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Institutions, Economic Development, and China鈥檚 Development Policy for Escaping Poverty

June 14, 2022June 20, 2022 tingxulaw8 Comments

I recently have had opportunities to reread the works of Professors Erik Reinert and Peer Vries and to reflect on my previous work on the relationship between institutions, economic development, and China鈥檚 development policy for escaping poverty. Professors Reinert and Vries have studied, along with a few other distinguished economists and economic historians, 鈥榩overty traps鈥� at national and transnational levels for decades (eg, Serra 1613; Landes 1998; Reinert 2007; Reinert 2009; Vries 2013). Both argued that innovation and structural change are the keys to escaping poverty.

Professors Reinert鈥檚 and Vries鈥檚 work on economic development has brought the work of Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) to light. In this blog post, I will review how the work of Schumpeter, Reinert, and Vries helps us explore three key questions: First, what kind of development does a country need to escape poverty? Second, what kind of institutions can promote development? Third, how to develop? These three questions are crucial to understand China鈥檚 escape from poverty.

Professors Reinert鈥檚 and Vries鈥檚 arguments can be well supported by China鈥檚 national development policy. Below are a few highlights of rich empirical evidence. In 1984 the Chinese government proposed a development-oriented poverty reduction policy to replace the previous aid reliance policy (Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council 1984; for critiques of relying on massive foreign aid to escape poverty, see e.g. Moyo 2009; Hubbard and Duggan 2009; Banerjee and Duflo 2011). On 18 January 1992, Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997, leader of the PRC from 1978 to 1989) made a famous speech in his Southern Tour, emphasising that 鈥榙evelopment is the absolute principle鈥� (fazhan cai shi ying daoli). Since then, China鈥檚 economic development has entered a new stage. In 1994 the Chinese government fully adopted the development-oriented poverty reduction policy as a national policy.

Agrarian Change in the Lap of Neoliberal Growth: Field perspective from India

May 21, 2022May 21, 2022 srishtiydvLeave a comment

If I had to describe three central characteristics of the Indian economy鈥攊ts three defining features in the neoliberal period鈥攖hey鈥檇 be i) , ii) growth in the absence of formal job-creation, and instead an , and iii) the in value added even as its share in employment remains sizeable. In June-July 2019, I did intensive fieldwork in Sangli, a village in in southern Haryana, to make sense of the ways in which these processes interact with agrarian change and play out for agrarian households, i.e. the contemporary Agrarian Question [1].

Sangli is in Haryana, where Green Revolution techniques (high yielding seed varieties, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and agricultural machinery like tractors and threshers) were adopted early on. It also happens to be close to the industrial belt that extends from the to its surrounding districts, where in the neoliberal era. This makes it an interesting place to study processes of generation and re-investment of agrarian surpluses, and to peer into the relationship between 鈥渕odernized鈥� agriculture and neoliberal industrial and urban growth that has dwarfed the rural economy.

On the perils of embedded experiments

March 27, 2022March 24, 2022 jaandaraz1 Comment

There is growing interest in 鈥榚mbedded experiments鈥�, conducted by researchers and policymakers as a team. Aside from their potential scale, the main attraction of these experiments is that they seem to facilitate speedy translation of research into policy. Discussing a case study from Bihar, Jean Dr猫ze argues that this approach carries a danger of distorting both policy and research.

Evidence-based policy is the rage, to the extent that even village folk in Jharkhand (where I live) sometimes hold forth about the importance of 鈥�ebhidens鈥�, as they call it. No one, of course, would deny the value of bringing evidence to bear on public policy, as long as evidence is understood in a broad sense and does not become the sole arbiter of decision-making. However, sometimes evidence-based policy gets reduced to an odd method that consists of using randomised controlled trials (RCTs) to find out 鈥榳hat works鈥�, and then 鈥榮cale up鈥� whatever works. That makes short shrift of the long bridge that separates evidence from policy. Sound policy requires not only evidence 鈥� broadly understood 鈥� but also a good understanding of the issues, considered value judgements, and inclusive deliberation (, 2020a).

Enormous energy has been spent on the quest for rigorous evidence, much less on the integrity of the process that leads from evidence to policy. As illustrated in an earlier contribution to Ideas for India (), it is not uncommon for the scientific findings of an RCT to be embellished in the process. This follow-up post presents another case study that may help to convey the problem. It also illustrates a related danger 鈥� casual jumps from evidence to policy advice. The risk of a short-circuit is particularly serious in 鈥榚mbedded experiments鈥�, where the research team works 鈥榝rom within鈥� a partner government in direct collaboration with policymakers.

The case study pertains to an experiment conducted in Bihar in 2012-2013 and reported in Banerjee, Duflo, Imbert, Mathew and Pande (2020)¹. This is a large-scale, influential experiment by some of the leading lights of the RCT movement 鈥� indeed, a formidable quartet of first-rate economists reinforced by one of India鈥檚 brightest civil servants, Santhosh Mathew. The high technical standards of the study are not in doubt, and nor is the integrity of the authors. And yet, I would argue that something is amiss in their accounts of the findings and policy implications of this study.

Debunking the “Eco-Fortress Nationalism” of the AOC/Markey Green New Deal

November 26, 2021November 25, 2021 sheetalchhabriaLeave a comment

tractor, tiller, tilling, equipment, agriculture, karnataka, india, transportation, mode of transportation, land, land vehicle, field, one person, landscape, agricultural machinery, day, nature, rural scene, plant, environment, driving, farm, dirt, agricultural equipment, outdoors, farmer, 4K

Photo: Farming in Karnataka, India.

Max Ajl鈥檚 笔别辞辫濒别鈥檚 Green New Deal is a brutal reminder for the American left that even the most celebrated and progressive developments in American politics are still simply American politics, in other words they are a politics for America, and America first. Ajl situates both the longer history of environmental destruction and the response to it within a planetary frame without losing sight of geographical unevenness. The book is divided into two parts. The first part is where Ajl systematically debunks the American-centrism of the Cortez/Markey Green New Deal (GND). The second part is an imagination-widening exposition of an alternative 笔别辞辫濒别鈥檚 Green New Deal that centers the livelihood of the majority of the world鈥檚 people by putting forth an anti-imperial and anti-capitalist framework for a just transition.

A need to re-examine the temporality of anti-trust action

July 5, 2021June 14, 2021 Anushka mLeave a comment

The structure of anti-trust laws is generally and neatly divided into ex-post enforcement and ex-ante regulation of market conduct and its participants. It is a matter of social and economic policy choice as to whether any regulation should precede 鈥榟arm鈥� or follow it, as is the construction of 鈥榟arm鈥� across statutes. For example, the requirement of a means to understand and assess the market impact of a merger. On the other hand, abuse of dominant position is an ex-post assessment once the dominance has set in, which may be in the long run. The determination of abuse is subject to a rule of reason and analysis by the competition authorities. Against this background, the question is what happens in the intervening period when an undertaking is slowly and surely inching towards domination, engaging in conduct which would be punished only once it becomes dominant ? What happens to the process of concentration of markets, along with the practices in concentrated markets? These questions are not borne out of academic interest alone and are not completely answered by a simple focus on anti-competitive agreements, as will be seen below. The analysis will zoom in on the Indian market conditions to make a case for questioning the timing of regulatory intervention and proceed to show that new economic methods may be required in this task.

The partnership trap in the Indonesian gig economy

June 20, 2021July 4, 2021 Arif Novianto3 Comments

In the last three months, there have been three strikes by gig workers in Indonesia. Problems related to harsh working conditions, injustice, and the decline in the welfare of gig workers became the main issues in the three strikes. The biggest strike was carried out by (delivery service from the platform company) involving nearly 1,500 couriers or almost 80% of active couriers on GoKilat. A day later, couriers from went on strike spontaneously for three days by mass deactivating accounts on their platform application.

Prior to the two strikes above, on April 6, 2021, a strike was carried out by couriers for 1 day in Bandung, Indonesia, involving around 1,000 couriers. The Shopee Express courier strike was motivated by a cut in the payment they received. The new rules reduce courier revenue from 2,500 rupiah (US$0.17)/package to only 1,500 rupiah (US$0.10)/package and that is the only income earned by the couriers. In other words, they did not earn basic income equal to the minimum wage in the province where they work. Moreover, they did not have health insurance, decent working hours, overtime pay, leave /holiday rights, and severance pay. The working conditions were worse due to the fact that the vehicles (motorcycle) used are theirs and they had to pay fuel cost.

With such a wage system, to be able to earn the minimum wage in Bandung City in 2021 of 3,742,267 rupiah (US$263.16) per month for instance, couriers have to deliver 2,495 packages monthly鈥攏ot including fuel and maintenance costs they have to pay. It means that they would have to deliver about 104 packages per day to the customers. If, on average, a package is delivered in 10 minutes, they need 17 hours per day, far above the decent 8 hours work day. This oppressive work system for gig workers is possible and there is no prohibition from the Indonesian government, due to the courier’s status as an independent contractor or, instead of labor.

The precarious and uncertain working conditions stem from the misclassification of their employment status. Companies classifies them as 鈥減artners鈥�, so that they could avoid the obligation to provide the minimum wage, health insurance, overtime pay, severance pay, 8 working hours per day, and holiday rights if they were labor, although the working relationships between the companies and their couriers represents the employer-employee relationships as there are shift work for the couriers, work control by the companies, requirements in recruitment such as contracts of employment, and the companies unilateral rules established by the companies.

The Changing Face of Imperialism: Colonialism to Contemporary Capitalism

April 13, 2021March 25, 2021 sunandasenLeave a comment

叠测听Sunanda Sen and

How is imperialism relevant today? How has it mutated over the past century? What are different theoretical and empirical angles through which we can study imperialism? These are the questions we deal with in our edited volume on (2018).

We understand imperialism as a continuing arrangement since the early years of empire-colonies to the prevailing pattern of expropriations, on part of those who wield power vis-脿-vis those who are weak. The pattern of 鈥榦ld imperialism鈥�, in the writings of Hobson, Hilferding and Lenin, were framed in the context of the imperial relations between the ruling nations and their colonies with political subjugation of the latter, captured by force or by commerce, providing the groundwork for their economic domination in the interest of the ruling nations. Forms of such arrogation varied, across regions and over time; including the early European invasions of South America, use of slaves or indentured labour across oceans, and the draining off of surpluses from colonies by using trade and financial channels. Imperialism, however, has considerably changed its pattern since then, especially with institutional changes in the prevailing power structure.

The essays in the volume offer a renewed interpretation, which include the alternate interpretations of imperialism and its changing pattern over space and time, incorporating the changing pattern of oppression which reflects the dynamics underlying the specific patterns of oppression. The pattern can be characterised as 鈥榥ew imperialism鈥� under contemporary capitalism as distinct from its 鈥榦ld鈥� form under colonialism. The varied interpretations of imperialism as in the literature do not lessen the significance of the common ground underlying the alternate positions, including the diverse pattern of expropriations under imperialism.

The volume offers fourteen chapters by renowned authors. In this blog, we organise them in the following manner: the first five of those deal with the conceptual basis of imperialism from different angles, the next three chapters deal with contemporary imperialism, and then the rest six chapters of book deal with India, colonialism and contemporary issues with imperialism.

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