Category: Economic structure

Economic Development in the 21st Century: A Review

ramiroealvarezLeave a comment

Favela_Jaqueline_(Vila_S么nia)_02

by Ramiro Eugenio 脕lvarez (University of Siena) and聽Santiago Jos茅 Gahn (Roma Tre University)

What drives economic development? What is the nature of the external constraints that developing economies face? What is the role of industrial policy and the central banks in the development process? These were the core questions that were posed in the recent webinar series on Development in the 21st Century, organized by the of the . These four meetings were particularly oriented towards examining notions such as distribution, patterns of specialization, industrial policies and balance of payment constraints. The discussion of such phenomena is especially important in a context of deep academic divides regarding the drivers of economic development.

Following the tradition of the Latin American structuralist school, the meetings placed special emphasis on the inherent challenges of conditions associated with being in the periphery when the problem of development is faced. During the meetings, processes of economic integration that perpetuate asymmetric economic relations of the center-periphery type were examined, as well as the role played by public institutions, e.g. central banks, in the development of industrial economies.Read More »

Historicising the Aid Debate: South Korea as a Successful Aid Recipient

Farwa Sial4 Comments

lotte-world-tower-1791802_960_720

鈥楾he principal enemy is orthodoxy: to use the same recipe, administer the same therapy, to resolve the most various types of problems; never to admit complexity and try to reduce it as much as possible, while ignoring that things are always more complicated in reality.
Albert O. Hirschman (1998:110)

It鈥檚 clear from last week鈥檚 blog posts by Duncan Green that he is tired of academic critique against aid which have not been translated into concrete solutions (see and ). However, the problem with his approach to addressing very complex problems is that it leads to reductive debates which are more symptomatic of the problem than constructive ways of finding solutions. Following Pablo Yanguas鈥� of research approaches I thought of taking a step back and analyzing the case of a successful aid recipient, South Korea. 聽I do this in hope of moving away from the 鈥榣iterature鈥� – which Duncan finds overbearing – as well as getting away from the linearity of the contemporary monitoring and evaluation approach used by the aid sector. Read More »

Africa: Time to Rediscover the Economics of Population Density and Development

Erik Reinert1 Comment

8757865770_1380332d3b_o.jpg

叠测听Erik Reinert听补苍诲听Richard Itaman.

At the OECD鈥檚 origin, we find the 1947 Marshall Plan that re-industrialised a war-torn Europe. At the very core of the Marshall Plan was a profound understanding of the relationship between a nation鈥檚 economic structure and its carrying capacity in terms of population density. We argue that it is necessary to rediscover this theoretical understanding now, in the mutual interest of Africa and Europe.Read More »

What is missing in the 鈥�33 Theses for an Economics Reformation鈥�

Erik ReinertLeave a comment
file-20180328-109182-179osyu
Andrew Simms (New Weather Institute), Sally Svenlen (RE student), Larry Elliott (Guardian), Steve Keen (Debunking Economics) and Kate Raworth (Doughnut Economics) symbolically nail the 鈥�33 Theses鈥� to the door of the London School of Economics in December 2017. .

By Erik Reinert (Talinn University of Technology) and (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya)

On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther鈥檚 Reformation, were formulated by Rethinking Economics and the New Weather Institute. The document was symbolically nailed to the door of the London School of Economics In December 2017 and , and was supported by an impressive list of over 60 leading academics and policy experts. The initiative offers a rare and most welcome refreshing message from the House of Economics.

Several elements in the theses are long overdue 鈥� for example, the existence of planetary limits, the superiority of political deliberation over economic logic, the appreciation of the role of uncertainty in economic predictions, the non-independence of facts and values when economic thoughts are formulated, the warning against over-reliance on modelling, econometrics and formal methods. Also important is the indication that both growth and innovation need to be conceived with a desirable end in sight, one which can be associated with material and spiritual progress 鈥� rather than with misery, inequity and inequality. It is finally all important that in the teaching of economics itself the history and philosophy of economics should be taught, together with all economic theories: not just the family tree of mainstream economics.Read More »

Unanswered Questions on Financialisation in Developing Economies

Carolina Alves2 Comments

479370088_3326281261_o.jpg

The discussions of the processes behind the growing importance of finance, financial transactions and financial motives, as well as the sustainability of the financial systems, have been located in the critical political economy debate of financialisation and neoliberalism (; ; ; ; ; ; ).

The analysis of financialisation in developing and emerging economies (DEEs) is relatively novel (). It is rooted in earlier discussions about the risks of financial globalisation and liberalisation (; ; ; ; ; ; ; ), including the Latin American Structuralist literature on the hegemonic role of the US dollar and its financial and monetary implications for DEEs (; ; ; ; ); the debate on capital account liberalisation and capital market integration (; ; ; ); and the Minsky-inspired currency and boom bust dynamics of financial crisis in developing economies (; ; ; ; ).Read More »

Pitfalls of the Developmental State: The Fate of the Sudanese Economic Model

tinashenyamundaLeave a comment

Screen Shot 2018-02-26 at 10.31.09.png

I have lately been grappling with the question of how African states came into being, not just as political, but especially economic territorial units. Connected to this are questions of how experts, especially economists came to influence and account for what became national economies. At the center of the state, economy and society are critical question of development and welfare. How did independent African countries make sense of their inheritance and what mechanisms did they deploy to transform themselves into coherent nations of multiple but entangled identities with disparate circumstance but common material goals united by the logic of a national economy? As I grappled with these issues, a great new monograph informed by an impressive historiography has arrived. The author grounds his work in an archivally based history of the transformation of the Sudan into an economic unit between the 1940s and the 1960s. 鈥檚 new book: (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017) is centred on addressing these question using the history of a territory that transformed from being an Anglo-Egyptian Sudan condominium into the independent state of Sudan.Read More »

Towards a better understanding of convergence and divergence: or, how the present EU strategy 鈥� at the expense of the economic periphery – neglects the theories that once made Europe successful

Erik ReinertLeave a comment

8450135745_78cfa66567_b

This new working paper attempts to address some of the main problems of the European Union today. The main thesis is that the Weltanschauung and the economic narrative on which the European project has been based have changed radically since the inception of the European Project, from one conducive to convergence and cohesion to another which is conducive to divergence and, in the last instance 鈥� I shall argue 鈥� to a form of internal colonialism towards the economic periphery.

The field of Science and Technology employs the term sociotechnical imaginary [1] about the collective narratives and visions of social futures and of the common good. I shall argue that the European Union has moved away from the sociotechnical imaginary, or narrative, that dominated after World War II. I shall argue that this post WW II Marshall Plan Narrative (MPN) gave way to an equilibrium-based Neo-Classical Economics Narrative with an added innovation rhetoric, which I shall argue is based on a fairly shallow understanding of innovation (which I shall call NC+I).Read More »