Raghuram Rajan

The U.S. should worry about the effects of its polices on the rest of the world. We would like to live in a world where countries take into account the effect of their policies on other countries and do what is right, broadly, rather than what is just right given the circumstances of that country.

Customers often value a good more when its price goes up. One reason may be its signaling value. An expensive handcrafted mechanical watch may tell time no more accurately than a cheap quartz model; but, because few people can afford one, buying it signals that the owner is rich.

The problem with forbearance is that it always looks like a good thing to do until it stops working.

Perhaps the hardest challenge has been to persuade the public, impatient for rapid growth, of the need to ensure stability first. Growth, it is argued, is always more important, regardless of the looming economic risks.

Too many years away from academia renders you pretty incompetent at research and teaching. So I had to go back.

The gap in India has always been between the promise and the execution.

Democratic accountability means that governments must be popularly accepted, with citizens empowered to replace corrupt or incompetent rulers.

In a world with weak aggregate demand, countries are engaging in a futile competition for a greater share of it. In the process, they are creating financial-sector and cross-border risks that will become increasingly apparent as countries exit their unconventional policies.

If developed countries' citizens want to feel slightly better about their economies' slow growth and high unemployment, they should contemplate how much worse matters could be without the institutions that they have.

The difficulty in a number of Western democracies is that the playing field is being tilted. For many in the middle class, prosperity seems unattainable because a good education - today's passport to riches - is unaffordable.

Instead of abandoning competition and giving banks protected monopolies once again, the public would be better served by making it easier to close banks when they get into trouble. Instead of making banking boring, let us make it a normal industry, susceptible to destruction in the face of creativity.

The more that everyone has access to the same educational opportunities, the more society will tend to accept some receiving disproportionate rewards. After all, they themselves have a chance to be winners.

By killing transparency and competition, crony capitalism is harmful to free enterprise, opportunity, and economic growth. And by substituting special interests for the public interest, it is harmful to democratic expression.

The first step to prescribing the right medicine is to recognize the cause of the illness. And, when it comes to what is ailing the global economy, extreme monetary easing has been more cause than cure. The sooner we recognize that, the stronger and more sustainable the global economic recovery will be.

In a competitive industry, only paranoid incumbents - those constantly striving for betterment - have any hope of surviving.

How do we get more politicians to move from 'fixing' the system to reforming the system? The obvious answer is to either improve the quality of public services or reduce the public's dependence on them. Both approaches are necessary.

Everyone may have some advise for the RBI. Some may advise, 'Cut your lending rates and raise the deposit rate.' How will a bank function? We take a medium term view. The bank has an 80-year-old history. I don't want to destroy it for a few decisions.

If anybody was to look towards a big source of demand in future, it would be hard for them to miss India.