Economy

It has been observed that the economic growth cycle coincides with the investment cycle in India. It is found that firm-level leverage could provide early signals about the movements in the investment cycle. Furthermore, a firm’s leverage adversely affects its investment activity after a threshold. Regression results, after controlling for firm’s price to book ratio and operational variables, indicate that the adverse impact of high leverage is predominant on low-growth firms. The initiatives to clean up the balance sheets of banks and deleveraging by non-financial corporates should help in the revival of the investment cycle. The results are consistent with the agency cost of debt and trade-off theory of capital structure, wherein firms set targets for leverage by balancing costs and benefits of debt.

Worker’s organisations are crucial to the government’s planned labour policy measures.

The current international financial system needs an urgent overhaul as it continues to undermine workers’ rights. The recent agreement on the “Two-Pillar Approach” that aims to tackle global corporate tax avoidance and taxing the digital economy falls short of addressing the priorities of the global South, and threatens their sovereignty.

Does the present income accounting system represent the real value of the wealth of the economy? If not, how do we evaluate the performance economy? How can the present evaluation method accommodate different aspects of the economy, society, and the environment? If these aspects are not considered in the evaluation process, can it be justified socially or environmentally? In this paper, we discuss the limitations of conventional income accounting, recent developments in environmental accounting at the international level, the progress and challenges of environmental accounting in India, and the way forward.

The continuous cuts in the goods and services tax rates will derail state finances.