New Releases by Ravi Batra

In a world of negative interest rates, extreme inequality and trillion-dollar budget deficits, it is safe to say that conventional macroeconomics needs an overhaul. Common Sense Macroeconomics is an innovative guide to various concepts of macroeconomic analysis. Presented in a student-friendly and accessible way, this textbook is an ideal introduction to all who seek to foresee economic developments and address some of the key problems of our time. Specifically, this book innovates as follows. Ravi Batra, a Professor of Economics at Southern Methodist University and known for his accurate forecasts such as the 2008 crash, argues that the goal of macroeconomics is to raise the living standard of all, not just a privileged few. Contrary to popular belief, relentless monetary expansion to finance budget deficits actually makes the rich richer and the poor poorer, which has been happening all over the world. Ethical policies and efficiency that create general prosperity go together. In order to increase everyone''s income, governments should generate competition and outlaw mergers among large and profitable firms. Inequality arises from monopoly capitalism, because then wages lag behind productivity and generate a rising wage-productivity gap. This is the ultimate source of almost all economic troubles and imbalances. While the growing gap is inherently unfair, it also leads to vast income disparity and wealth concentration, stock market bubbles and crashes, recessions and eventually depressions. It is the rise in the wage gap that preceded the Great Depression of the 1930s and now the Great Recession of 2008. Hence governments should not stifle competition and vigorously enforce anti-trust laws. Macroeconomic equilibrium nowadays requires that Supply = Demand + New Debt

As COVID-19 pandemic gains foothold worldwide, all spheres of life, including daily activities, education, economic, social sectors experienced significant downturns. While COVID-19 affects all population subgroups, college students are particularly vulnerable given their transition to the emerging adulthood surrounded by a broad possibility of future. According to a mounting evidence, college students bear a disproportionate burden of psychosocial morbidities, which can be explained by the uncertainties surrounding the course of the pandemic and the sudden transition to online education. Moreover, many businesses scaled down their recruitment efforts leaving limited employment for students and more competition in the graduate labor market. COVID-19 pandemic has set up a ,Äúperfect storm,Äù for students to initiate or relapse of maladaptive behaviors to alleviate their negative feelings. This is where ,ÄúDeaths of Despair,Äù comes into play. This chapter aims to reflect on the factors contributing to ,ÄúDeaths of Despair,Äù among college students in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic. Author of this chapter would like to advocate for developing tailored interventions to promote the post-traumatic growth among college students.

This is a textbook on macroeconomic principles that explains what other texts have not been able to explain about the Great Recession of 2007

The year 2010 marked when the National Bureau of Economic Research declared an end to the Great Recession. The economy had shed over six million jobs in 2008 and 2009, but few had been recalled to work by 2010. Today, government policies have yet to make a significant dent in unemployment. In End Unemployment Now, Ravi Batra explores why this is the case. He explains how joblessness can be completely eliminated—in just two years, and without the help of our painfully incompetent Congress. The President and the Federal Reserve have the legal authority to generate free-market conditions that will quickly end the specter of unemployment, all without involving Congress. Some examples of how to end unemployment without congressional intrusion: • Creating a bank by the FDIC to compete with banking giants and then charging only 5% interest rates on credit card balances, instead of the standard 10-35% seen today • Banning mergers among large and profitable firms, as such mergers directly cause layoffs and reinforce monopoly capitalism • Aid to small businesses in the form of cheap loans and government contracts, because small firms have been real job creators since 1980, while Big Business has been a job destroyer • Offer retiree bonds to increase the incomes of pensioners who live on savings and whose incomes have been practically destroyed by the collapse of interest rates • Bring oil prices down to $20/barrel, which would lower a gallon of gas to $1.50

For two decades Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has held reign over economic policy, outlasting three presidents. His long tenure has had a profound effect on global economics and on individuals. In this hard-hitting exposé, international bestselling author Ravi Batra takes sharp aim at Greenspan''s policies since he came into power. Greenomics, Batra argues, has extracted trillions of dollars from the American middle class and sharply benefited the rich, while protecting big business. Batra proves that Greenomics has also been responsible for periods of irrational exuberance, and exposes the wild inconsistencies in his social security plans. Greenspan''s Fraud explores Greenspan''s influences and motivations and the discrepancies between his words and actions, while revealing how his policies have national and global impact.

In The New Golden Age, bestselling author and economist Ravi Batra identifies the roadblocks to economic prosperity--and what we need to do to overcome them. Bringing the same insight and expertise that made books like The Downfall of Capitalism and Communism international bestsellers, Batra takes on falling minimum wages, corporate scandals, rocketing oil prices, and many of the other crises facing the world economy. He also offers an expansive, optimistic vision of how the international community can address them and bring about something historically unprecedented: true global economic prosperity.

''''Reflections is immense pleasure & thought - provoking. Gentle rhythm in the poems and lucid, tasteful expressions on themes which are undoubtedly laudable is soothing & rejuvenates one in one''s otherwise busy & tension- ridden life." Shri Loknath Misra (Ex-Governor) Assam " In Reflections, the poet''s sense of commitment to the readers as friend, philosopher and guide has found its pristine expression in each line of the poems impeccable style & chaste manner. Subjects addressed cover vast tapestry." Shri M V Dieghe (Ex Governor) Meghalaya

This book is step-by-step practical tool for a truly liberated life. It would help any reader to understand life threadbare and then manage it based on ancient Indian wisdom, universal love, and human values.

We construct a general equilibrium model of trade and show that an economy can experience technological progress and declining real wages provided that it is open to trade and import demand is sufficiently inelastic in both countries. This is a puzzling outcome so far as marginal productivity paradigm is concerned. In this context we demonstrate that new technology works differently in a closed vs an open economy. In an open economy, technical improvements may generate a fall in labor real earnings, but not in a closed economy. In addition, technical progress in manufacturing must increase manufacturing-service wage gap according to marginal productivity doctrine. We show that the opposite outcome can occur theoretically in an open economy - yet another seemingly puzzling labor market outcome.

It is well known that nations with high trade deficits normally have higher interest rates than those with surplus or balanced trade. However, such has not been the case with the USA, which has seen a relentless trade deficit since 1982. Its interest rates have been lower than those prevailing in many trade-surplus nations. Furthermore, these rates fell even as the trade shortfall shot up, generating an interest-rate paradox. This paper demonstrates that, unlike for other nations, the rising trade deficit itself became the cause of lower US interest rates, and this happened because of the world''s strong interest in maintaining a high value of the dollar.

''The Splendour of Lodi Road is a wonderful "must" for Dilliwallahs as well as for the thousands of tourists and other people who visit this city. Ravi Batra has captured the historical essence of the monuments on this road in utterly delightful paintings. There is a gentle transparency, a lyrical fluidity, a dreamlike impression when reality is rendered in watercolours.''- Malvika SinghIn the words of Ravi Batra ''There is perhaps no other road in Delhi, or even the whole world, which connects, over a distance of just four kilometres, a unique heritage gateways, mosques, tombs, gardens and even a step-well and a bridge. They were built during successive empires and over several centuries, with different architectural styles and building materials. They include Humayun''s Tomb a UNESCO World Heritage site''. The text provides historical, architectural and anecdotal information on each monument.

Using a Heckscher-Ohlin model, this paper re-examines Robert Mundell''s famous thesis that free trade and unimpeded capital mobility are perfect substitutes. Under very general conditions which, according to many economists, have caused international convergence of factor rewards, we show that in a polluted environment free trade is inferior to free international investment. This happens even though commodity prices and factor rewards are the same with both policies. The practical side of our thesis is that the world will be better off by reducing the volume of trade while removing all barriers to foreign direct investment that at present hamper the service industries.

The purpose of this paper is to incorporate the currently mushrooming phenomenon of outsourcing into the standard two-sector, two-factor Heckscher-Ohlin model of international trade. We first show how outsourcing modifies a firm''s production function, and then demonstrate that outsourcing generally raises the return to capital and lowers the real wage, although the nation''s GDP rises in proportion to the value-added in the outsourcing industry. Furthermore, the output of the outsourcing sector may actually fall even though its unit cost goes down; the output of the other sector then rises. By contrast, employment in the outsourcing sector may actually rise.

Outsourcing has become an increasingly contentious subject ever since N. Gregory Mankiw remarked in 2004 that outsourcing is just another way of doing international trade, and must be beneficial to the nation, including the workers. We construct a simple two-sector specific-factor model and explore the validity of Mankiw''s remarks. We find his ideas are valid when the country does not produce any outsourced factor''s work at home in that both the laborers and the nation benefit. But when some outsourced factor cum intermediate good is also produced at home, the nation still benefits but the workers may suffer.

Currency depreciation has been studied conventionally in terms of three hypotheses - the elasticities approach, the monetary approach and the absorption approach. In this paper we offer another hypothesis called the price approach, wherein the balance of payment disequilibrium results from an inappropriate price level. Specifically, a country has a trade surplus if the equilibrium price level is below that compatible with balanced trade; by contrast, it has a trade deficit if the price level is above that compatible with balanced trade. We illustrate the price approach with the experience of currency devaluations that have occurred in emerging markets since 1997.

Focusing on a variety of places and personalities, trains and planes, houses and spouses—whatever catches the author''s fancy—these observations of life offer entertainment, amusement, and insight. Providing a view into life''s sojourn within the world at large, these colorful and creative essays find the extraordinary in the ordinary.

We offer a new paradigm to understand the effects of trade on factor rewards. It utilizes the classical-Keynesian model, and shows that normally a country''s trade deficit hurts labor by lowering the real wage, but benefits the owners of capital. The effects of tariffs on factor rewards and employment are opposite to those of the trade deficit, which falls with a rise in the tariff rate. Countries with trade shortfalls unambiguously benefit from their tariffs, because laborers far outnumber capitalists, who suffer from the declining interest rate. Thus, tariffs lead to a rise in social welfare in trade-deficit countries.

The paper explains most, if not all, observations made by the empirical literature regarding the behavior of skilled and unskilled real wages in the United States, especially those since 1980. Generalizing the Stopler-Samuelson theorem, the authors show that the nontraded sector is critical to explaining the effects of changes in the price of traded goods on relative and absolute wages. Factor-intensities play their role as in the traditional Stolper-Samuelson model, but the output of the nontraded sector matters as well. Specifically, freer trade benefits capital and hurts both the skilled and unskilled labor if the import as well as the nontraded sectors contract. This is a new result to the literature on Stolper-Samuelson issues.

The paper examines three popular models that form the foundation of modern economics. The author concludes that two of the three, the classical and the Keynesian, are seriously deficient in logic, whereas the third, dealing with gains from trade, is partially lacking in logic. Classical and neo-Keynesian approaches require desired investment to expand during recessions, whereas the trade model requires real GDP to rise without any rise in employment, capital stock, or technology. The paper offers an alternative macro framework that is free from the limitations of conventional models. Money is either neutral or non-neutral, depending on whether the economy is operating below or at full capacity. Wages are strictly determined in the labor market, yet employment is influenced by aggregate demand. The alternative model thus combines the attractive features of classical and Keynesian frameworks.

[This book is written in Japanese.] This book is one of the Tachibana Publishing Future Book Series (Japanese Edition), a series of books with the world’s leading futurists and social analysts. This series looks at future perspectives in a variety of fields- economics, ecology, management, leadership, stock markets, culture, and social issues. Ravi Batra published Stock Market Crashes in 1997, after the Asian crisis hit the newsstands. He predicted the US stock market drop in August 1998, as well as the market recovery when the Fed raised it’s rates — both happened. He is predicting another crash in 1999, resulting in the collapse of the "American Business Empire." Batra always offers interesting insights in his books. As in his earlier books, The Downfall of Capitalism and Communism (1978), he credits many of his ideas for economic reform as well as social historical analysis to his late Indian teacher P.R. Sarkar

As an antidote to our economic ills—the federal deficit, our reliance on foreign imports, widespread downsizing, environmental destruction—Dr. Batra sets out a five-year plan for economic revival that includes raising tariffs on imports, banning mergers among giant firms, and encouraging domestic competition by splitting huge corporations into smaller units. In a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal, Pat Buchanan named The Myth of Free Trades as one of the cornerstones of his protectionist economic policy. Written by Dr. Ravi Batra, bestselling economist and author of The Great Depression of 1990, The Myth of Free Trade throws down the gauntlet to economic orthodoxy and challenges the gospel of free trade. Dr. Batra states that "laissez-faire has wrecked U.S. industry and shattered the American dream."

Dr. Ravi Batra shocked the nation with his financial predictions in the runaway bestseller, The Great Depression of 1990. Now in this lifesaving sequel, Dr. Batra showsome out on top. Clear, straightforward and thought-provoking . . .--Newport News Daily Press.