On November 3, 2021, the Federal Open Market Committee announced that it would reduce the scale of its asset purchases by $15 billion a month starting immediately. Do emerging markets, such as India, need to prepare for a replay of the taper tantrum of 2013? We show that emerging markets, including India, have strengthened their external economic and financial positions since 2013. At the same time, fiscal deficits are much wider, and public debts are much heavier. As U.S. interest rates now begin moving up, servicing existing debts and preventing the debt-to-GDP ratio from rising still further will become more challenging. Either taxes have to be raised or public spending must be cut to generate additional revenues for debt servicing.
On November 3, 2021, the Federal Open Market Committee announced that it would reduce the scale of its asset purchases by $15 billion a month starting immediately. Do emerging markets, such as India, need to prepare for a replay of the taper tantrum of 2013? We show that emerging markets, including India, have strengthened their... Read More
Poonam Gupta is the Director General of National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), India’s largest economic policy think tank; a member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister; and a member of the Advisory Council to the 16th Finance Commission. She joined NCAER in 2021 after working at senior positions for nearly two decades at... Read More
Barry Eichengreen is George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Chair and Distinguished Professor of Economics and Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1987. He is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (Cambridge, Massachusetts) and Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic... Read More