Since 2017, China has adopted the "tolerant and prudent" policy in regulating emerging digital platform industries. Wei Zhang, Hao Qi and Zhongjin Li conduct an analysis for the cities of Nanjing and Beijing that finds that although these regulations can help reduce labor precarity in the marketplace for licensed drivers, they have exacerbated precarity in the workplace. This is because the ridehailing platforms aligned with third-party rental companies that provide licensed vehicles. This has forced drivers bounded by a rental or rent-to-own agreement to work significantly longer hours than counterparts who drive their own vehicles.

>> Watch interview from the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)>> Learn more about "How China Escaped Shock Therapy." In an interview with INET's Rob Johnson, Isabella Weber discusses her new book on how China managed its transition from central planning to markets.

Sripad Motiram and Vamsi Vakulabharanam deploy a socio-spatial approach and use a spatially representative survey in Hyderabad and Mumbai to analyze the relation between city, space, and religion. They identify poor-ghettos and elite-enclaves in Hyderabad and Mumbai. In both cities, ghettos have a high proportion of Muslims, while enclaves are dominated by non-Muslim inhabitants. Ghettoization of Muslims is far more pronounced in Hyderabad than in Mumbai. A key finding on the relation between city space and religion is that compared to segregated neighborhoods, mixed (“grayer”) neighborhoods produce better economic outcomes like lower poverty.

In “Hindutva, Economic Neoliberalism and the Abuse of Economic Statistics in India,” Jayati Ghosh describes how, at first sight, Prime Minister Modi’s unabashedly pro-big capital agenda could seem contradictory to his politics of hatred that severely disrupt economic growth. However, the ability of the government to persuade the public that the economy is doing well serves the neoliberal agenda by taming the resentment of the poor and enabling further concentration of wealth. The manipulation and/or destruction of the statistical system are decisive to the Modi government’s project.