Category Archive: Sources

  1. Composition

    Comments Off on Composition

    STATE, CLASS, & MILITARY

    The impending retreat of US troops from Afghanistan has brought renewed discussion on Pakistan amidst both US and Chinese alliances. Much of the scholarship on Pakistan centers around its military and foreign policy, but less attention has been given to the specific social formations that inform the nation’s development.

    In a 2014 article, S. AKBAR ZAIDI offers a corrective, arguing that the focus on Pakistan’s state and military has obscured readings of class.

    From the article:

    “The analysis in Pakistan suggests that institutions rather than class determine the nature of the state. The media, judiciary, and parliament are all multi-class institutions, as is the military, although they all work for the defence of the capitalist order in which they function, with the purpose of accumulating more capital. However, they are not class organisations in the way landlords or the industrial bourgeoisie are perceived to be. Yet, these are certainly not institutions that are radical, though they occasionally raise their voices for oppressed nationalities and peoples. Class seems lost in the analysis. The discourse, especially in Pakistan, focuses on very broad categories, such as institutions and on “feudals” and the military.

    In recent years, understanding Pakistan has been premised on notions of “Islam”, and the country has been forced into an analytical Islamic framework as if no other sense of existence or identity existed. While Islam may be important in analysing Pakistan, it is certainly not the only or even dominant category to examine it, especially in its social formation and class categories. It is the Islam of the post- 9/11 era that has suddenly surfaced as the core of such analyses.”

    Link to the text.

    • “Though Pakistan’s class structure has undoubtedly changed, its ruling classes—which I define specifically as the economic and political 1 percent—have retained their hold on political and economic resources very successfully.” Rosita Armytage revisits Zaidi’s argument on shifting class structures. Link. And Muhammad Ali Jan examines segmentation within the landlord class. Link.
    • “The military-bureaucratic elites believed that they had to promote a ‘capitalist spirit’ and encourage the formation of financial-industrial groups…thus emerged a patron-client relationship between [the two groups].” Saeed Shafqat on civil-military relations in Pakistan between 1973 and 1996. Link.
    • In a 1998 article, Hamza Alavi criticizes India-centered explanations of US-Pakistan military alliances, arguing it “obscures the extent to which Pakistan was increasingly drawn into west Asia following the role it was assigned by the US in western military strategy.” Link.

    (pinboard: class, state, military)

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Gender Inequality & Fiscal Policy

    EURYDICE FOTOPOULOU is Lecturer in Economics at Goldsmiths’ Institute of Management Studies. A 2019 paper co-authored with Özlem Onaran and Cem Oyvat models the gender wage gap and employment outcomes of different fiscal policy mixes in the UK.

    From the paper:

    “[This paper develops] a unified model, integrating i) the impact of three dimensions of inequalities –functional income distribution between wages and profits, gender inequality, and wealth concentration, and their interactions; ii) the impact of fiscal policies, particularly the effects of government spending in social vs. physical infrastructure, and different types of taxation; iii) both the demand and supply-side effects; iv) effects on both output and employment. We estimate this general model econometrically for the UK using time series data for the period of 1970-2016. The positive impact of public social infrastructure investment on both output and employment is much higher, and despite a strong positive effect on productivity, employment of both men and women increase in the medium-run as well. An increase in the tax rate on wealth decreases wealth concentration, and has a positive and the strongest impact on output, employment and the budget.”

    Link to the text, link to Fotopoulou’s profile.

    (pinboard: gender, fiscal_policy, new_researchers)

    Each week we highlight research from a graduate student, postdoc, or early-career professor. Send us recommendations: (email: editorial@jainfamilyinstitute.org text: editorial@jainfamilyinstitute.org) .

    + + +

    • “We must build a foundation for shared prosperity today.” In a NYT opinion piece, Representative Rashida Tlaib and former member of the Federal Senate of Brazil Eduardo Suplicy advocate for unconditional cash programs, referencing JFI’s work with the Federal Fluminense University in Maricá, Brazil. Link. And see a Boston Review piece co-authored by JFI’s Paul Katz and Leandro Ferreira on Maricá’s solidarity economy. Link.
    • “Until the difficult rebalancing and reforms on both sides of the Pacific gain traction, the world will continue to be on the dangerous path of inter-imperial antagonism resembling the international politics of a century ago.” New on PW, Ho-fung Hung explores US-China relations from post-Keynesian and Hobsonian perspectives. Link.
    • “The article asks how this mismatch between the power to block the flow of goods and the lack of power to achieve significant improvements of the truckers’ situation can be explained.” Jörg Nowak on the 2018 truckers’ strike in Brazil. Link.
    • Hossein Kermani and Marzieh Adham map over 2.5 million Persian tweets during a period surrounding Iran’s 2017 election. Link.
    • “I estimate that housing assistance for single adults experiencing homelessness reduces the likelihood of future return to the homeless system by 20 percentage points over an 18-month period.” Elior Cohen examines homeless housing programs in LA County. Link.
    • In Foreign Affairs, Charles King on J. William Fulbright and American internationalism. Link.
    • “We call for the creation, management and curation of behavioural data in public data trusts.” By Jathan Sadowski, Salomé Viljoen, and Meredith Whittaker. Link. And read Viljoen’s PW essay on data governance. Link.
    • Callen Anthony analyzes black boxing algorithmic technologies at an investment bank. Link. h/t Paul
    • “We document striking gender disparities within a government health insurance program that entitles 46 million poor individuals to free hospital care in Rajasthan, India.” By Pascaline Dupas and Radhika Jain. Link.
    • “I argue that early modern discoveries and production of precious metals in America can be used to identify the macroeconomic effects of monetary shocks. Variation in the availability of precious metals caused by the discovery of American mines of silver and gold led to exogenous monetary variation in Europe. Using a panel of six European countries, I find that monetary expansions had a material impact on real economic activity. The magnitudes are substantial and persist for a long time: an exogenous 10% increase in the production of precious metals in America measured relative to the European stock leads to a frontloaded response of output and, to a lesser extent, inflation.” By Nuno Palma. Link.

  2. Window of Chaos

    Comments Off on Window of Chaos

    WATER MARKETS

    Since the 2000 World Water Forum in The Hague, governance over water resources has gained salience in international development discourse. The allocation of rights (to technology and decisionmaking) and resources (both financial and natural) has shaped local economies in the face of compounding climate emergencies.

    A 2014 piece by KAREN BAKKER reviews the literature on water marketization, complicating existing accounts which focus exclusively on models of ownership.

    From the article’s conclusion:

    “Market environmentalism is not synonymous with (or limited to) privatization. It includes commercialization, environmental valuation and pricing, the marketization of trading and exchange mechanisms, and the liberalization of governance. The trend is relatively recent and is by no means hegemonic. In many countries, it has only partially displaced a state hydraulic paradigm of water management—indeed, many aspects of the social and hydrological cycle are still owned, managed, and regulated by governments.

    Market environmentalism is difficult to implement in practice, with tensions arising from attempts to privatize, commercialize, value, market, and liberalize water governance—for example, between the desire for less government control and drivers for greater governmental control, spurred by fears over water security. Some of these tensions arise from contradictions that are difficult to resolve in practice, notably the contradiction between monetary and nonmonetary values of water and the tension between framing water as an economic good versus incorporating its noneconomic uses. These tensions, which have acted as a brake on market environmentalism, are inherent to water management and are unlikely to be effectively resolved. The question is how, through institutional innovation, governance reforms, and political mediation, they will be handled.”

    Link to the text.

    • In a 2000 article, Bakker examines the role of privatization in generating the Yorkshire drought of 1995. Link. And a 1997 paper by Matthew Gandy examines “how the social and economic development of New York City since the 1970s led to a sudden crisis in the city’s water supply system in the 1990s.” Link.
    • “By 1993, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank had been involved in the Argentine water sector for several years. Once the government announced its administrative reform, the World Bank funded and appointed a team of private sector technical and financial consultants from the UK to advise on the future of Buenos Aires’ water sector.” Alexander Loftus and David McDonald consider the political context for water privatization in Argentina. Link.
    • “In the arid conditions that often characterized agriculture in the Roman world, access to water for irrigation could be crucial to the fortunes of individual farmers and agrarian communities.” Dennis Kehoe analyzes water rights in the Roman empire. Link.

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Floods, Dispossession, and Guerrilla Movements

    María del Pilar López-Uribe is Assistant Professor in Economics at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. A 2018 chapter co-authored with Fabio Sanchez Torres explores the links between land dispossession in the early 20th century and the rise of guerrilla movements in Colombia.

    From the chapter:

    “This work argues that the differences in the intensity of armed conflict at municipal level during its early stage (1974-1985) were due to old peasant’s land dispossessions by large landowners that led to the rise and persistence of grievances. This study exploits variation in floods to identify how peasants’ land dispossessions during the export boom (1914-1946) determine the rise of rural guerrilla movements and the consolidation of their rebel activities. The study documents that municipalities experiencing floods were substantially more likely to have land dispossession than municipalities where floods was not severe. Floods reduced temporarily the conditions of the land and its value, facilitating the dispossession of the peasants of their lands by large landowners. We then show, first, that there is a strong link between FARC rebel activity (1974-1985) and land dispossessions during the export coffee expansion (1916-1946). And second, that the link is mediated by the exposure to the previous civil war “La Violencia”, facilitating that small peasant groups had access to weapons and military experience, and by an ideological cohesion lead by the communist party.”

    Link to the text, link to Pilar López-Uribe’s website.

    Each week we highlight research from a graduate student, postdoc, or early-career professor. Send us recommendations: editorial@jainfamilyinstitute.org .

    + + +

    • “Today, there is more reason to speak of a ‘pro-labor turn’ than perhaps at any time over the last half century. But history is not so easily reversed.” We’re thrilled to announce that Tim Barker has joined Phenomenal World as a contributing editor. On the site this week, Barker writes on the “fifty-year crisis” of the wage share, and what it might mean for the Fed’s expansionary monetary policy. Link.
    • “More research is needed to understand what factors drive the persistent belief—shared by Winship and millions of Americans—that the poor don’t know what’s best for themselves.” In a new post for JFI, James Medlock and JFI Fellow Paul E. Williams examine paternalism and welfare policy in the US. Link.
    • “Because education does not achieve income parity for Black workers, the disproportionate debt Black students are taking to finance their education is reinforcing the racial wealth gap.” A new report by JFI Senior Fellow Marshall Steinbaum, Andre M. Perry, and Carl Romer, cross-posted from Brookings Metro. Link, and link. And tune into a Brookings conversation featuring the authors with a keynote by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Monday, June 28 at 10am ET. Link.
    • “‘Maximum employment’ is a rich concept worthy of careful and iterative elaboration if the Fed is to fully follow through on its Congressional mandate, framework revisions, and forward guidance commitments.” Skanda Amarnath and Alex Williams of Employ America propose a new communication framework for the Fed’s maximum employment goals. Link.
    • Michael Baker, Derek Messacar, and Mark Stabile examine the Canada Child Benefit and Universal Child Care Benefit, finding a reduction in child poverty and no evidence of labor supply response. Link.
    • Emily Baum on China’s “fortune-telling fever” post-Mao. Link.
    • “Prime funds have long been viewed as a source of vulnerability, while government funds have been viewed as a source of strength. But the bad kid might be getting too much blame and the good kid too much credit.” Wenxin Du in the FT on money market funds. Link.
    • Giampaolo Conte on capitalist-style reforms in the late Ottoman empire. Link.
    • Juan Nicolas Gonzalez, Jose Perez-Doval, Juan Gomez, and Jose Manuel Vassallo find that Madrid’s private vehicle restrictions had led to lower car ownership rates. Link.
    • “Neither the FLSA nor the NLRA penalty and enforcement regimes create sufficient incentive to comply for many firms.” Anna Stansbury looks at the expected penalties firms face for violating the Fair Labor Standards Act and the National Labor Relations Act. Link.
    • “The tension between ‘building back’ and ‘building better’ is nowhere more visible than in the debate over the American Rescue Plan Act.” In Notes on the Crises, Amanda Kass and Philip Rocco on state and local funding in ARPA. Link. (See also: Kass and Rocco’s contributions to JFI’s Social Wealth Seminar)
    • Diana Vela-Almeida and Nataly Torres on Ecuador’s consultation policy in extractive projects. Link.
    • “Using new data on the date of first state emergence within contemporary countries, we present a global scale analysis of the chronological relationship between the transition to agriculture and the subsequent emergence of states. We find statistically significant relationships between early reliance on agriculture and state age in all sub-samples and also when we use alternative sources of data at different levels of geographical aggregation. A one millennium earlier transition to agriculture among non-pristine states predicts a 317-430 year earlier state emergence. ” By Oana Borcan, Ola Olsson, and Louis Putterman. Link.

  3. Aspiration

    Comments Off on Aspiration

    GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE

    Earlier this week, global leaders at the G7 summit signed a “green belt and road initiative,” which offers funds to low income countries for sustainable investment. The agreement comes in the face of a $15 trillion global infrastructure investment gap, which threatens to compound resource and climate-based inequalities.

    In a 2018 introductory article, GAVIN BRIDGE, BEGUM ÖZKAYNAK, and ETHEMCAN TURHAN consider the global politics of green investment.

    From the piece:

    “Energy infrastructures draw together and advance the material interests of specific actors and groups across multiple scales. It is in this multi-actor and multi-scalar context, then, that a resurrection of debates on energy has to be understood: in some contexts energy policy reflects the reassertion of the national state as an economic actor (i.e. resource nationalism in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador). In others, it signals the rise of a populist and authoritarian form of economic nationalism (i.e. Turkey, Poland, India), where energy projects are harnessed to claims for national security in ways that occlude the particular interests of private capital and suppress dissent. In countries that embraced economic liberalization in the energy sector (such as the UK), claims for the national importance of new energy infrastructure reflect concerns about growing import dependency and the way energy systems are no longer ‘nationally’ contained. Elsewhere, it is an artefact of international agreements signed and ratified by nation-states.

    It is important that social science research on energy better understand these complex intersections between energy infrastructure and the political economies of national development. Claims about the national significance of infrastructure ‘do political work’ by, for example, licensing state intervention in energy systems, establishing political authority, and marginalizing criticism. In many countries, energy policy-making remains centralized and divorced from public participation. Questions about who bears the costs of power stations, pipelines and other energy infrastructures deemed ‘critical’ to national security or development now animate calls for more inclusive and sustainable energy systems. Energy infrastructure also enables and sustains particular forms of political economy. This includes, for example, the importance of electricity transmission systems, gas pipelines and storage facilities to constituting wholesale energy markets and enabling the adoption of economic liberalization policies in national energy sectors. Chile’s introduction of wholesale markets for electricity in 1978, and comprehensive electricity and gas sector privatization in the UK beginning in the 1980s illustrate how infrastructures for circulating gas and electricity have been a key experimental site for economic deregulation and the introduction of market principles, commercial logics and private capital into national economies. Infrastructures for energy have been a key frontier in the evolution of economic organizational forms—around markets, finance, labor organization and techno-scientific expertise—that transcend the energy sector, such that they can be considered integral to the reproduction of economic power.”

    Link to the text.

    • More from the special issue: Ayşen Eren on hydroelectricity infrastructure in Turkey, Yifan Cai and Yuko Aoyama on wind power in China, and Trine Pallesen & Peter Holm Jacobsen on flexible energy consumption in Denmark. Link.
    • In a 2017 article, Remi Jedwab and Adam “introduce a new dataset on the evolution of the stocks of railroads (1862-2015) and multiple types of roads (1960-2015) for 43 sub-Saharan African countries” to analyze the “economic and political factors in infrastructure investment.” Link.
    • “Whilst there is a clear need to deliver quality and purposeful infrastructure such as shelter, access to clean water and electricity, the provision of a high-speed rail network is often more aspirational than essential. Failure to deliver infrastructure provision of essential needs and services is what we contend determines the ‘real infrastructure gap’ that should inform investment priorities but which all too often does not.” Harry T. Dimitriou & Brian G. Field reexamine the need for mega infrastructure. Link. And from the PW archive, Alice Tianbo Zhang reflects on the local consequences of development induced displacement. Link.
    • For more on investment in green infrastructure, see a recent PW essay by Anusar Farooqui and Tim Sahay on a proposal for a green finance ratings agency, and a conversation on investing in the low carbon transcription. Link, link.

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    School Finance Post-Desegregation

    Esther Cyna is PhD candidate in History and Education at the Teachers College, Columbia University. In a recent paper, Cyna examines rural and urban school finance and political power in North Carolina.

    From the paper:

    “Two separate school districts—a city one and a county one—operated independently in Durham, North Carolina, until the early 1990s. The two districts merged relatively late compared to other North Carolina cities, such as Raleigh and Charlotte. In Durham, residents in both the county and city systems vehemently opposed the merger until the county commissioners ultimately bypassed a popular vote. Much of the city’s opposition to the merger stemmed from a fear of diluted black political influence under a merged system, even though the merger seemed to be the only way to equalize resources between the two districts. This tension between seeking equal resources and maintaining political power for the city school district existed and persisted because of historical, structural injustices in school financing schemes, legal constraints, and other policies that reinforced inequalities between urban and suburban areas. This article examines the evolution of these dynamics beyond the desegregation years. The constant tension between financial equity and political power, and the changing economic interests that came with the increased influence of the business community, shaped the merger story in Durham.”

    Link to the paper, link to Cyna’s website.

    + + +

    • “The investment programs on the table are, bluntly speaking, inadequate to the task at hand. The question is how we can go bigger, how we can go bigger urgently, and how this can be done practically.” New on the blog, a transcript of a recent PW event on investment and decarbonization. Link.
    • Join us on Tuesday, June 22 at 6 pm ET for the next session of the Social Wealth Seminar, featuring Jason Windawi on the Alaska Permanent Fund and what makes guaranteed income durable. RSVP to (text: sws_reservations@jainfamilyinstitute.org email: text: sws_reservations@jainfamilyinstitute.org).
    • On June 24 and 25, JFI will be participating in a UBI workshop on experiments, policies, and strategies, hosted by the Márica Basic Income Evaluation in Brazil. Link for more information, and sign up here.
    • “We find that temperature shocks affected agricultural production in El Salvador, which affected the labor market of agricultural workers…this is an important mechanism to explain rising international migration.” Ana Maria Ibáñez, Jimena Romero, Andrea Velásquez on climate change and migration. Link.
    • Rosaria E. A. Cardoso Amaral and Yewande S. Abraham on the effectiveness of a sustainable infrastructure rating system in East Timor. Link.
    • Daniel Gross and Bhaven Sampat on crisis innovation policy in the US from World War II to Covid-19. Link.
    • “To pull off a roaring 2020s, we should prepare to manage a boom, not fight it.” In the New York Times, Mike Konczal and J.W. Mason on inflation. Link.
    • In the Guardian, Thea Riofrancos on lithium mining. Link. And see a PW essay by JFI Lead Independent Researcher Francis Tseng on the subject. Link.
    • Adam Bonica, Jacob Grumbach, Charlotte Hill, and Hakeem Jefferson find that between 2014 and 2018, all-mail voting in Colorado increased turnout by 900,000 vote and reduced turnout inequality. Link.
    • Archana Prasad examines the role of women in the agrarian question, looking to peasant movement participation in India. Link.
    • “My research analyses data from a newly constructed database on Mughal conflicts, which includes information on 269 rebels for whom it is possible to determine their fates after they rebelled. 118 rebels (43%) were forgiven. Moreover, some of these rebels were forgiven multiple times. Importantly, these rebellions were not instigated by peasants but rather by wealthy individuals. There are many examples were peasants have been forgiven for their involvement in mass rebellions: the peasant’s revolt of 1381 in England or the Chiang-yin rebellion in Qing China. But in the Moghul era, wealthy rebellion could instigate many costly rebellions and the rulers could have responded by confiscating a rebel’s wealth thereby eliminating a threat and gaining income. I argue that it was rational for a revenue-maximising state to forgive rebellion leaders because this was a cost saving strategy.” By Safya Morshed. Link.

  4. The Concierge

    Comments Off on The Concierge

    LIBERALIZATION & MOVEMENTS

    A close election in Peru has pinned socialist candidate Pedro Castillo against Keiko Fujimori, former congresswoman and daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori. The contest has revealed deep polarization in the country between social movements opposed to foreign investment and those who favored market liberalization that has defined Peruvian politics since the 1990s.

    In a 2008 article, MOISÉS ARCE shows the links between these two poles, examining how the policies of the Fujimori regime and decentralization efforts under his successor, Alejandro Toledo, reinvigorated social struggles in mining, agriculture, and industrial labor.

    From the article:

    “Following the 1992 autogolpe, Fujimori recentralized political authority and effectively created a system with few or no veto points, which, in turn, allowed for dramatic policy change. During this period, Fujimori enjoyed majority support in Congress and was able to minimize political dissension within his own party, thereby expediting legislative approval for policy initiatives drafted by the executive. Fujimori also reversed the decentralization initiative that had created 13 regional governments in 1989. The period of the Fujimori regime, indeed, was characterized by a general decline in strike activity, largely because the political environment delegitimated the use of protest and the economic conditions eroded and weakened collective action.

    In contrast to Fujimori’s authoritarian regime, the democratic government of Toledo provided an environment that facilitated greater levels of mobilization. Unlike Fujimori after his autogolpe, Toledo did not have majority support in Congress, and disagreements within his party were customary. In 2002, Toledo restarted the decentralization process that the Fujimori regime had abruptly interrupted. Not surprisingly, Toledo’s democratic government faced many mobilizations. Outside the capital, in September 2001, peasants in Cuzco seized the city’s airport, demanding the construction of an access road to Quillabamba. Later that month, residents of Puno arrived in Lima requesting that the government build through Puno, instead of Cuzco, the so-called intercoastal highway (carretera interoceánica) between Peru and Brazil. The following month, 15 different mayors from 3 poverty-stricken regions, Junín, Huancavélica, and Ayacucho, arrived in Lima demanding more public works. In August 2002, rice producers in Tarapoto went on strike demanding a financial bailout from falling rice prices. At least 13 different departments, mostly in the poorer regions of the country, harbor several active and latent conflicts involving local communities and transnational mining corporations over the extraction of natural resources. Perhaps no other protest was as powerful as the one that rocked Arequipa in June 2002, when citizens violently resisted the sale of the city’s electric companies. Overall, this upsurge in localized protests was unprecedented. The cycle of contentious activity in Peru is exemplified by the Arequipa uprising and other geographically segmented conflicts against foreign direct investment. Many scholars have identified foreign direct investment as the hallmark of globalization and economic liberalization policies; therefore these conflicts can be seen as reactions to neoliberal or market policies.”

    Link to the text.

    • “Fujimori’s campaign rhetoric appealed to lower and lower middle classes by advocating stabilization measures that would minimize recession and job loss.” A 1997 article by Susan Stokes analyzes Alberto Fujimori’s jump from his campaign promises, which rejected “shock” fiscal adjustment, to his economic policies once in power. Link.
    • “As political liberalization legalizes the right to organize, state reforms have restricted access to state resources and jeopardized pockets of local political, material, and cultural autonomy that indigenous communities had carved out.” Deborah Yashar looks at indigenous organizing in Latin America in the 20th century. Link.
    • In NACLA, Ana Watson and Conny Davidsen examine failing state Covid-19 responses and an uptick in resource extraction in the Amazon region of Peru. Link. And Alejandra Dinegro Martínez takes a closer look at a national rural bloc of voters and the dynamics of the current election. Link.

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Politics of Drought Relief

    In her job market paper, PhD candidate in economics at Boston University LISA TARQUINIO examines the political motivations behind drought relief allocations in southern India and their implications for agricultural productivity.

    From the paper:

    “This paper studies the geographic targeting of drought relief in three Indian states. I document the degree to which relief is provided on the basis of official measures of need and identify the distortion of allocations due to political motives. India has developed a comprehensive drought management program with relief measures including food and water pro vision, agricultural extension support, direct cash transfers, and increased public employment. With climate change predicted to increase the interannual variability of the Indian monsoon, reducing households’ vulnerability to rainfall extremes and ensuring effective (private or public) insurance is all the more critical. A key feature in the evolution of India’s program is the movement towards a rules-based allocation, national guidelines that base the allocation of relief on environmental criteria, though it did not explicitly remove scope for discretion. I demonstrate that states’ targeting of relief only partly aligns with environmental measures of drought. Furthermore, targeting does not adhere to national guidelines for allocating drought relief. Instead, allocations are disrupted by the political motivations of the state ruling party. The likelihood of an area receiving relief increases in the electoral competition faced by the ruling party.”

    Link to the paper, link to Tarquinio’s website.

    Each week we highlight research from a graduate student, postdoc, or early-career professor. Send us recommendations: editorial@jainfamilyinstitute.org.

    + + +

    • “Like the products it carries, the ship is a transnational project: Japanese-owned; Taiwanese-leased; German-managed; an Indian crew; its Panamanian flag indicating the ship’s registry in that offshore haven which grants asset-owners tax exemptions and enables the employment of cheaper foreign labor.” New on PW, Mona Ali examines what the Ever Given reveals about the global economy. Link.
    • “The Great Recession is also substantially at fault for the student debt crisis, and the geographic contours of the downturn carry implications for how student debt has been experienced throughout the country.” Also new on the blog this week, JFI Fellow Sérgio Pinto and Senior Fellow Marshall Steinbaum on hysteresis and the student debt crisis after the Great Recession. Link.
    • Join the Basic Income Research & Action Lab seminar, hosted by JFI, on June 14 at 12 pm ET for an international look at guaranteed income messaging, featuring Anne Price, Barb Jacobsen, Tatiana Roque, and Catherine Thomas. Register here.
    • On June 24 and 25, JFI will be participating in a UBI workshop on experiments, policies, and strategies, hosted by the Márica Basic Income Evaluation in Brazil. Link for more information, and sign up here.
    • Nicholas Muller on the green interest rate, “which depends on temporal changes in the pollution intensity of output.” Link.
    • Martin Sandbu on labor shortages: “You can see shortages everywhere except in the data.” Link.
    • Saori Shibata on the political economy of digitization in Japan’s service sector. Link.
    • Fergus Green and Richard Denniss on “the economic and political case for restrictive supply-side climate policies.” Link.
    • “An additional Senator or Representative per million residents predicts an additional $670 dollars in aid per capita across the four relief packages.” Jeffrey Clemens and Stan Veuger on the small-state bias of federal Covid-19 relief legislation. Link.
    • In the Boston Review, Chris Hong, Robert Manduca, and Nic Johnson review Ariel Ron’s new book Grassroots Leviathan, which explores a grassroots farming movement to challenge the slaveholding south. Link.
    • “This paper examines the politics of compensation and rent distribution following the process of a large-scale expropriation of family lands for an oil palm plantation in Ghana’s eastern corridor.” By Adwoa Yeboah Gyapong. Link.
    • “A 25% minimum tax [on the profits of multinational companies] would increase corporate income tax revenues in the EU by about €170 billion in 2021.” A new report from the EU Tax Observatory by Mona Barake, Theresa Neef, Paul-Emmanuel Chouc, and Gabriel Zucman. Link.
    • “This article outlines the development of gender disparities in education for 28 Latin American and Caribbean countries for the period from 1880 to 1949. We explore in particular the hypothesis of a U-shaped development of women’s education during economic development. The basic economic mechanism was that if relative female labor market prospects were better, the families might have invested slightly more in the education of their female offspring, and vice versa. For the downward sloping part, we find some evidence, although this part is relatively small. The upward sloping part is strongly confirmed. We also find evidence for pronounced differences within the region: While South American countries like Argentina and Uruguay already had relatively high gender equality in the late 19th century; Central American countries had traditionally lower levels. Non-Hispanic Caribbean countries performed better in terms of gender equality, as well as in overall numeracy.” By Kerstin Manzel and Jörg Baten. Link.

  5. Essay on Urban Planning

    Comments Off on Essay on Urban Planning

    PEASANT REVOLTS

    This week marked the 640th anniversary of the 1381 Great Rising, a rebellion which swept across medieval England demanding an end to serfdom and an overhaul of the legal system and the aristocracy.

    A 2009 book edited by A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi and Cristóbal Kay examines the past, present, and future of peasant studies, paying close attention to the impact of globalization on configurations of rural power.

    From the book’s conclusion:

    “Agrarian restructuring has altered the land-, labour- and capital-intensity of production, in ways that have profoundly altered the terrain of the agrarian question. In Brazil and Vietnam, significant linkages between the export-oriented and peasant production subsectors has facilitated an asymmetrical but mutually reinforcing expansion of both subsectors, and consequently domestic demand. In both, the agricultural export sector now drives growth that, through its impact on product prices and wages, fosters increases in domestic demand in the rural economy in the first instance, but also more generally in the economy as a whole. Within both Brazil and Vietnam, rural accumulation continues to be of importance for both capital and labour and, in this sense, the classical concerns of the agrarian question remain salient.

    By countrast, in countries as varied as Bolivia, Egypt, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Morocco, Namibia, Pakistan, Peru, the Philippines, South Africa, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Zimbabwe, the processes of market-led land appropriation can be witnessed, though contingent trajectories of variation have produced manifestly different outcomes in specific settings. In particular, higher-value agricultural exports are an important determinant of aggregate rates of rural accumulation, but substantially weaker linkages between the export and peasant subsectors have fostered a significantly weaker distribution of the gains from rural accumulation and thus equality-deteriorating patterns of rural growth. Indeed, the greater emphasis on higher-value agricultural exports, coupled with devaluations and the removal of import restrictions resulting from ongoing structural adjustment in agriculture, has effectively, and in some cases deliberately, neglected agricultural production for the home market. Thus a range of countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America are increasingly engaged in the production of specialist farm output for niche consumer markets in developed capitalist economies, usually under the aegis of agro-food transnational corporations operating upstream in the commodity chain. The result, in many countries, has been to generate a reproduction squeeze within the increasingly fragmented peasant sector.”

    Link to the text.

    • “There are no longer classes of predatory pre-capitalist landed property of any major weight, nor is it useful to regard today’s small farmers as ‘peasants’ in any inherited historical sense.” Henry Bernstein asks “Is There an Agrarian Question in the 21st Century?” Link. And, by Max Ajl, “Does the Arab Region have an agrarian question?” Link.
    • “I use data covering 267 prefectures over four centuries to investigate two questions about historical China. To what extent did weather shocks cause civil conflict? And to what extent did the historical introduction of sweet potatoes mitigate these effects?” A 2013 paper by Ruixue Jia on weather-induced economic decline and peasant uprisings. Link.
    • “The crucial determinant of large-scale, sustained peasant rebellions is the ability of peasants to find allies among other societal groups.” Karen Barkey undertakes a comparison of uprisings in seventeenth century France and the Ottoman Empire. Link.
    • “It is abundantly clear that the peasantry, and not wage workers, has constituted the decisive social base of most, if not all, successful twentieth-century revolutions.” James Scott’s 1977 article reflects on “Hegemony and the Peasantry.” Link. And in his seminal work, Barrington Moore concludes that “The process of industrialization begins with peasant revolutions that fail. It culminates during the twentieth century with peasant revolutions that succeed.” Link.

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Sovereign Debt & War in Latin America

    FELIPE FORD COLE is the Sherwood Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. In a chapter co-authored with Juan Flores Zendejas, Ford Cole examines the role of sovereign debt and intervention in Latin America in the 19th century.

    From the paper:

    “The 19th century witnessed a high number of of episodes in which a government’s failure to repay its debt led to the erosion of a country’s sovereignty. In the most extreme cases, such disputes would trigger the intervention of European powers—mostly Britain and France—and the establishment of colonial regimes. Interestingly, the colonial wars and foreign control commissions that could be observed in Southern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East were seldom seen in Latin America. This is odd given that Latin American governments frequently defaulted on their external debts during this period. Different episodes of sovereign defaults witnessed the rise of merchant banks and other, private agents as actors with capacities to alter the economic policies of a country, or to exert different types of control over public revenues, expenditures, and monetary policy. But this does not mean that more heavy-handed options to force repayment were absent. As shown in the Mexican, Venezuelan, or Central American cases, the threat of external interventions existed as the region also fell into the field of imperial competition. Recognition between Latin American nations and European powers that came with independence in the 1820s meant that they enjoyed the right to non-intervention. But because Latin American nations were considered throughout the 19th century as part of a semi-periphery, neither colonized nor within the family of ‘civilized’ nations, they could not enforce this right against the same European powers when they sought to enforce debt claims.”

    Link to the text.

    Each week we highlight research from a graduate student, postdoc, or early-career professor. Send us recommendations: editorial@jainfamilyinstitute.org

    + + +

    • “Shadow banking has three foundations: liquid assets, global dollar funding, and risk management. So far, the Fed has left the last foundation unattended.” New on PW, Elham Saeidinezhad on risk management after 2008. Link.
    • Also new on the site: an entry in our Phenomenal Works series by Laleh Khalili, who recommends a paper by Winona LaDuke and Deborah Cowen. Link. See also: Khalili in conversation with Katy Fox-Hodess about her book Sinews of War and Trade. Link.
    • David Reinecke on NASA-funded science in an era of austerity, 1967-1976. Link. (ht: reader Philip R)
    • “There are statistically significant associations (p<0.05) between subnational data quality and key indicators of public health system capacity, fiscal decentralization, and the quality of democratic institutions.” A new paper by Philip Rocco, Jessica Rich, Katarzyna Klasa, Kenneth Dubin, and Daniel Béland looks at subnational data collection during the Covid-19 crisis in federal countries. Link.
    • Arjun Ramani and Nicholas Bloom use USPS and Zillow data to quantify migration within and across US cities during Covid-19. Link.
    • Peter Wade examines the politics of genomic science, race, and indigeneity in Latin America. Link.
    • A new report from the People’s Policy Project by Paul E. Williams on social asset building with the American Rescue Plan. Link.
    • Aaron Littman on the role of sheriffs in incarceration and criminal justice policy. Link.
    • “The estimates indicate that one HIV/AIDS death has been avoided for every $314,000 allocated through the program and that the program has saved approximately 60,000 lives through 2018.” Marcus Dillender examines city-level funding to fight HIV/AIDS. Link.
    • Jonathan Gruber, Amalie Jensen, Henrik Kleven study the effects of scaling back the mortgage interest deduction for middle- and high-income households in Denmark. Link.
    • “We analyse how workers perceive corporate labour standards and the related work conditions in the agro-export sector of Northern Guanajuato, Central Mexico.” By Jaime Hoogesteger and Gaya Massink. Link.
    • “Secondary-school enrollment and graduation rates increased spectacularly in much of the United States from 1910 to 1940; the advance was particularly rapid from 1920 to 1935 in the nonsouthern states. This increase was uniquely American; no other nation underwent an equivalent change for several decades. States that rapidly expanded their high school enrollments early in the period had greater wealth, more homogeneity of wealth, and less manufacturing activity than others. Factors prompting the expansion include the substantial returns to education early in the century and a responsive “state.” By Claudia Goldin. Link.

  6. We’re Coming

    Comments Off on We’re Coming

    LABOR SHORTAGES

    Though the US economy remains about 10 million jobs short of its pre-pandemic levels, employers and commentators have begun to express fears over a reduction in the labor supply, prompting debates over the possible causes of this shortage.

    A new article by JOSH BIVENS and HEIDI SHIERHOLZ questions the grounds for these fears using data from the most recent jobs report.

    From the piece:

    “Policymakers currently face a choice of guarding against growth constraints driven by demand or driven by supply. The Biden administration has chosen to zealously guard against demand shortfalls, even at the risk of running into some supply constraints in the near term. If policymakers change this orientation and reel back macroeconomic stimulus and cut off UI benefits, they will be making the other choice—guarding zealously against supply-constrained growth and being willing to risk growth running into demand constraints. This would be a huge mistake for human welfare, even if it were true that some workers were choosing to pass on available jobs due to enhanced UI benefits. A worker who is jobless because they have voluntarily decided that they’d rather wait out the next month or two on enhanced UI benefits—rather than throwing their caregiving responsibilities into disarray by taking on work in the face of continued school closures or braving a job they feel might be unsafe for them—suffers far less than a worker desperate for work who just can’t find it because the economy is unnecessarily running at too cool a pace.

    Many face-to-face service-sector jobs have become unambiguously worse places to work over the past year. This has in no way been fully restored to the pre-COVID normal, as the coronavirus remains far from fully suppressed. Well-functioning labor markets should account for this degraded quality of jobs by offering higher wages to induce workers back. If enhanced UI benefits and a demand-increasing dose of fiscal stimulus are allowing these higher wages to be quickly offered in the face of supply constraints, then it seems like they’re improving labor market efficiency in this regard. Policy boosts to labor supply that aim to expand opportunities and remove key barriers to work—like the investments in care work provided in the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan—are excellent examples of this kind of progressive labor supply policy.”

    Link to the post.

    • “If UI were driving things, you would absolutely expect to see low-wage workers less likely to be coming back to work. And in fact, it’s the opposite. That is compelling evidence that UI is not in the driver seat.” Shierholz elaborates in Mother Jones. Link. And in the NYT, David Leonhardt explains the trend through stagnanating wages, weakening unions, and rising coroporate profits. Link.
    • For other takes on the JOLTS figures, see Matt Klein on the manufacturing sector and Skanda Amarnath on sectoral data. Link, link.
    • “Using empirical evidence from the Prussian districts of Imperial Germany during the period between 1871 and 1912, we show that relative labor market shortages of agricultural workers increased the willingness of rural voters to ‘take electoral risks’ and vote for the opposition Social Democratic Party.” Martin Ardanaz and Isabela Mares on labor shortages and democratization. Link.

    (pinboard: employment, labor_market)

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Self-entrepreneurialism & Inequality

    PhD candidate in sociology at Princeton University SOPHIE MOULLIN studies the culture of inequality. In a recent paper, she probes the concept of “self-entrepreneurialism.”

    From the paper:

    “Several social theorists describe a culture of self-entrepreneurialism: a subjectivity in which individuals see themselves as determining their objective economic outcomes or earnings. This culture, it is thought, is institutionalized in contemporary employment practices such that, as in human capital theory, self-entrepreneurialism is widespread among employees, and the more self-entrepreneurial earn more. I contribute a quantitative and comprehensive response to these largely untested claims using survey data from the mid-1990s through mid-2010s, representative of working-age Americans. I find that self-entrepreneurialism, defined as a latent, reflective self-concept of self-growth, mastery, directedness, and foresight, is associated in the cross-section with a significant earnings premium – of between 5% and 10% of average earnings – between individuals within the same occupation. However, differences in degrees of self-entrepreneurialism do almost nothing to explain the earnings differences between different occupations. Further, within individuals over their working lives, there is no significant longitudinal association, in either direction, between changes in self-entrepreneurialism and earnings. Self-entrepreneurialism is economically rewarded, but within – not between or against – the enduring occupational and life-course structure to earnings inequality.”

    Link to the paper, link to Moullin’s website.

    (pinboard: labor_market, new_researchers)

    + + +

    • “How the 1 percent’s savings buried the middle class in debt.” A review of recent literature on wealth and savings by Rebecca Stropoli. Link.
    • Dennis Sullivan and Andrea Ziegert study the Black-white poverty differential between 1980 and 2014, looking at tax and transfer policy, demographics, and labor market structure. Link.
    • Sumudu Perera, Ananda Rathnayake, Janaka Fernando, Thilani Navaratne, and Dilan Rajapakshe examine the shift from in-kind transfers to direct cash transfer fertilizer subsidies in Sri Lanka. Link.
    • “If world leaders don’t act now, the end of the Covid pandemic may come with a horrible form of herd immunity, as more transmissible variants that are taking hold around the world kill millions.” Zeynep Tufekci on new variants and vaccine distribution. Link.
    • “This paper employs the multisectoral balance-of-payments constrained economic growth model to capture the influence of structural changes on the exports and economic growth of Vietnam over the period 1997–2016.” By Woocheol Lee. Link.
    • Isabella Weber in Fortune on China and cryptocurrency. Link.
    • Stephen Redding on explanations for suburbanization in the US from 1970 to 2010. Link.
    • Sebastian Kohl and Jardar Sørvoll compare social democracy and housing cooperatives in German and Nordic-speaking countries. Link.
    • A new report from the Century Foundation and Data for Progress finds overwhelming support for a stronger Supplemental Security Income (SSI). Link.
    • “Major epidemics of plague in Germany and France in the early 18th century and in Moscow in the 1770s brought an end to a series of epidemic disasters in Europe which had started with the Black Death. The article examines what they had in common, and seeks to understand why they should have ended when they did. It shows that European governors were unanimous in insisting on rigid quarantine and other measures for containing the disease developed over previous centuries, despite their ignorance of plague’s precise causes. It shows also that physicians across Europe were more deeply divided than they had ever been on the issue of contagion, and now engaged in an international dispute about whether the acknowledged cruelties inflicted by compulsory quarantines were wholly counterproductive, or a price worth paying for the prevention of still worse disasters.” By Paul Slack. Link.

  7. In Praise Of

    Comments Off on In Praise Of

    CONDITIONING AID

    Recent events in Gaza and Colombia have led to calls for the conditioning of foreign aid—a controversial but longstanding element of the US foreign policy toolkit for pursuing economic and political aims abroad.

    A 2007 article by STEVEN HOOK looks at the effort to condition foreign aid as part of the post-Soviet transition following the Cold War.

    From the article:

    “Upon the Cold War’s demise, the global development aid regime coalesced around the overarching goal of sustainable development. Among other components of this goal, such as preventing ecological decay and restraining population growth, the promotion of democracy emerged as a primary concern. Bush and Clinton looked to foreign assistance as a primary vehicle to promote the expansion and consolidation of democratic rule. The stated objectives of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) were aligned with those of other major donors and international organizations, with themes related to all aspects of sustainable development assuming a high profile. Leaders of USAID announced new standards for aid qualification and reorganized the agency’s bureaucratic structure, in Washington and in overseas field missions, around the new mission. In some cases, most notably former Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), USAID missions were closed because their host governments had proven to be ‘poor partners’ in implementing reforms. The agency’s central challenge became convincing a skeptical Congress and general public that global democratization was as vital to US national interests — and as worthy of the country’s financial sacrifice — as was communist containment during the cold war.

    The rhetorical alignment of US aid policy with that of the development aid regime represented a profound departure for the United States, which had long diverged from regime norms in the qualitative aspects of aid policy even while serving as the primary donor of aid at an absolute level. The uneven results of the US policy may thus be attributed to unresolved tensions between the principles advocated by the aid regime and the coexisting and often contradictory foreign-policy objectives of the US government. While changes in the international environment may alter the substantive foreign-policy priorities of donors, and while transnational regimes may impose pressures on donors to promote objectives that cross national boundaries, the ultimately political role of foreign aid as an instrument of foreign policy remains its distinguishing feature.”

    Link to the text.

    • “During the Cold War, donors’ geopolitical objectives diminished the credibility of threats to condition aid on the adoption of democratic reforms.” A 2004 article by Thad Dunning examines the effectiveness of conditioning aid in Africa following the Cold War. Link.
    • “First generation conditionality focused on economic reform and came in the wake of growing economic crisis in of many Third World countries, particularly in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa.” Olav Stokke introduces a 1995 volume on political conditionality. Link. And a 1998 volume edited by Tony Killick looks at conditionality in IMF and World Bank loans. Link.
    • “By quietly offering alternatives to aid-receiving countries, emerging donors are weakening the bargaining position of western donors.” Ngaire Woods examines how increasing aid from countries outside of the OECD challenges conditionality. Link.
    ‡ foreign_policy    aid

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Chile’s Export Diversification

    AMIR LEBDIOUI is a research fellow at the Latin American and Caribbean Centre at LSE. In a 2019 paper, Lebdioui investigates the causes of Chile’s export diversification under the Pinochet dictatorship.

    From the paper:

    “By analyzing the dynamics underlying the emergence of the salmon, fruit, forestry and wine sectors in Chile’s export basket since the 1960s, the findings of this research show that, in contrast to the laissez-faire narrative, the role of the Chilean state has been crucial in catalyzing human capital accumulation, ensuring sustainability, and diffusing expertise and technology in non-copper related sectors, through different types of vertical policies and through various public institutions (including government agencies, the Central Bank, Fundación Chile and universities). The opening up of the economy in the 1980s took advantage of the specialized human capital, knowledge and technological capabilities accumulated through vertical interventions prior to liberalization. It appears that the Chilean government had thus relied on several policy tools to effectively govern the market through what could be termed industrial policy ‘in disguise,’ especially during the seemingly economically liberal military regime (1973–90).”

    Link to the paper.

    ‡ markets    exports    new_researchers

    + + +

    • Watch a recording of Thursday’s panel on investment and decarbonization, featuring Anusar Farooqui, Yakov Feygin, Daniela Gabor, Robert Hockett, JW Mason, Saule Omarova, Tim Sahay, and Adam Tooze. Link.
    • For background reading, see this thread of work from the panelists, featuring proposals for a public green ratings agency, the National Investment Authority, a macro case for the Green New Deal, the “Wall Street Consensus,” and more. Link.
    • “Housing IS the Business Cycle.” Edward Leamer on residential investment and predicting recessions. Link.
    • Cornel Ban on the shifts in central banking during Covid-19. Link.
    • Dean Birch, DT Cochrane, and Callum Ward on big tech and data as an asset. Link. And see Salomé Viljoen’s PW essay on data as labor or property. Link.
    • “Drawing on findings from an analysis of nearly 10,000 postwar property records in the South Side Chicago neighborhood of Englewood, this article demonstrates that vacancy stems not from disinvestment but from predatory investments in housing.” By Rea Zaimi. Link.
    • Edoardo Saravalle on global financial regulation and the US dollar. Link.
    • “After a quarter century of sharp and sustained increase, Chinese inequality is now plateauing and, according to some measures, even declining.” Ravi Kanbur, Yue Wang, and Xiaobo Zhang on China’s inequality turnaround. Link.
    • Michael A. McCarthy, Ville-Pekka Sorsa, and Natascha van der Zwan on investment and patient capital in pension fund capitalism. Link.
    • “Most [manufacturers] continue to overstate the power of robots in order to receive material and symbolic benefits from local states.” Ya-Wen Lei on attitudes towards automation in China. Link.
    • “This essay provides comparative evidence that an at least incipient public sphere emerged within colonial Spanish America’s civil societies in the late colonial period. This argument challenges the view that intellectual debate and critique took place in a mostly private space at that time. It also calls into question the recent idea that the development of a true public sphere in those days was hindered by the absence of printed news and propaganda and the lack of a literate population. Regardless of whether or not newspapers were widely read, radical, or active, the emergence of a public press in itself and the proliferation of literary, scientific, and economic associations were indicative of a new movement.” By Victor Uribe-Uran. Link.

  8. Hinged Landscape

    Comments Off on Hinged Landscape

    CONSUMER CREDIT

    Use of the most recent government stimulus varied by income, with richer households saving the money and poorer ones using it to pay off debt. At the same time, the supply of consumer credit available to low-income households has declined.

    These developments mark a shift in patterns of American credit consumption. Examining consumer credit in the 20th century, GUNNAR TRUMBULL’s 2014 book considers the comparative trajectory of France and the United States and focuses on the role of policy coalitions in prioritizing consumer protection and credit access in each case.

    From the article:

    “In the immediate wake of World War II, as credit-driven consumption boomed in the United States, French families faced credit rationing. In 1949, consumer credit represented 10% of GDP in the US, but just 0.2% of GDP in France. Even as rationing was relaxed, French consumer lending remained low. The account in this book attributes the emergence and divergence of U.S. and French consumer credit to the ways in which the sector was transformed into a legitimate economic activity. At the beginning of the 20th century, societal attitudes toward credit in both France and the United States were mainly negative. By the end of the twentieth century, the popular perception of lending in the two countries had been remade.

    In the United States, the supply of consumer credit was supported by an evolving coalition between progressive activists and consumer lenders. The groundwork for abundant consumer credit was laid in the 1910s and 1920s, when credit access was supported by progressives as a salve to the emerging working class, and by powerful industrialists as an alternative to expansive welfare of the kind that was spreading in Europe. In the 1950s and 1960s, consumer credit became an element of the postwar productivity coalition, in which organized labor supported credit to the working class and manufacturers encouraged credit to drive new demand. By the 1970s, credit market access became a consensus issue of women’s and welfare rights campaigns. These groups reconceived credit access as a right of citizenship and a means to economic equality.”

    Link to the text.

    • “This article explores distinctive features of the credit transaction that differentiate claims making in the credit market from more familiar forms of claims making in the labor market.” Greta Krippner analyzes “Ownership and the Politics of Credit Access in Late Twentieth-Century America.” Link.
    • Sarah Quinn on budgets, fiscal policies, and financial engineering: “A 1960s political battle between the federal government and the Johnson administration over asset sales and the budget culminated in a reorganization of U.S. housing finance policy.” Link.
    • “In the absence of a more elaborate, cradle-to-grave social welfare system, Americans saw a greater need to set aside funds for these life events and risks. In contrast to West Germans, American consumers did not view saving for consumer goods as an attractive alternative to obtaining them through consumer debt.” Jan Logemann examines welfare policy and credit consumption. Link.
    ‡ credit_scoring social_policy

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    India’s Rice Exports

    Assistant Professor at the Delhi School of Economics Manish Kumar studies agricultural and commodity markets in India. In a 2019 paper, he examines how India’s rice exports have affected different classes of farmers.

    From the paper:

    “This article provides an empirical study of the economic impacts of rice exports on the actors involved in Paddy Value Networks (PVN) in India. The significance of rice production in India is clear when considering that India’s rice exports command the highest share in the country’s total agricultural exports; and that paddy cultivation involves almost half of India’s agricultural households. The export of rice thus connects the masses with the world market. The maximum number of the paddy farmers in India are selling paddy at a price which is less than the cost of production. In 2012–2013, 83 per cent of the total paddy cultivators in India received a price less than the minimum support price; in this way as well, the small and marginal farmers are more deprived than the larger-sized group of farmers. The export unit price of rice is less than its economic cost. In a situation where the farming community is already facing the deficit and not able to cover the cost of production, the recent export prices are an additional concern. Since an exporter of any country cannot alone change the world price, it means that in order to make exports profitable, even with a lower margin, the squeeze is possible only in the backward linkages in general, and from farmers in particular.”

    Link to the paper.

    ‡ agriculture exports new_researchers

    Each week we highlight research from a graduate student, postdoc, or early-career professor. Send us recommendations: editorial@jainfamilyinstitute.org.

    + + +

    • Join us on Thursday, May 20 at 10 am ET for a panel discussion in investment and decarbonization, featuring Anusar Farooqui, Yakov Feygin, Daniela Gabor, Robert Hockett, JW Mason, Saule Omarova, Tim Sahay, and Adam Tooze. Register here.
    • “We can be virtually certain that, were green ratings left to ‘independent’ ratings agencies or financial intermediaries, they would become decoupled from fundamentals as the green boom gets underway.” A new a piece by Farooqui and Sahay that explores funding and implementation of green projects, and proposes the creation of a public ratings agency for green finance. Link.
    • A new report co-authored by JFI Fellow Patrick Robbins, alongside Johanna Bozuwa, Thea Riofrancos, Sarah Knuth and more, on a vision for the New York Power Authority’s role in decarbonizing New York’s energy system. Link.
    • On the links between Chinese investment projects and increased protest in Africa, by Francesco Iacoella, Bruno Martorano, Laura Metzger, and Marco Sanfilippo. Link.
    • Quinn Slobodian on the sovereign debt crisis and risk ranking poorer nations in the 1970s. Link. (ht: Paul]
    • “Whatever the cause of the April slowdown in job growth—one that could easily prove to be statistical noise—it is unlikely that the extra federal benefits are the primary explanation.” Skanda Amarnath in the Times on the jobs numbers. Link.
    • “We demonstrate that existing government institutions and policy established for reasons unrelated to climate change may induce climate adaptation.” By Antonio Bento, Noah S. Miller, Mehreen Mookerjee, and Edson R. Severnini. Link.
    • “Aggregate indicators are informative only to the extent that the importance of the underlying components are constant over time.” Matt Klein in Barron’s on why the apparent inflation surge in April actually reflects idiosyncrasies in reopening. Link.
    • “Strategic interaction has transformed the old Fordist dual industrial structure into a tripartite structure composed of high profit volume firms with monopolies based on intellectual property rights (IPRs), physical capital-intensive firms protected by an investment barrier to entry, and low profit volume labor-intensive firms.” Herman Mark Schwartz on global stagnation and intellectual property. Link.
    • Lorenz T. Keyßer and Manfred Lenzen on how to achieve a 1.5°C climate target through different degrowth scenarios. Link.
    • Michael Witter on Covid-19’s threat to the Caribbean. Link.
    • “Fuelwood was the main domestic fuel in the Mediterranean Basin during the early modern age, although the consumption level was lower than in other latitudes. The calculation of annual real prices and per capita household consumption figures in Seville from 1518 to 1775 reveals a complex evolution connected to a European-wide scenario. Contrary to prior assumptions, a substantial increase in domestic fuelwood use is evidenced as of 1630. The growing supply of firewood from tree-crops, leading to a decrease in real prices, ran parallel to an early diet shift to pulses and the corresponding extension of cooking times.” By Isabel Bartolomé Rodríguez and Manuel González-Mariscal. Link.

  9. The Spell of the Lake

    Comments Off on The Spell of the Lake

    LAND GRABS

    In the late 2000s, the term “land grab” rose to prominence to describe large-scale acquisitions of farmland in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Reports of “land grabs” also inspired debates around the specific functions of foreign investment, domestic policies in the global South, and commodity prices in development.

    A 2012 article by LORENZO COTULA takes a critical approach towards “land grab” literature and distinguishes contemporary land acquisition patterns from their historical counterparts.

    From the article:

    “There is nothing new in the acquisition of land in the global South to produce crops for export to the global North, and some crops have a long history in tropical plantations (e.g. rubber). However, the biofuels boom has brought new actors (e.g. constellations of energy, agribusiness and biotech companies) and new crops (e.g. jatropha), or has reinvigorated interest in longstanding crops (e.g. sugar cane, palm oil). Carbon markets are changing the nature of the financial returns at stake and, more fundamentally, the very relationship between humankind and nature. The growing participation of financial players in the global land rush brings to the land arena a new set of players, motivations and investment models. In the words of Peluso and Lund, ‘there is no one grand land grab, but a series of changing contexts, emergent processes and forces, and contestations that are producing new conditions and facilitating shifts in both de jure and de facto land control.’

    However one looks at it, the land rush, if sustained over the next few years, will have profound implications for the future of world agriculture, including the roles of states and markets, of agribusiness and family farming, and of the global trading system. For example, as companies increase their degree of vertical integration and as governments acquire land overseas to import agricultural produce, a growing share of world agricultural trade will occur within the ‘closed circuit’ of corporate or country systems – deepening a trend that has emerged over the past few decades. In turn, this trend may have repercussions in multiple directions: to name a few, greater vertical integration of value chains can squeeze local operators; intra-firm transactions may increase opportunities for tax avoidance through transfer pricing; and mercantilist approaches to outsourcing agricultural production for national food security can ultimately undermine the multilateral trading system.”

    Link to the text.

    • “The period between 2007 and 2012 is what we can call the ‘making sense period’: media, NGOs, policy experts and academics were grappling with basic questions: how do we define land grab?” Marc Edelman, Carlos Oya, and Saturnino Borras Jr. introduce a 2013 issue of Third World Quarterly dedicated to the subject. Link.
    • “Expulsion by pollution is different from the land dispossession described in most land grab studies as it involves expelling people from their land by reducing its use value, rather than taking the land away.” In a recent article, Hua Li and Lu Pan examine dispossession and the construction of industrial parks in rural China. Link.
    • “In the aftermath of the crisis, agribusiness’s access to credit based on promises of future production was reduced significantly.” Maria Luisa Mendonça and Fábio Teixeira Pitta on speculation and debt in Brazilian land acquisitions. Link.
    ‡ agriculture land commodity

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Tax Havens and Global Capital Flows

    PhD candidate in economics at Harvard ANTONIO COPPOLA studies finance and international macroeconomics. A new paper co-authored with Matteo Maggiori, Brent Neiman, and Jesse Schreger examines cross-border financing and tax havens.

    From the paper:

    “Global firms often access capital markets by issuing securities through cross-border affiliates. Standard economic data associate such offshore securities with the location of the issuing affiliates, rather than the country of their ultimate parents, so they offer a highly distorted view of global portfolios. In this paper, we match foreign subsidiaries located in tax havens to their parents with a security-level dataset on global fund holdings and restate bilateral investment positions to reflect the true financial linkages across countries. The resulting nationality-based statistics paint a vastly different picture of global capital allocation than the original residency-based data. First, the revised positions involve significantly larger bilateral portfolio debt investments from developed markets to large emerging markets including the “BRICS” countries. Firms in those countries disproportionately issue bonds through affiliates that are resident in tax havens in part to minimize the burden of withholding taxes that apply to interest payments on foreign-held bonds. As a result, our revised positions reveal that U.S. investments in Brazilian corporate bonds, for example, equal $50 billion, much larger than the $8 billion position listed in TIC. Second, the revised positions involve a massive increase in the bilateral holdings of Chinese equities by each of the advanced economies. For example, whereas the national statistics for 2017 list the United States as holding $154 billion in Chinese common equities, we find the position to be worth about $700 billion.”

    Link to the paper.

    ‡ macroeconomics finance new_researchers

    Each week we highlight research from a graduate student, postdoc, or early-career professor. Send us recommendations: editorial@jainfamilyinstitute.org.

    + + +

    • “Many of those same countries that needed their debt restructured twenty years ago because they were too poor to repay the IMF are now too poor to repay Citibank.” New on the blog, Reece Sisto interviews Ken Shadlen on sovereign debt, the IMF, and solving the collective action problem. Link.
    • “A commitment to getting the social world right does not require deference to results simply because the approved statistical machinery has been cranked.” JFI Fellow Lily Hu in the Boston Review. Link. For more, read Hu’s Phenomenal World essay from causal counterfactuals and race. Link.
    • “As Steinbaum writes, student debt is like a bathtub that is overflowing because too much debt is pouring in and not enough is being paid off.” Ryan Cooper covers JFI Senior Fellow Marshall Steinbaum’s research in The Week. Link. See Steinbaum’s report on the crisis of nonrepayment here.
    • Martijn Konings, Lisa Adkins, and Dallas Rogers introduce a new issue of Economy and Space by looking at the “institutional logic of property inflation.” Link.
    • “How and why did a group of private sector actors succeed in establishing a high-protectionist global IP agreement? And why did these actors fail to achieve the same results in parallel issue areas?” Susan Sell on TRIPS and the globalization of IP rights. Link. And see a recent newsletter on the implementation of TRIPS in developing countries. Link.
    • A new report from the Center for Popular Democracy and Data for Progress on revamping the unemployment insurance system. Link.
    • Global mortality from fossil fuel emissions is much higher than previously thought, according to a new study by Karn Vohra, Alina Vodonos. Joel Schwartz, Eloise Marais, Melissa Sulprizio, and Loretta Mickley. Link.
    • Alejandro De Coss-Corzo on the politics of austerity in the maintenance of water infrastructure in Mexico City. Link.
    • “As the power to certify scientific knowledge diffused out into the marketplace of the press, academies and societies invested journals with functions designed to confer reward and to demarcate true practitioners from others. As journals became not only purveyors of scientific news but also archives of discovery, it became more common to conceive of science as a series of discrete discovery events localized in time and connected with an individual author. This raised other tricky questions about the status of collective knowledge.” Alex Csiszar on the politics of scientific journals in the 19th century. Link.

  10. In The Act

    Comments Off on In The Act

    REGULATING SUPPLY CHAINS

    Millions of workers in global supply chains have lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic. The impact has been especially acute in the garment industry; in Bangladesh, more than 70% of apparel workers were sent home without pay in the early days of the pandemic.

    These practices, along with the working conditions in many major industries, violate firms’ regulatory standards. In a recent article, SAROSH KURUVILLA, MINGWEI LIU, CHUNYUN LI, AND WANSI CHEN consider the structural impediments to effective supply chain reform.

    From the piece:

    “Why is there a gap between the policies of private regulation and the labor standards of global supply chains? Two general explanations have been advanced. The first has focused on ‘symbolic adoption,’ whereby companies adopt private regulation primarily as a strategy to minimize reputational risk without seriously implementing it. A second explanation points to faulty assumptions underlying the model’s design and implementation.

    Our argument is that actor heterogeneity in private labor standard regulation generates opacity that decouples practice from outcomes. We develop three propositions demonstrating how heterogenous actors contribute towards field opacity: practice multiplicity (the diversity of practices adopted by actors across sociopolitical and geographic spaces), behavioral invisibility (the difficulty in assessing the behavior of suppliers) and causal complexity, whereby a ‘multitude of interconnected actors and factors interacting in non-linear ways creates uncertainty about cause-effect relations.’ Our contribution to the private regulation literature is to outline an alternative, systemic explanation for the performance gap; the complex ways in which actors interact play an important role.”

    Link to the text.

    • “The voluntary private model likely displaces government and trade ­ union interventions and is designed not to protect­ labor rights, but to limit ­legal liability and protect brand value. But thus far, governments have yet to actively enforce legislation in supplier countries.” In his new book, Kuruvilla delves into the history and effectiveness of corporate supply chain regulation. Link.
    • A recent article by Tim Bartley politicizes the discussion: “Theories of transnational governance remain focused on emergence, design, or legitimation. This paper argues that some simple facts about intersecting expressions of power can help us make sense of the concrete practices of private regulation.” Link.
    • “Public governance has evolved beyond its traditional focus on enforceable rules directed to actors within national jurisdiction. Increasingly, states seek to have impact beyond their national territory.” Guillaume Delautre, Elizabeth Echeverría Manrique and Colin Fenwick introduce a new ILO report on hybrid institutional and legal regulatory frameworks. Link.
    ‡ supply_chain regulation

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Economies of Scale in the Auto Industry

    In his job market paper, PhD candidate in economics at Yale University JIAN ZIN HENG looks at firm-firm relationships among automobile manufacturers and their suppliers after the Great Recession.

    From the paper:

    “A concern during the Great Recession was the collapse of American automobile producers hurting other firms in their industry. Central to this fear was the industry’s network of manufacturer-supplier relationships. This paper studies how economies of scale and product differentiation affect manufacturer-supplier relationships. When manufacturers differentiate their products, they typically sell sophisticated goods with narrow market segments. Hence, they may not realize economies of scale. However, if their inputs remain simple and homogeneous, their suppliers can achieve scale economies by supplying multiple firms. From this viewpoint, highly connected production networks are desirable, since they reduce production costs. This paper introduces a simple model of manufacturer-supplier relationship formation. The data shows auto producers sharing more suppliers after the Great Recession. The simple model predicts more relationship investment when manufacturers face greater demand. The empirical results indicate overinvestment dominates relationships. Hence, subsidizing US automakers during 2008-16 may only increase relationship formation to more inefficient levels.”

    Link to the paper, link to Zin Heng’s website.

    ‡ networks manufacturing new_researchers

    + + +

    • “In response to the economic downturn of 1937-8, the RFC moved into industrial policy, providing working capital directly to corporations. It wasn’t just providing liquidity—it was socializing investment.” New on Phenomenal World, Nic Johnson resurrects the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. Link.
    • “Why are the east sides of formerly industrial cities more deprived?” Stephan Heblich, Alex Trew, and Yanos Zylberberg on past pollution and neighborhood segregation. Link.
    • Taylor Shelton examines “gameday homes,” which emerge through speculative real estate proximate to college football stadiums in the American South. Link.
    • “New international enrollment (including those online) decreased by 43 percent.” John Bound, Breno Braga, Gaurav Khanna, and Sarah Turner on international students in US higher education and the Covid-19 enrollment drop. Link.
    • Nick Krachler, Ian Greer, and Charles Umney on healthcare marketization in five countries. Link.
    • “The existence of structural causes of citation gaps means that certain attempts to make academic communities more efficient (e.g. by eliminating pre-publication peer review) have the potential to create feedback loops, where initial inequities feed back into greater inequities over time.” By Hannah Rubin. Link.
    • Max Krahé on what defines a sustainable investment. Link.
    • “Far from addressing climate change, California’s forest offsets appear to be adding tens of millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere on balance.” By Lisa Song and James Temple. Link. And in Bloomberg, Max de Haldevang on deforestation as an unintended effect of AMLO’s tree-planting program. Link.
    • “Railway companies in the UK were a popular investment choice among the middle classes and had been a major asset class since the first railway boom of the mid-1830s. The railways, therefore, make an interesting case study through which to examine women investors. An analysis of 500,000 shareholder address books reveals the growing importance of women shareholders from 1843, when they made up about 11 per cent of the GWR shareholder base, to 1920, when they constituted about 40 per cent of primary shareholders. We find that women were much more likely to be solo shareholders than men, with 70 to 80 per cent of women investing on their own, compared to just 30 to 40 per cent of men.” By Graeme G. Acheson, Gareth Campbell, Áine Gallagher, and John D. Turner. Link.