Category: Dependency

Covid-19 and The Myth of Convergence: The West, the Rest and the urgent need for fiscal space in the Remainder

pbehuria5 Comments

Imagining recovery, while a pandemic rumbles on, is an ominous task. But governments around the world have been forced to contend with this challenge. Several African, Asian and Latin American economies were in precarious financial positions before the pandemic hit. Fluctuations in global commodity prices in recent years and mounting trade deficits had already forced several African countries to request the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a range of support mechanisms including credit facilities. Debt was already reaching alarming levels. The pandemic made economic dependencies more salient, with Zambia plunging towards becoming Africa鈥檚 . 

The recent thrust of research championing possible convergence (often based on questionable and selective use of data) between 鈥榙eveloped鈥� and 鈥榙eveloping鈥� countries ignores the vast range of economic trajectories of former colonies. In slapdash cross-country economic studies, a strategic use of averages and unreliable categorisation is often used to draw generalisations about large-scale change. Sweeping claims made about a rising 鈥榙eveloping鈥� world often fail to isolate China鈥檚 rise. There is rarely any acknowledgment that most countries鈥� economies remain undiversified and deeply dependent on foreign actors. The data used to make the case for convergence often relies on GDP and human development indicators, rarely mentioning let alone measuring the of economies. Structural transformation remains one of the essential facets of economies that have . Whether countries can retain fiscal space after this crisis will inevitably depend on the nature of structural transformation and how that has shaped national growth and dependency within the global economy.

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The perils of monetary policy in the global periphery during the Covid-19 pandemic

nreismx2 Comments

For several decades, countries of the periphery have been deeply in the grip of debt. The Covid-19-induced crisis has and thus increased financial vulnerability. Recent policy measures by peripheral governments and central banks have brought momentary relief, but ultimately represent a manifestation of the interests of finance capital to get the most out of peripheral economies as long as it is still possible. 

Because of the dependence of their currencies on international capital flows, due to the possible effects of political decisions on the movement of such flows. The enormous power of financial markets over monetary policy in the periphery is again becoming evident during the current crisis. The crisis in the global periphery is generally much more severe than in the central countries, not only because of often inadequate health systems that have been abandoned under three decades of neoliberal policy. As peripheral assets do not serve as a store of value, within three months, constituting a historically unprecedented capital flight. Factors such as the deflation of prices of primary resources, the fall in external demand for manufactured products, and the fall in cash flows due to decreasing remittances and tourism mean that financial pressure has increased even more. Consequently, peripheral currencies significantly depreciated with the beginning of the crisis, in some cases by as much as 20-30%, as in the cases of Brazil and Mexico.

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Structural polarisation and path dependent development models in the EU

heimbergecon1 Comment

The macroeconomic consequences of the CODID-19 pandemic in the EU economy are materializing against the background of underlying structural challenges. Ensuring long-term convergence and stability between EU countries will require coordinated fiscal, wage and industrial policies. This blog post finds that EU countries are stuck on different trajectories in their economic development. Core countries, periphery countries, East European countries and financial hubs have responded differently to increasing European economic integration. This leaves Europe mired in structural polarisation, where political tension relates to diverging economic developments and increasing gaps in the evolution of technological capabilities. As a consequence, counteracting polarisation and promoting convergence requires a coordinated strategy that includes fiscal, wage and industrial policies.

Several EU countries were already on diverging macroeconomic development paths when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, but the macroeconomic consequences of the crisis must be expected to further accelerate existing divergences. Even though large parts of the EU experienced an economic upswing in the years running up to the COVID-19 pandemic, this temporary upswing in the business cycle served to mask the underlying tendencies towards structural polarisation in Europe, which will become more apparent over the course of the current crisis.

In a, I argue with Claudius Gr盲bner, Jakob Kapeller and Bernhard Sch眉tz that essential factors for explaining the long-term polarisation between EU countries are to be found in the unequal regulatory conditions in the context of the European 鈥榬ace for the best location鈥� (for example, in the areas of labour market, tax and corporate law or financial market regulation), as well as in the different technological capabilities across EU countries.

We show that technological capabilities in EU countries are distributed unequally; EU countries remain structurally polarised, i.e. they are that contradict the political goal of ensuring convergence and stability in the EU. Notwithstanding short- and medium-term cyclical developments, existing differences in technological capabilities will continue to fuel a process of economic disintegration in the EU if policy-makers fail to counteract the polarisation trend by introducing a coordinated policy strategy that should include fiscal, wage and industrial policies.Read More »

Facing a liquidity tsunami? Profit, risk, and discipline in emerging markets

Ilias ALAMI1 Comment

moneypower

In April 2012, at the White House on her first visit to the United States since her election in 2010, Brazilian president Brazil Dilma Rousseff scolded advanced capitalist economies for unleashing a 鈥�tsunami de liquidez鈥�, a 鈥榣iquidity tsunami鈥�, onto the developing world. The expression liquidity tsunami suggests that the sheer scale and volume of financial capital flows to developing and emerging markets had become an issue. It indicates that these quantities were overwhelming and could trigger devastating damages.聽

This in itself is puzzling. Have we not been told by development economists and practitioners that financial capital flowing into the poorer areas of the world economy is something good and desirable? That one of the main causes of underdevelopment is actually the lack of capital and domestic savings in developing countries, and that this should be compensated with foreign capital inflows? Following this line of reasoning, vast swathes of financial capital flowing into emerging markets surely should be seen as a boon.

And there was some truth to that. The capital flow bonanza from the mid-2000s to late 2013 (coupled with the primary commodity super-cycle) did deliver some benefits to emerging markets. It helped governments fund themselves at better conditions. It provided the material basis for significant redistribution via a number of social policies. It contributed to economic growth performances much higher than over the previous decade. It also made a minority of people much richer in a very short period of time. In sum, the capital flow boom temporarily helped deliver some economic and social gains, and this was instrumental in consolidating social contracts between governments and their populations.Read More »

Immanuel Wallerstein (1930-2019)

Max AjlLeave a comment

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Photo:聽Brennan Cavanaugh

Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein, historical social scientist,聽, world systems theorist, intellectual provocateur and polymath, has passed 鈥� and with him has passed the last giant of the golden age of anti-Eurocentric history. Wallerstein was born in 1930, educated at Columbia, from where he successively received BA, MA, and PhD degrees by 1959. From his early adulthood, he was seasoned and beguiled by national liberation struggles, reading the texts of Nehru and Gandhi, attending youth congresses alongside participants from African countries in the heat of anti-colonial militance. His earliest works focused on colonial and post-colonial African governments, including a number of neglected monographs and聽聽document collections on the African liberation movements.Read More »

Sudan鈥檚 national salvation

Alden Young1 Comment
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Omar al Bashir has fallen in Khartoum. Beyond regime change–managed by the military– there’s a deeper economic crisis.

In April 11th after聽outside of the compound of the Military High Command in Central Khartoum, the Minister of Defense and First Vice President of Sudan,聽聽Ahmed Awad Ibn Auf made a televised broadcast to the nation, announcing the arrest of President Omar El-Bashir and an unspecified number of other high ranking officials primarily associated with Islamist Movement. Ibn Auf聽, and a three month state of emergency including a curfew. His demands have been rejected by the Sudanese Professional Association and other groups like Girfna, which have declared that only a civilian transitional government would be acceptable. The Sudanese Professional Association have published a Declaration of Freedom and Change which outlines a plan for a four year transitional government made up of civilian technocrats. Chants of tsgut bas (Just fall) changed overnight to sgut (fallen).

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Economic development in Palestine and beyond

Patrick Kaczmarczyk1 Comment

Palestine-blog-image-TSuccessful economic development in Palestine will require an adequate theory of development, industrial policy, and institutional reforms.

Recently, the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS) published a聽聽on Palestinian economic development. In this report, co-authored by my colleagues Heiner Flassbeck, Michael Paetz, and I, we explore possible solutions as to how Palestine could sustainably finance its deficits. Now, after the Israeli elections, Jared Kushner, the US President鈥檚 son-in-law and senior advisor, is set to announce the details of the US 聽for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Given that the Peace Plan is expected to include a large聽聽to solve the conflict, it will be interesting to see to what extent it addresses the fundamental problems we identified in our research.

Our results suggest, succinctly, that under current conditions of excessive imbalances in the external sector (trade and current account), any issuance of debt securities requires fixing these imbalances first, for which, in turn, strategic public intervention is critical. This finding may come as a surprise to most policymakers, as orthodox economic theory suggests that the most efficient ways for countries to develop is through market led (as opposed to state led) policies. Historical evidence demonstrates that none of the advanced countries followed this path in their own development, yet the idea of 鈥榯he market鈥� as the most efficient development tool is still widespread. Based on this belief, Western institutions wreaked havoc in developing countries during the 1980s and 1990s, and continue to do so (although some institutions, notably the IMF, show significant progress in聽).Read More »

Tensions in Hegemonic Stability and Global Structural Transformation

Abel B.S. Gaiya1 Comment

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In this article I argue that there is a fundamental tension characterizing the process of global development and structural change. Industrial policy is necessary for triggering structural change in the developing world. Yet such efforts put pressure on economic leaders to adjust structurally as well. Drawing from international relations theory, a hegemon is necessary to provide international public goods such as peace, which are critical for development to be possible in the first place. But this necessity gives the hegemon expansive powers over international institutions of economic governance; and this enables the hegemon to externalize the costs of adjustment associated with structural change in the developing world.Read More »