Economic History – Page 4

Thinking politically about capital controls: a class perspective

December 18, 2017December 18, 2017 Ilias ALAMILeave a comment

The recent global financial crisis sparked renewed debates, both within academia and policy-making circles, about regulating highly mobile cross-border money-capital flows. A particular type of policy tool has received considerable attention: capital controls (CC). Within mainstream economics and policy-oriented circles (including policy-makers in central banks, finance ministries, and international organisations such as the IMF and the G20) there has been a growing recognition that unregulated cross-border money-capital flows can considerably disrupt capital accumulation, and debates have accordingly focused on the potential role and effectiveness of temporary CC in limiting the destabilising potential of those flows, while maintaining a long-term commitment to an open capital-account and free capital mobility.[1] By contrast, the Left (including organised labour, progressive economists, and civil society organisations) has been largely critical of capital-account liberalisation, and has denounced its detrimental effects in terms of constraining policy options for development and long-term industrial development.[2]Read More »

The long run evolution of the rich in India 1937-2012

August 11, 2017August 11, 2017 Rishabh Kumar3 Comments

Inequality in India may be returning to levels last seen during British Rule. To understand this, it is necessary to put India鈥檚 elite at the center of macro-history.

One of the central questions in political economy is how wealth evolves, particularly at the top. In Europe and the USA, we now accept that progression of wealth inequality followed a 鈥淯鈥� shape or what has been called the 鈥淚nverted Kuznets Curve.鈥� Briefly put, on the eve of World War I, the richest few percentiles dominated Western society with their massive wealth holdings. Fast forward to a decade after World War II and we see that their wealth declined substantially, but then started rising again in the late 1970s. Much has been written on this since (and due to) the publication of Piketty鈥檚 (2014) . My new and revised paper () puts the rich at the center of India鈥檚 economic history over the last eight decades. The main question I want to ask is the following: Is the state of contemporary wealth concentration in India a continuation or a break from its history?Read More »

How Racist Rhodesia Did It And 鈥業ndependent鈥� Zimbabwe Is Getting It Wrong: Comparing Currency and Finance Under Sanctions

March 6, 2017March 6, 2017 tinashenyamundaLeave a comment

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Although Zimbabwe was the victorious outcome of a nationalist struggle against Rhodesia, there were significant continuities in the country鈥檚 economic structures in the first two decades of independence. The government exhibited limited commitment to land reform and economic indigenisation. Even though the ZANU PF government needed to be tactful not to upset historical structures of Zimbabwe鈥檚 economic inheritance, it needed to strike a delicate balance and undertake some form of transformation to maximise the country鈥檚 future prospects. However, limited progress was achieved in terms of economic transformation in the first twenty years of independence, resulting in political disaffection in the 1990s.

To retain political support at the turn of the twenty first century, the state undertook sudden and radical measures aimed at transforming the racial structure of the economy, resulting in the Fast Track Land Reform Programme. However, the racial undertone and process of this overdue exercise was problematic. Moreover, land reform did more than destabilise race relations. Although a steady decline had started in the early 1990s under the weight of the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP), land reform prompted rapid economic collapse. The most visible symptom of this was inflation. With its Special Drawing Rights (SDR) suspended at the World Bank and with its government officials facing European Union and American sanctions, these challenges ushered in a deepening political and economic crisis. By comparison, Rhodesian history had also been characterised by political conflict and international sanctions between 1966 and 1979.Read More »

Re-centering Inequality in African Economic History

February 18, 2017February 18, 2017 Alden Young3 Comments

African economic history today lacks a literature to provide an accurate portrayal of economic growth in Africa during the decades after the Second World War. [1] The scholarly field of African Studies has exacerbated problems caused by the lack of synthetic works on African economic history or discussions of national or regional policymaking, because of its focus on localized studies often undertaken with an anthropological focus. One of the fathers of the anthropological turn in African history, Steven Feierman noted in 1999 that the success of his methodology was making it increasingly difficult to tell African history at a macro-level on its own terms. [2]听 Read More »

Kicking Away the (Statistical) Ladder

January 13, 2017March 31, 2020 assaj4012 Comments

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Developed countries often lecture developing and emerging countries on the appropriate policies and institutions necessary for economic success. This is done either bilaterally or through multilateral organizations such as the World Bank, IMF, OECD or European Union. Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang exposed the hypocrisy of this approach in his provocative 2002 book . Chang suggests that when today鈥檚 rich countries were themselves developing, they used practices opposite to what they preach today, including industrial policies, high tariffs and infant industry protection. Therefore their current advice to poorer countries amounts to 鈥榢icking away the ladder鈥� of development.

A lesser-known but equally disturbing process has occurred in the realm of economic statistics, in particular national income accounts. The EU and OECD often criticize the national accounts of developing countries, and a recent example is a claim made in a by Robert Barro: “There are suspicions that China鈥檚 reported growth rates in recent decades have been boosted by manipulation of the national-accounts data.” While no statistical system is beyond doubt, the biggest manipulations of data in history, in fact, have benefited (and were supported by) rich countries.Read More »

The Rise of the Rest? A shameless plug

January 3, 2017January 3, 2017 ilanstrauss2 Comments

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During the summer I wrote on the rise of emerging markets since World War II for the Delma Institute, a consulting firm based in the UAE. The piece is designed to be read on the web as an (apparently that is what all the hip kids are doing nowadays). This blog post is a shameless plug to get you to read it. Below I pick a few juicy items from it to wet your appetite.

But first, who should read the full piece? It will make for perfect holiday reading if:

You want to take extended bathroom breaks to escape your family and need some reading.

You want a big picture overview 鈥� for yourself or your undergraduate students 鈥� of global economic development since WWII.

You haven鈥檛 been on your computer enough during the last quarter.

The piece essentially tries to answer two questions: Have emerging markets 鈥榬isen鈥�? And will their 鈥榬ise鈥� become more widespread? It does so by painting a picture of the major changes in the global economy since World War II, focusing on: 1. Increasing global economic integration and the spread of capital; 2. The rise of emerging Asia (and China in particular); and 3. The fall of communism. Read More »

Africa: Why Western Economists Get It Wrong

September 23, 2016September 23, 2016 grievechelwa2 Comments

2-3-_unpacking_african_numbers_10070552376 Morten Jerven, image via Wikimedia

Development economics as a field of study was formally launched in the 1950s by the Afro-Caribbean economist who, out of necessity, wanted to understand how his own country, Saint Lucia, could transform from an agro-based economy into a modern industrial state (later, in 1979, Lewis was awarded the for this work, the only black person to have won the prize to date). For Lewis, the key to providing a satisfactory answer to the problem of underdevelopment lay in studying those societies as they were and not in comparing them to some mythical ideal. Saint Lucia, like all developing countries, had a lot of underemployed labor in its agricultural sector. The question was how best to marshal this valuable resource into driving industrialization.

Sadly, development economics has moved away from Lewis鈥� pioneering contribution of studying poor countries on their own terms. For example, today鈥檚 development economists explain Tanzania鈥檚 lack of development as stemming from its inability to be more like Sweden. This way of studying development, termed the 鈥渟ubtraction approach鈥�, has led us down a dark alleyway where there is more confusion than elucidation. That, at least, is the charge leveled by economic historian in his book published in 2015, but still circulating and prompting debate in academia and amongst practitioners.

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