aims to unlock carbon finance for developing countries.
Launching 12 November in Antalya, the Global Carbon Market Network will connect exchanges and market actors to build trust and channel investment into climate projects.
📍 unctad.org/meeting/cop31-sid…
Saon Ray retweeted
India’s electric car exports are expanding across European markets, highlighting the growing reach of the country’s electric vehicle manufacturing sector.
Growing exports offer Indian electric vehicle manufacturers greater access to international markets and new opportunities to expand their global presence.
#ElectricMobility #ElectricVehicles #IndiaExports #DoC_GoI @PIB_India @RajeshAgrawal94
Saon Ray retweeted
My VoxEU column on my new NBER WP: "The Global Office"
👉Service value chains are expanding faster than industrial ones
👉their geography is strikingly different.
🌟A US-centred star rather than regional blocs dominated by China.
👉This column documents the shift from factories to offices and argues that differences in production processes call for new theory, new empirical approaches, and new development thinking.
🔗cepr.org/voxeu/columns/globa…
Saon Ray retweeted
The Indian government is reviewing local content requirements for shipbuilding subsidies.
What is going on?
Effective industrial policies need to be both flexible and strict. Let me explain.
(1/n)
infra.economictimes.indiatim…
Saon Ray retweeted
East Asia's explosive economic growth did not happen automatically or by accident. It was the product of deliberate, sustained investment in the infrastructure and institutions that let cities do what they do best, @WorldBankGroup's @Paschald explains. project-syndicate.org/commen…
Saon Ray retweeted
🪨⛏️ #CriticalMinerals now feature in most trade and economic agreements—but are these deals delivering for producers and the climate?
Our latest deep dive explores #CRM partnerships, their benefits & priorities for future deals.
🔗bit.ly/4ivL6yJ 1/2
ALT An open-pit mine with two water-filled sections, one turquoise and the other reddish-brown, under a clear sky. The upper part of the image shows terraced excavation levels. Text overlay reads: "NEW ARTICLE - Critical Minerals Diplomacy: What over 200 agreements reveal." IISD logo is at the bottom.
Saon Ray retweeted
We are offering free and priority access (including for commercial applications) to our national river flow datasets to researchers, NGOs, consultancies, and Indian startups. Please fill this form: forms.gle/62YVnFPSvbAw6ziZ7
ILDAS-Flows is a high-resolution streamflow reanalysis product developed using the Indian Land Data Assimilation System (ILDAS), an integrated hydrologic–hydrodynamic modeling framework for the rivers and floodplains of the Indian subcontinent. Built on a 12 m river network, it provides daily streamflow estimates from 1948 to 2022 in 500,000+ river reaches, assimilating gauge observations from over 200 discharge stations through a Localized Ensemble Kalman Filter (LEnKF). For each river reach, the dataset includes daily discharge, annual maximum discharge and its date of occurrence, 2- to 100-year return-period flood estimates, flood seasonality indices, and fitted flood frequency distribution parameters. Reach metadata include reach and downstream reach identifiers, stream order, upstream drainage area, reach length, slope, coordinates and basin name.
ILDAS: hydrosense.gitbook.io/ildas
HydroSense Lab: hydrosense.iitd.ac.in/
ILDAS-Flows is provided “as is,” without warranties or liability for its use, and must not be relied upon for critical decisions without independent verification and expert assessment.
Saon Ray retweeted
Upfront Capital Support is the new PLI.
Today, the Union Cabinet has approved up to 30% capex support for lithium and nickel processing plants.
Unlike PLI, where support comes after production starts, upfront capital support comes in tranches as firms meet specific milestones. The same technique was used for chip fabs and chip assembly plants.
What this does not yet resolve is the price-shock risk processing firms face. For that, processors will have to lock in long-term purchase agreements with price-floor guarantees with buyers.
Source: @PIB_India
Saon Ray retweeted
How does infrastructure shape development?
Infrastructure Foundations presents the first exhaustive global database of physical #infrastructure assets, offering an unprecedented view of infrastructure across more than 150 countries: wrld.bg/bXbY50ZbYfg
Saon Ray retweeted
Sharing a report that I co-authored with Rajeswari Sengupta on "#India in the eye of the storm: How to read the rupee weakness".
Few large economies are as exposed to the Iran war as India. It imports nearly 90 percent of its oil and most of its cooking gas, much of it through the Strait of Hormuz, and the Gulf is a key trading partner and home to millions of Indian workers. The war has hit through several channels: a much higher energy bill, pressure on food and fertiliser prices, costlier shipping and a widening current account deficit. Growth has held up so far, but inflation is rising and the Reserve Bank has switched from easing to tightening.
The Indian rupee has been steadily depreciating since the war began but the war is not the only factor responsible for the rupee’s fall. It was a stress test that exposed a problem years in the making. The rupee was already sliding in 2025, while growth was the fastest of any major economy and inflation close to zero. Strong fundamentals should lift a currency. In India, the opposite happened.
The reason lies in the capital account. The external deficit is modest, but India no longer attracts enough durable foreign capital to pay for it. Foreign direct investment has largely bypassed India for East Asia, and much of what arrives soon leaves again. Portfolio flows fill the gap, and they leave precisely when most needed.
For investors, the key is to separate the cyclical from the structural. Part of the outflow reflects an expensive equity market that has deflated and a global rush into the AI trade, where India offers little exposure. That part can reverse. The rest reflects an economy that produces too little of what it needs and exports too little of what it produces.
The Reserve Bank’s response has bought time but not changed this picture. Heavy FX intervention, curbs on currency derivatives markets and an emergency deposit scheme have avoided a disorderly collapse, but raised hedging costs, reduced the reserve buffer and signalled anxiety to markets.
Our recommendation is therefore to let the adjustment run its course. Once Indian assets become sufficiently cheaper, a rebound may come, but a cyclical bounce would not fix the underlying weakness.
The time to invest is when the government moves on the reforms we set out: letting the rupee float freely, restoring credible protection for foreign investors, cutting input tariffs, implementing the trade agreements it signed and accelerating electrification to cut energy imports. That would strengthen the rupee for the right reasons and mark a genuine entry point.
research.natixis.com/Site/en…
Saon Ray retweeted
Which jobs help households escape poverty—and which help them avoid falling into it? The answer changes with a country’s level of development.
In “One Ladder Does Not Fit All: Jobs and Poverty Transitions Across the Globe,” Maurizio Bussolo, Iván Torre, and Hernan Winkler examine household panel data from 41 countries. This @WorldBankGroup Policy Research Working Paper contributed to the Poverty, Prosperity, and Planet Report 2026.
In the poorest economies, moving into non-agricultural self-employment is at least as strongly associated with escaping poverty as moving into wage employment. As economies develop, the association between wage employment and poverty exit strengthens, while that of non-agricultural self-employment weakens.
The type of employment is closely associated with a household’s chances of escaping poverty, while access to almost any employment is associated with a lower risk of falling into it.
For policy, this means that expanding opportunity requires understanding where people work, the alternatives available to them, and how these change as economies transform.
More and better jobs remain central to lasting poverty reduction. Making that agenda effective requires policies adapted to each economy—and attention to both upward mobility and protection against setbacks.
Read the paper: documents.worldbank.org/en/p…
Saon Ray retweeted
What comes after globalization?
The world as we know it is a product of globalization — and this era of globalization might be coming to a close.
jacobin.substack.com/p/what-…
Saon Ray retweeted
classic lant pritchett, vindicated yet again.
India saw about 496 million people lifted out of poverty between 2011 and 2023 in one of the world’s fastest declines in this metric, the World Bank said, although the gains remain uneven. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Saon Ray retweeted
India's engineering exports are now at 122.4 billion $, accounting for nearly 28% of total merchandise exports. Automobiles, industrial machinery, iron & steel products and electrical machinery account for ~70% of engineering goods exports. Diversification of the exported commodities could drive growth higher.
etedge-insights.com/industry…
Saon Ray retweeted
Not sure which difference-in-differences estimator fits your study?
Clément de Chaisemartin's team made a free guide that asks a few questions and points you to the right methods.
Tool: credible-answers.github.io/W…
Subscribe: assistweekly.org
Saon Ray retweeted
El MIT ha presentado un informe histórico, que suscribo, elaborado por su Comité Ad Hoc, sobre el uso de la IA en la enseñanza, el aprendizaje y la formación en investigación, en el que propone una reorganización profunda de su modelo académico/educativo ante el avance de la IA generativa, entre lo que destaca, entre muchos otros aspectos:
– Diseño inverso (Backward Design): Se insta a los profesores a definir primero qué deben saber, comprender y valorar los estudiantes, para luego decidir en qué puntos específicos la IA suma o resta al aprendizaje.
– Enfoque de aumento, no de automatización: La meta no es prohibir la IA, sino rediseñar los programas y cursos para que la tecnología apoye el pensamiento crítico sin permitir la rendición cognitiva (cuando los estudiantes recurren a la IA antes de intentar resolver por sí mismos un problema difícil).
– Nuevos métodos de evaluación: Se desaconseja el uso de detectores de IA, por considerarlos poco fiables y propensos a generar desconfianza. En su lugar, se propone un mayor uso de exámenes orales, evaluación continua, proyectos prácticos, portafolios con revisiones presenciales y componentes sociales en cada área temática.
El informe propone 8 principios medulares para guiar la integración de la IA generativa en la educación superior:
· Sé humilde (Be humble): Reconocer que el ritmo del cambio tecnológico es demasiado rápido como para establecer reglas permanentes, lo que requiere flexibilidad constante.
· Sé audaz (Be bold): Afrontar la situación de forma proactiva mediante el rediseño profundo de los planes de estudio, en lugar de aplicar parches defensivos.
· Pon a la humanidad en el centro (Put humanity front and center): Priorizar las relaciones interpersonales, el florecimiento humano y el valor de la educación residencial (de humanos enseñando a humanos).
· Sumérgete en el aprendizaje / Preserva el esfuerzo constructivo (Lean into learning): Entender que el esfuerzo cognitivo y la dificultad son esenciales para aprender; obtener una respuesta rápida de una IA no equivale a adquirir conocimiento.
· Enseña con intencionalidad (Teach with intentionality): Diseñar las clases con propósitos claros, evitando tanto las prohibiciones reflexivas como los mandatos ciegos de la IA.
· No hay una solución única para todos (No one size fits all): El nivel de formación importa; una política o herramienta adecuada para un doctorando puede resultar perjudicial para un alumno de primer año que aún está construyendo sus bases conceptuales.
· Aumentación, no automatización (Augmentation, not automation): Utilizar la IA para elevar el nivel de los problemas que un estudiante puede resolver (potenciar el pensamiento), en lugar de delegar por completo la capacidad humana de pensar.
· Piensa más allá del aula y del campus (Think beyond the classroom and the campus): Considerar el impacto de la IA en el desarrollo integral de los estudiantes como personas y ciudadanos en el mundo exterior.
PUEDE LEER EL REPORTE EN INGLÉS EN: bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.…
Saon Ray retweeted
My new NBER WP is up! nber.org/papers/w35975
👉The Global Office: How Globalisation's Frontier is Shifting from Factories to Offices.
1⃣ Portrait of the Global Office side by side with the Global Factory.
2⃣ Five stylised facts:
1) The Office is larger in world GDP but smaller in world trade. Intermediate services exports have grown faster since 2008.
2) All export-linked net job creation since 2008 has been in digitally delivered services (DDS), not manufacturing. Trade-linked DDS jobs pay more.
3) The Global Office is star-shaped with the US as the star; the Global Factory is bloc-shaped, dominated by China.
4) DDSx exports are less sensitive to distance but more sensitive to time zones.
5) Export-led development is shifting to the Office.
Saon Ray retweeted
Super interesting!
"Winners and Losers: Competition, Creative Destruction, and Labor Income Risk" by Brice Green, Leonid Kogan, Dimitris Papanikolaou, and Lawrence D. W. Schmidt.
"Using U.S. administrative data, we find that technology-driven creative destruction in the product market passes through to worker earnings. The passthrough to incumbent worker earnings is both asymmetric and concentrated: profit drops from rival innovations lead to proportionally greater earnings declines and changes in the likelihood of job destruction than profit gains from their own firm’s innovations, while top workers are significantly more exposed than the average worker. We develop an endogenous-growth model with monopsonistic labor markets and worker heterogeneity that replicates this asymmetry and the distribution of earnings risk. In the model, creative destruction exposes highincome workers to concentrated downside risk while increasing upward mobility for lower-income workers, shaping the welfare consequences of innovation policy."
conference.nber.org/conf_pap…
Saon Ray retweeted
New research by @AditiBhowmick18 et al finds that upward mobility in South Asia is higher in cities, with the urban mobility premium substantially higher for women
than for men. Mechanisms are less patriarchal social norms and higher returns to education
paulnovosad.com/pdf/fuma.pdf
