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The concept of 'Jobless Growth' refers to a macroeconomic phenomenon where a country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) expands significantly, but the ___ remains stagnant or fails to generate proportional employment opportunities.
- employment elasticity (or labor market)
- snob
- notice
- Paper Gold
Answer: employment elasticity (or labor market)
Jobless growth typically occurs when economic expansion is driven by capital-intensive sectors (like heavy manufacturing or high-end IT) or rapid automation, rather than labor-intensive sectors (like textiles or agriculture). This creates a severe structural imbalance where the wealth of the nation grows, but the masses do not see corresponding improvements in livelihoods or wage employment.
In the context of sovereign debt, a '___ Bond' is specifically issued by a government or corporation to raise capital exclusively for financing projects that have positive environmental or climate-related benefits.
- Rules
- Green
- 279A
- Governing Council
Answer: Green
Green Bonds have gained immense traction globally as nations transition toward net-zero emissions. The funds raised are strictly ring-fenced and audited for use in renewable energy, clean transportation, or sustainable water management projects. The RBI and the Government of India have recently started issuing Sovereign Green Bonds to fund public sector sustainability initiatives.
The 'Gig Economy' is characterized by short-term contracts or freelance work as opposed to permanent jobs, and the workers participating in this ecosystem are legally and economically classified as ___ workers.
- 1965
- indifference
- middle-income (and creditworthy low-income)
- gig
Answer: gig
Gig workers, such as ride-hailing drivers or food delivery partners, operate outside the traditional employer-employee relationship. While this model offers flexibility, it raises significant economic and policy challenges regarding the lack of social security, health insurance, and job stability, prompting recent government initiatives to draft welfare codes specifically for unorganized and gig workers.
The 'Fiscal Multiplier' measures the ratio of the change in national income to the initial change in ___ that caused it.
- six
- Demand deposits
- government spending (or autonomous expenditure)
- below
Answer: government spending (or autonomous expenditure)
When the government injects a certain amount of money into the economy (e.g., building a highway), that money becomes income for workers, who then spend a portion of it, creating income for others. The fiscal multiplier quantifies this ripple effect, showing how an initial $1 of government spending can ultimately generate more than $1 in total GDP growth.
The phenomenon where inflation pushes taxpayers into higher income tax brackets, resulting in an increase in their tax burden without any actual increase in their real purchasing power, is known as ___.
- not (or never)
- 41
- Paris
- bracket creep (or fiscal drag)
Answer: bracket creep (or fiscal drag)
Bracket creep occurs in progressive tax systems where tax brackets are not indexed to inflation. As nominal wages rise merely to keep pace with inflation, individuals are pushed into higher marginal tax rates. This stealthily increases government revenue at the expense of the taxpayer's real disposable income, acting as a hidden tax.
The 'Ease of Doing Business' index, which was historically published by the World Bank and used to rank countries on regulatory efficiency, was discontinued in 2021 due to data irregularities and is being replaced by a new framework called ___.
- Consumer Price Index (CPI)
- B-READY (or Business Ready)
- gig
- NPCI (or National Payments Corporation of India)
Answer: B-READY (or Business Ready)
The World Bank scrapped the flagship Ease of Doing Business report following an ethics audit that revealed data manipulation in previous editions. To restore credibility, the Bank launched the 'Business Ready' (B-READY) project, which aims to evaluate the business environment with a more robust, transparent, and balanced methodology that includes labor rights and environmental sustainability.
To provide long-term, patient capital for India's massive infrastructure needs and to avoid the asset-liability mismatches faced by commercial banks, the government established the ___ in 2021.
- banks
- snob
- capital
- NaBFID (or National Bank for Financing Infrastructure and Development)
Answer: NaBFID (or National Bank for Financing Infrastructure and Development)
NaBFID was set up as a specialized Development Financial Institution (DFI) with a target to support the National Infrastructure Pipeline. Unlike commercial banks that rely on short-term deposits, NaBFID raises long-term funds from domestic and international capital markets, providing the crucial long-gestation 'patient capital' required for massive, multi-year infrastructure projects.
The economic concept of ___ refers to a state of resource allocation where it is impossible to make any one individual better off without making at least one other individual worse off.
- tangent
- technological
- Refinery Products
- Pareto Efficiency (or Pareto Optimality)
Answer: Pareto Efficiency (or Pareto Optimality)
Named after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, this concept defines the absolute maximum efficiency of an economy. When a market reaches Pareto Efficiency, all mutually beneficial trades have been exhausted. Any further reallocation of goods or resources will inevitably harm someone, meaning no net societal welfare can be generated without redistribution.
The 'Bad Bank' or the National Asset Reconstruction Company Ltd (NARCL), set up to aggregate and resolve bad loans from Indian banks, is backed by government guarantees and works in tandem with the ___ for the actual management and recovery of these stressed assets.
- Veblen
- IDRCL (or India Debt Resolution Company Ltd)
- Total receipts excluding borrowings
- 2003
Answer: IDRCL (or India Debt Resolution Company Ltd)
The NARCL is designed to acquire the stressed assets from banks by issuing Security Receipts (SRs). However, the NARCL acts primarily as an aggregator. The actual operational work of managing these bad assets, formulating resolution plans, and executing recoveries is outsourced to the IDRCL, which is majority-owned and managed by private sector professionals.
The economic practice of exporting a product to a foreign market at a price that is lower than the price charged in its home market, or lower than its cost of production, is known as ___.
- dumping
- John Maynard Keynes
- dividend (or window of opportunity)
- substitutes
Answer: dumping
Dumping is considered a predatory and unfair trade practice under WTO rules. It is often used by foreign producers to capture market share or drive domestic competitors out of business. To counter this, importing nations can impose 'Anti-Dumping Duties' to level the playing field and protect their domestic industries from material injury.
When a worker is employed for fewer hours than they are capable of and willing to work, resulting in underutilization of their labor capacity, this specific condition is termed as ___ unemployment.
- Rules
- product
- public
- underemployment
Answer: underemployment
Underemployment is a severe issue in developing economies like India, often manifesting visibly in the gig economy or invisibly in agriculture (disguised unemployment). It means the economy is not generating enough full-time, productive jobs, leading to lower aggregate wages, reduced purchasing power, and wasted human capital potential.
Payments Banks, a new category of niche banks introduced by the RBI based on the Nachiket Mor Committee recommendations, can accept demand deposits but are strictly prohibited from undertaking any ___ activities.
- two
- lending (or credit)
- decrease (or reduce / lower)
- 1999
Answer: lending (or credit)
Payments Banks are designed to provide safe, secure, and widespread payment and remittance services to migrant laborers and low-income households. While they can accept deposits (up to a specified limit) and issue debit cards, they cannot issue credit cards or lend money directly. They must invest their mobilized deposits in safe government securities and SLR-eligible bonds.
The MUDRA Bank, launched to provide funding to the non-corporate, non-farm small/micro enterprises, operates under the tagline 'Funding the ___'.
- inflation
- Rules
- Unfunded
- public
Answer: Unfunded
MUDRA stands for Micro Units Development and Refinance Agency. Its core mandate is to 'Fund the Unfunded' by providing institutional credit to millions of small entrepreneurs, street vendors, and artisans who traditionally fall outside the purview of formal banking channels and rely on exorbitant informal moneylenders.
According to the Law of ___ Utility, the additional satisfaction a consumer gains from consuming one more unit of a good decreases as the total consumption of that good increases.
- Diminishing Marginal
- Lewis
- 1965
- indirect
Answer: Diminishing Marginal
This fundamental law explains why demand curves slope downward. As a person consumes more units of a specific commodity (like glasses of water on a hot day), the urgency and satisfaction derived from each successive unit fall, eventually reaching zero (satiety) or even becoming negative if overconsumption occurs.
The ___ model of economic growth posits that long-term per capita economic growth is driven primarily by exogenous technological progress, rather than just capital accumulation and labor force expansion.
- frictional
- Washington
- Tarapore
- Solow (or Solow-Swan)
Answer: Solow (or Solow-Swan)
The Neoclassical Solow-Swan growth model demonstrates that merely adding more capital and labor will eventually lead to diminishing returns. It concludes that sustained, long-term increases in living standards and per capita income can only be achieved through continuous, exogenous technological advancements that improve total factor productivity.
The 'JAM Trinity', which has been instrumental in the successful implementation of Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT) and reducing leakages in welfare schemes, stands for Jan Dhan, Aadhaar, and ___.
- technological
- low (or zero / no)
- Solow (or Solow-Swan)
- Mobile
Answer: Mobile
The JAM (Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile) number trinity links the beneficiary's bank account (Jan Dhan) with their unique biometric identity (Aadhaar) and their registered mobile number. This technological architecture ensures that government subsidies are transferred directly to the intended beneficiary's account, eliminating ghost beneficiaries and middlemen.
The Special Drawing Rights (SDR), an international reserve asset created by the IMF to supplement its member countries' official reserves, is colloquially known as ___.
- stagflation
- Paper Gold
- IDRCL (or India Debt Resolution Company Ltd)
- jobless growth
Answer: Paper Gold
The SDR was created in 1969 during the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system when gold and the US dollar were the primary reserve assets. Because it was intended to act as a synthetic substitute for gold in international settlements, despite existing only as a bookkeeping entry, it earned the nickname 'Paper Gold'.
The Balance of Payments (BOP) is a systematic record of all economic transactions between the residents of a reporting country and the rest of the world over a specific period, and it must always ___ in an accounting sense.
- Green
- balance (or sum to zero)
- collusion
- OPHI
Answer: balance (or sum to zero)
The BOP follows the double-entry bookkeeping system. Therefore, the sum of the Current Account, the Capital Account, and the Financial Account, along with changes in official foreign exchange reserves, must mathematically equal zero. A deficit in the current account must be perfectly offset by a surplus in the capital/financial accounts or by drawing down forex reserves.
The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) was established as a statutory body in the year ___ to regulate and promote the insurance industry.
- first
- 1999
- Pareto Efficiency (or Pareto Optimality)
- crowding out
Answer: 1999
Following the recommendations of the R.N. Malhotra Committee, the IRDA was constituted in 1999 and later given statutory status through the IRDA Act, 1999. Its mandate includes issuing licenses to private and foreign insurers, protecting policyholder interests, and ensuring the orderly growth of the insurance sector in India.
In the Indian money market, funds borrowed for a period ranging from 2 days to 14 days are technically referred to as ___ money.
- notice
- rivalrous (or unregulated common)
- 1999
- 2011-12
Answer: notice
The inter-bank money market is highly segmented by maturity. 'Call money' refers to overnight borrowing (1 day) to meet immediate reserve requirements. 'Notice money' covers short-term borrowing from 2 to 14 days, where the borrower must give a short 'notice' before repaying the funds.