Karthik Muralidharan: Accelerating India’s Development

China is a country of deep contradictions. It remains an industrial and technological powerhouse, capable of mobilizing resources on an enormous scale. Yet its population is shrinking, and the rural-urban divide persists. Its economy is struggling to generate jobs for young people, and its political institutions appear increasingly resistant to change.Will China grow old before it grows rich? And can its political system adapt to the challenges ahead? These are the central questions in Episode 82 of The Hale Report, recorded with Carl Minzner, senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and professor at Fordham Law School.

How will power be defined in the twenty-first century? In the Middle East, the answer is no longer oil or military strength alone. It is increasingly the ability to combine energy, data, computing capacity, capital, supply chains, and strategic partnerships.That is the central theme of Episode 81 of The Hale Report, recorded with Rachel Bronson from Dubai at an extraordinarily fluid moment for the region.Rachel Bronson is Distinguished Visiting Professor of International Affairs at the American University in Dubai, where she is teaching nuclear strategy and deterrence in the Middle East. She is also the Lester Crown Non-Resident Senior Fellow for Energy and Geopolitics at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.Rachel previously led the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists for a decade, overseeing the Doomsday Clock, and earlier directed Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She is the author of Thicker Than Oil: America’s Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia.

My guest is Heidi Crebo-Rediker, and we are going to be talking about critical minerals, China, US innovation, and the allied defense-industrial challenge now coming into sharper focus after the G7 and NATO meetings.Heidi is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and one of the country’s leading voices on geoeconomics, economic security, and economic statecraft.Her new Special Report at the Council on Foreign Relations, co-authored with Mahnaz Khan, is Leapfrogging China’s Critical Minerals Dominance: How Innovation Can Secure U.S. Supply Chains. The report argues that the United States cannot simply out-mine, out-process, or outspend China. Instead, it must use its own strengths — innovation, substitution, recovery, recycling, finance, and allies — to reduce China’s leverage over the minerals that power advanced manufacturing, defense systems, AI infrastructure, robotics, batteries, electric vehicles, wind turbines, and the technologies of the future.

My guest today is Barry Eichengreen, one of the world’s leading economic historians, professor of economics and political science at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of many books including his newest, Money Beyond Borders: Global Currencies from Croesus to Crypto. His work has shaped how we understand the gold standard, the Great Depression, exchange-rate regimes, sterling, the euro, and the dollar, one of the of the key topics we will be discussing today.

Today’s guest is Arthur Laffer, one of the most influential economists in modern public policy.Dr. Laffer is of course best known for the Laffer Curve, the idea that tax rates can reach a point where they discourage work, investment, and entrepreneurship — ultimately reducing economic growth and government revenue.His work helped shape the tax reforms associated with President Ronald Reagan, and his ideas continue to influence debates about taxation and economic growth today. For his contributions he received the Presidential Medal of Honor.

On this episode of The Hale Report, Lyric Hughes Hale speaks with journalist and global policy convener Steve Clemons, a longtime observer of power, who has spent decades moving between Washington, journalism, and the world’s major geopolitical forums—from Tokyo and Brussels to Davos.

In this episode of The Hale Report, Lyric Hughes Hale speaks with Ruby Wang about China’s rapid transformation of its healthcare system - and why it matters far beyond medicine.Drawing on personal experience, economic analysis, and cultural insight, the conversation explores how healthcare has become central to China’s development model, its approach to aging and demographics, and its growing influence in biotech, digital health, and pharmaceutical supply chains.The discussion also confronts one of the most persistent barriers to understanding China: fundamentally different assumptions about privacy, data, and the relationship between the individual and the state.

Lyric Hughes Hale speaks with David Marsh, the founder of OMFIF about Europe’s fractured landscape: Germany’s struggles, Russia’s war, US- China rivalry, regulation, the euro—and what must change for the continent to endure.

Guest host Marsha Vande Berg speaks with Karthik Muralidharan, Tata Chancellor’s Professor of Economics at UC San Diego and founder of the Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States (CEGIS). They discuss his acclaimed new book, Accelerating India’s Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance, exploring how better state capacity—not just more spending—can unlock India’s vast potential. A conversation about evidence-based reform, economic inclusion, and India’s evolving role on the world stage.

In Episode 73 of The Hale Report, Lord Adair Turner — economist, former head of the UK Financial Services Authority, and chair of the G30 Working Group on Carbon Pricing, discusses the group’s new report: Carbon Pricing and MarketsEnabling Efficient Emission Reductions