When buying a fintech or a pharma stock, you can afford to ignore what economists and their lengthy research papers may say. But it would be useful to listen to them when buying stocks in some other sectors. A paper by Sanjeev Sanyal – on the relative economic performance of Indian states – underlined the contribution of the southern states to the national GDP. Sanyal shows that the South has done better since the liberalization phase started in 1991. How is this related to our headline?