Ajay Shah writing for the mass media (2001)
This is my alternate-Wednesdays column in Business Standard, except when stated otherwise.
- The op-ed column, 14 November 2001. kw - policy debates in India. BS carried this with a headline last ride together.
- The private placements controversy, 31 October 2001. kw - private placements, hedge funds, transparency, agency conflicts.
- How much bundling?, 17 October 2001. kw - vertical integration versus competitive sub-industries, GSM cellular phones, computing, pension sector.
- Excitement on the equity derivatives market, 3 October 2001. kw - index futures, index options, stock options, state of the market.
- The Indian equity market after the attacks, 19 September 2001. kw - new equity market, World Trade Centre bombings, government interventions.
- Banks and FIs - What should be done?, 5 September 2001. kw - banking reform, privatisation, DIC, bank closure, reducing leverage, harnessing securities.
- Information retrival from $HOME, editorial on http://www.freshmeat.net, 30 August 2001. If the URL for the article is broken, here is a local copy. kw - organising file system, email, bookmarks on the web. digital libraries, search engines applied into $HOME, non-text files.
- What growth rates are feasible?, 22 August 2001. kw - diffusion of knowledge, the Internet, implications for growth rates.
- How to get low overheads in finance, 8 August 2001. kw - overheads in banking, overheads in mutual funds, the problem of small value transactions, political economy, implications for pension reforms.
- Traditional brokers strike back, 25 July 2001. kw - strike by brokers, experience of first three weeks of new world with rolling settlement and without badla, political economy.
- The real problem is not US-64, 10 July 2001. kw - US-64, opportunity cost of bailout, political economy, banking crises, privatisation of UTI and banks.
- Index derivatives or stock options?, 27 June 2001. kw - Index futures, index options, stock options, liquidity.
- Now, we have options., 13 June 2001. kw - Nifty futures, Nifty options, arbitrage.
- The shrinking global government bond market, 30 May 2001. kw - fiscal surpluses, shrinking size of fixed income markets in OECD (except Japan), consequences, role of US dollar.
- Manipulation: What can we prove?, 16 May 2001. kw - market manipulation, liquidity, prevention versus cure, market design, anonymous trading.
- MP3 versus free speech, 2 May 2001. kw - MP3, SDMI, DCMA, Windows XP, Edward Felten, democracy, police states, music industry.
- What next on the equity market?, 18 April 2001. kw - what the new world with rolling settlement + CNS + margin trading will be like; payments system.
- Handling a crisis, 4 April 2001. kw - we have a systemic crisis on our hands, with a vicious cycle of illiquidity, liquidation of collateral, dropping stock prices; SEBI's ban on short selling is exactly wrong; should avoid a witchhunt. For once, I recommend a position: buy Nifty.
- What went wrong with the equity market?, 21 March 2001. kw - Scam 2001; leverage; risk management; exchange governance; rolling settlement; Novation at NSCC; improving BSE, CSE; limits to demutualisation; SEBI's failures.
- Why list offshore?, 7 March 2001. kw - rationale was bad Indian markets and restrictions on ownership; the former is largely behind us; there is little reason for doing an ADR or GDR unless the firm is stuck against the 24%/40% limits.
- How not to reform pensions, 21 Feb 2001. kw - what is wrong with Indian pensions today; we should avoid bundling (DB); we should avoid the government as a pension provider; we do need to build infrastructure.
- Is E-commerce dead?, 7 Feb 2001. kw - reports of the death of E-commerce are exaggerated; many E-commerce firms are winning in absolute terms even though their stock market valuations have dropped sharply in recent months.
- What's going on with the index futures?, 24 Jan 2001. kw - the state of the art on the index futures market as of 24 Jan 2001, volumes and spreads, mispricing, patterns in brokerage firms trading on the market.
- The hidden public debt, 10 Jan 2001. kw - hidden liabilities of the government of India; implicit public debt in pensions; in banking; part of it can be eliminated using better policies, the rest of it will become explicit public debt.
Dates as yet missing
- Wither price limits?, DATE. Price limits shouldn't be the main tool against manipulation; price limits convert price risk into liquidity risk; recent move to 8/16 regime is a good one.
- Should pension assets be invested in equities?, DATE. GOI bonds can at best yield the rate of wage growth; private securities can yield the marginal product of capital; problem of investment risk; what can be done about it.
- Globalisation and the brain drain, DATE. Globalisation has led to a new regime of labour mobility; middle management in India is getting hired outside India; one labour market for those with a global market and another labour market for those where transactions costs impede global mobility; wages equalise for former subject to PPP and lower taxes in India.
- A new dawn for hedging, DATE. To speculate, or to hedge? Speculation versus hedging on the equity market; long stock + short Nifty is a new level of precision in implementing speculative bets on individual stocks.
- Vulnerability on the stock market, DATE. Global equity volatility; India has little .com market cap; Indian software services firms are not .coms; Indian software services firms work primarily for global customers so if their stock prices move like those of international software services firms, it is not surprising; vulnerability within (badla, leverage).
- The razor's edge, DATE. Fiscal crisis in India, a potential growth engine in services exports, elimination of monetisation of deficits is bringing on crunch date.
- Services exports, not just software exports, DATE. kw - there's a tremendous labour arbitrage opportunity in export of a wide range of IT-enabled services, not just software, the human capital available in the labour market is better suited for these other areas.
- The perils of pay-as-you-go, DATE. kw - difficulties with EPS 1995, civil servants pension, small savings (paygo banking!).
- What makes banks fragile?, DATE. kw - obtain numerical comfort with deposit insurance premia under various asset-side assumptions.
- Building a new pension system, DATE. kw - design issues for a new pension system, rates of return, political risk, funded vs. unfunded, private vs. government securities, individual accounts vs. collectivist program, defined benefits or not.