IB Economists

Facebook invested $5.7 Billion for a 9.9% stake in Reliance subsidiary Jio, this will help Jio Mart users to make payments through Whatsapp, which is the most widely used messaging app in India. Jio Mart helps local grocery stores to connect with consumers nearby with the help of e-commerce. Jio Mart is seen as a competition to ‘Local Stores by Amazon’ which also allows local grocery stores to connect with consumers in their locality. The service was launched six months ago on a trial basis. However, Local Stores, the stores themselves are responsible for delivering the goods, while in Jio Mart goods use its own delivery system to deliver the goods, this includes employees of Jio Mart to pick up goods from the store and deliver it to the consumer. During the coronavirus pandemic the need to deliver essential goods such as groceries at the doorstep is paramount and consumers may also be willing to pay extra for this service. Facebook and Amazon are among the largest corpora...

O ne of the recent articles stated that the USA has demanded India to supply them with HCQ for the rising corona  malaria, and it is also recommended by the scientists and doctors that HCQ can to certain extent cure virus victims in the USA. Nonetheless the USA is not the only country demanding India for the HCQ drug, there are multiple other countries which are demanding India for HCQ suppliers. This signifies the shortage in the world market for the HCQ drug.  The HCQ drug is a drug used to combat and help victims or patients of coronavirus recover. Knowingly, as the cases of coronavirus in the USA are rising exponentially, which is leading to an economic instability (Exchange rates are becoming more volatile), and this is one of the main reasons why the demand for the HCQ drug is more than the supply for it leading to a shortage in the market. According to one of the recent news articles there is a shortage of the HCQ drug in Rajasthan. The shortage in the world market ...

The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries(OPEC) along with other major oil producers such as Russia and the United States decided to reduce the global oil supply. The decision came due to the coronavirus reducing demand for oil worldwide, leading to a fall in oil prices . However the OPEC+ decided to cut the oil supply by around 9.7 million barrels per day(bpd) which is about 10% of the global oil supply. The consumption of oil has been said to be reduced by 30% globally. The reduction in oil supply was taken in order to maintain the profits. The cut in supply will lead to a fall in employment levels since workers will be made redundant. These workers will lose their main source of income and hence will not be able to demand other consumer goods, hence the aggregate demand in the economy will be reduced and the GDP may also fall. Since a lot of the revenue for oil dependent economies like Saudi Arabia and UAE comes from oil, the government revenue will also reduce, and th...

T he United States government announced that they would be providing India with a $2.9 million assistance package in order to help the Indian government prepare laboratory systems, activate case-finding and event-based surveillance, and support technical experts for response and preparedness. This will help India combat the deadly virus which has taken thousands of lives around the world. As India is still in the initial stages and under a lockdown, the total cases in India stand a little above 1200 and have continued to grow, looking at other countries such as Italy and the United States, who have a smaller population and better health facilities compared to India and hence India poses a larger threat from this virus. According to experts the most effective way to stop the spread of this virus is to have social distancing because the virus can spread easily from person to person. However, the World Health Organisation believes that to contain the virus all countries need ...

On 8th March 2020 there was a price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia, which consequently caused 31% price drop (From $31.02 to $20 per barrel). The factor which led to the price war between the two countries is the drop in quantity demand for oil barrels due to the widespread of Coronavirus, subsequently Russia refused to agree with  OPEC to stabilise/fix a price, clearly indicating a non-collusive oligopoly. The price war has caused the oil prices to drastically fall, and has also led to reduction in the world oil supply, which can have drastic effects on the economy because oil is an essential resource for the world, as oil is used for transportation, energy production, cooking and more, without these activities an economy will have major problems in functioning, for instance visualise an economy sustaining without electricity; communicating with other without electricity would become impossible, which can result in an economy down turn. Nonetheless, the reduct...