The Economist magazine has write-up on the Big Mac Index and an interactive tool/map. There is also a standard of living comparison (per-capita GDP relative to the price of a Big Mac).
The data are for July 2016 and pretty much all Asian and emerging market currencies are undervalued (relative to the US$). Switzerland, Norway and Sweden on the other hand, have overvalued currencies.
Here is my one slide on FDI inflows during the Asian financial crisis.
Here is the article from The Economist magazine on India. I am reminded of the Philippines. Although the Philippines has a very favorable demographic profile (which means it has a lot of people who are young, or in the working age group), the country has been exporting labor to other countries. Their happy smiling faces, good social skills and command of English are highly sought after in the hospitality industry for example. The IMF estimates that "more than 10 million Filipinos are now abroad, equivalent to around 10 percent of the total population, 18 percent of the working age population, and 25 percent of the labor force." Personal remittances amounted to US$ 23.8 billion in 2012 (according to official estimates) and the IMF indicates that official estimates under-report remittances - the actual amount could be 50% higher than official estimates.
The Philippines government is happy about this. This article provides some more data. In 2011 remittances were as high as 44% of the value of merchandise exports (exports of goods). In the same year remittances were 1.35 times the value of earnings from export of services (recall that service exports are quite high for the Philippines because of the export of IT-enabled services or the BPO sector). Remittances help the balance of payments; they are least sensitive to business cycles and show some counter-cyclical characteristics ... so they smooth things out, not just in the balance of payments; but they also smooth out consumption expenditure.
Why is this happening in the first place? Probably because the Philippines is not able to create enough jobs, or enough well paying jobs or both. And who is working abroad? Apparently workers come from the higher income regions of the country and they are also likely to be better-educated. Is this good for the Philippines?
What appears to be happening in India is the 'business' version of the Philippines story. Indian people are not leaving (yet) but Indian businesses are leaving or at least conducting a lot of their activities abroad. So why would foreign firms set up shop in India?
Why is this happening? It appears (from the article) that India has a poor (microeconomic) business environment. So I am also reminded of Michael Porter - the patron saint of competitiveness who says that business creates prosperity (not government). Prosperity here means higher per-capita income. So what is the role of government? To improve the business environment (or at the very least, get out of the way) ... so business can do what it is supposed to do - create jobs and higher incomes.
If you are interested in applications of (cross-price) elasticities you may want to read pages 23-27 of this document.
This is from the Nutrasweet antitrust case.
In the first session I mentioned a paper on Liberia. It looks at the link between double-digit growth and governance, or what is required to sustain high growth. You can read about it (and download the paper) at the HBS Working Knowledge website.
Somebody asked about this today so I am posting a response. And if it is not very intuitive for you, don't worry about it.
Here are two articles on various types of price supports for rice pretty much in all Asian countries and how they end up making rice more expensive for consumers.