The Arthashastri

Dark Side of Vaccine Development COVID-19 pandemic has already exploited economic structures and punctured health mechanisms of many countries all over the globe. But now the developed world is exploiting the pandemic itself. And these are not just the private players and companies, but governments too are looking to take advantage of this global crisis and make money out of it. As we all await an effective vaccine that many hopes will kick-start the world’s return to normalcy, geopolitics is increasingly spilling over into the vaccine race, not just with its development but also the distributional aspect, and thus complicating the matters further. This developmental race (for COVID-19) has brought   about the  ‘politicization of vaccine’. When a COVID-19 vaccine will become available, powerful leaders around the world are all likely to resort to shortsighted ‘my country first’ approaches to manage its production and distribution. In absence of an effective internation...

Consumer Behavior: Accumulated Demand and Recovery of Losses Let’s Recap: “Economics is a social science that deals with allocation of resources and concern with production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.” The utility of a good determines its demand and productivity of labor and capital determine its supply, and subsequently, equilibrium is determined in the economy. But, in this micro-economic equilibrium setup, we often disregard one important component of demand and that is ‘taste’. Consumer preferences are defined as the subject of their taste of various bundles of goods. Tastes and preferences of consumers are very important in micro-economic analysis , especially in the short-run. Why not in the long-run? Because of their volatility and erratic nature. ‘Tastes and Preference’ often impact demand and supply in the short run and especially when there are temporary supply disruptions such that the good becomes scarce in a particular market area....