Category Archive: Sources

  1. Les Fanatiques

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    This is an archived version of the PW Sources newsletter from Saturday, December 2. Sign up to receive PW Sources directly to your inbox here.

    NAGORNO-KARABAKH 

    In September, Azerbaijan launched a military attack on Nagorno-Karabakh. The majority ethnic Armenian enclave inside Azerbaijani borders has been the site of territorial disputes since its creation within the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic in 1923. But the latest conflagration resulted in a ceasefire whose terms included the disarming of Armenian separatist groups, the announcement of the dissolution of the enclave’s Armenian government, and almost all of the territory’s 120,000 ethnic Armenians fleeing west across Armenia’s borders. 

    In a 2003 book, Thomas de Waal reconstructs the history of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

    From the text:

    “From 2004, President Ilham Aliev slowly established himself as leader of Azerbaijan. The main reason for his  success was the huge economic lift delivered by Azerbaijan’s new oil boom. In 2006, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline was inaugurated. At a length of 1100 miles or 1768 km, it was the second longest pipeline in the world, shipping oil from the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea via Georgia to Turkey and then on to Western markets. Azerbijan was now host to an oil-and-gas route that was beloved by Western oil companies and politicians for being under the operational control of BP and bypassing both Russia and Iran. Azerbaijan was the world’s fastest growing economy in the years 2005–2008 and in 2008 its GDP had risen to $35 billion, having been just $1.3 billion in 1991. Oil revenues completely dominated the economy, comprising more than 90 percent of the country’s exports. The new State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan was set up in 2000 to manage revenue flows and had accumulated assets worth more than $22 billion in early 2011. Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry expanded rapidlly. Azerbaijani military spending had topped $3 billion and exceeded the entire Armenian state budget—an explicit goal the Azerbaijan leadership had set itself.  Five years before, Baku had embarked on a new arms race, acquiring heavy artillery, MiG-25 fighter aircraft, tactical midrange and long-range missiles, and multiple launch rocket systems. Although they constituted a threat of war, the declared aim was to force Armenia into an arms race it could not afford and therefore into concessions at the negotiating table.”

    +  “The EU also wants to keep Azerbaijan on side for energy reasons: its natural gas resources could make up for the embargo on Russian gas.” Constant Leon in Le Monde Diplomatique. Link. A SIPRI report on arms sourcing in the conflict. Link.

    +  “The economic effect of a resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict on Armenia and Azerbaijan,” by David Saha, Ricardo Giucci, Matthias Lücke, Robert Kirchner, Veronika Movchan, and Georg Zachmann. Link.

    + “In the New Left Review, Georgi Derlugian explores the history of the conflict. Link. And a Times op-ed from October by Derlugian on the exodus. Link.

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Pentecostal TV

    MARCELA MELLO is a PhD candidate in economics at Brown University. Her job market paper examines media dispersion and the Pentecostal movement in Brazil.

    From the paper:  

    “We study the socioeconomic consequences of adherence to the Pentecostal movement in Brazil, using exposure to a church-affiliated TV channel as a source of quasi-random variation in religiosity. Our empirical strategy exploits the placement of transmitters prior to the channel becoming religiously affiliated. Results show that exposure to this TV channel increased the number of Pentecostals in Brazil (30% increase compared to baseline) ten years after change of ownership. Consistent with the church’s prescriptions, municipalities exposed to this TV channel had higher fertility rates, lower female labor force participation, lower schooling for young women, and more votes for Pentecostal candidates. We find no effects on schooling for boys. Results persist in following 20 years. In an event-study framework, we exploit the expansion of RecordTV over time to show that the number of Pentecostal churches increases following the introduction of channel in the municipality.”

    + + +

    +  ” The proliferation of state-led industrial policy across the global South in recent decades holds a crucial lesson: there is not one path to economic transformation.” New on PW, Jojo Nem Singh offers a comparative study of industrial policy. Link. 

    +  “Most of the countries in the Sahel are now under the control of military juntas.” Tamas Gerőcs on French colonial legacies and recent coups in in West and Central Africa. Link. 

    +  Mariana Mazzucato and Laurie Macfarlane examine mission-oriented development banks. Link. 

    +  “I demonstrate that the number of military operations significantly increased in the lead-up to elections, which strongly indicates the extent of instrumentalisation.” Huseyin Zengin on the Turkish army and Erdogan’s AKP party. Link. 

    +  Francisco Javier Bonilla on extractivism and political clientelism Panama’s most recent anti-mining protests. Link.

    +  Brad Setser on Argentina, Milei, and the dollarization question, on Odd Lots. Link.

    +  “Building on the BJP’s increased organizational capacity is the mobilization of state welfare benefits by the party and the concerted effort to convert welfare recipients into supporters.” Shashank Chaturvedi, David Gellner, and Sanjay Kumar Pandey on the 2022 state elections in Uttar Pradesh, India. Link. 

    +  “This paper empirically examines the role of gender diversity in inventive activity during the first and second industrial revolutions. The analysis of systematic data on patents and unpatentable innovations uniquely enables an evaluation of women’s creativity within both the market and nonmarket sectors. British women inventors were significantly more likely than men to focus on unpatentable innovations in consumer final goods and design-oriented products that spanned art and technology, and on uncommercialized improvements within the household. Conventional approaches that fail to account for nonmarket activity and for such incremental changes in consumer goods and design innovations therefore significantly underestimate women’s contributions to household welfare and overall economic progress.” By B. Zorina Khan. Link. 

  2. Nostalgia del Paraná

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    This is an archived version of the PW Sources newsletter from Saturday, November 25. Sign up to receive PW Sources directly to your inbox here.

    PERONISM

    Libertarian economist Javier Milei has won the Argentine presidential 
    election, defeating Sergio Massa of the incumbent Unión por la Patria (UP) coalition. UP has its roots in Peronism, a traditionally left-wing political movement founded by Juan Perón in the 1940s.  

    In a 2020 article, MARÍA VICTORIA MURILLO and S.J. RODRIGO ZARAZAGA examine the factional dynamics of Peronism. 

    From the text:

    “The long-running grand cleavage of Argentine politics—for or against Peronism with its complicated blend of populism, nationalism, trade-unionism, and redistributive
    efforts accompanied by a pragmatic and broad ideological appeal—remains dominant across the country. Typically, core Peronist voters are the beneficiaries of redistributionist public policies. These include public-sector employees, workers in the informal sector, the unemployed, and slum dwellers. By contrast, middle-class Argentines tend to feel that too large a share of their payroll taxes goes into programs for the poor, and disapprove of the corruption associated with the Kirchners. Institutionally, Peronism is a heterogeneous affair. Its conservative camp includes most labor unions plus many state governors, who vie for influence with the progressive faction, which includes social movements, dissident unions, and La Cámpora, the Peronist youth wing. During the commodities boom, Argentine soybeans (the leading export) could pay for both higher wages and social-welfare programs. In post-boom Argentina, things are tougher. Since the 2001 crisis, social movements representing informal workers and the unemployed have grown in influence vis-a-vis unions and formal workers, long the backbone of Peronism. As a recession rages and a huge foreign debt looms, tensions have risen between the social-welfare policies on which so many Argentines depend and the painful squeeze that taxes put on the falling real wages of formal workers, some of whom have come to resent these redistributionist measures, seeing them as subsidies paid to ‘lazy’ informal workers.”

    +  “In the 1980-90s, reformers dismantled Peronism’s traditional mechanisms of labor participation, and clientelist networks replaced unions as the primary linkage to the working and lower classes.” By Steve Levitsky. Link. And James W. McGuire on “Peronism without Peron.” Link. 

    +  “During his presidential tenure (1989-99), Carlos Menem arranged an unprecedented transformation in Argentina, combining conservative and neoliberal elements within the plebeian and populist matrix of Peronism.” By Gastón Souroujon. Link. And Miguel Teubal on the “rise and collapse of neoliberalism in Argentina.” Link. 

    + “Peronists under Krichner represented a strand of the Pink Tide in Latin America that found it unfeasible to radically change the “reprimarization”—or renewed reliance on agricultural and mining exports—of the economy while the country was enjoying the monetary benefits of neo-extractivism and China’s growing demand.” By Ernesto Semán. Link. 

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Adult caregiving

    EMILIA BRITO is a PhD candidate in economics at Brown University. In her job market paper, she explores the gender pay gap in the context of caring for sick parents.  

    From the abstract:  

    “This paper studies the impact of adult caregiving on gender inequality in the labor market. Using administrative data from Chile, we leverage variation in a parental health shock—the first cancer hospitalization of a parent—to examine who bears the burden of adult caregiving. After a parental health shock, daughters but not sons experience a reduction in employment and earnings. A parental health shock creates a caregiving penalty—the effect of the shock on daughters relative to sons—of 11% on earnings, increasing the overall gender pay gap by 9%. These penalties affect women even if they earn more than their partners or brothers, suggesting that gender norms influence the distribution of adult caregiving. Additionally, penalties are concentrated among women who are mothers, suggesting a correlation across the life cycle between care given to children and then to aging parents.”

    +  Phenomenal World is hiring an part-time assistant editor based in New York. It will be your job to write this newsletter. See more details and apply here. And please share widely!

    +  “Improving insurance markets does little to address the fact that the core drivers of the ‘climate risk doom loop’ rest in the design of capital markets.” New on PW, Advait Arun on insurance markets and climate risk. Link. 

    +  “The US is an exception with respect to virtually all factors governing intergenerational persistence, including returns to human capital, amount of socioeconomic segregation, and progressiveness of the tax-and-transfer system.” By Pablo A. Mitnik, Victoria Bryant, and David B. Grusky. Link.

    +  An interview with Sanaa Alimia about the expulsion of Afghan migrants from Pakistan. Link. 

    +  “In the energy sector, export credit agency financing is not only larger than that provided by multilateral financial institutions, but it has been vital to the development of carbon intensive sectors.” By Maxfield Peterson and Christian Downie. Link. 

    +  Brian Mier, Bryan Pitts, Kathy Swart, Rafael R. Ioris, and Sean T. Mitchell on US involvement in the “long coup” that ousted the left from power in Brazil in 2016. Link.

    +  Stefano Liberti on excessive land consumption in the Po Valley. Link. 

    +  Two on the underdevelopment of Gaza: Mostafa Hosny on crumbling health infrastructure and Noor Swirki and Sara Seif Eddin on drinking water shortages. Link and link. 

    +  “Banditry is a rather primitive form of organized social protest, perhaps the most primitive we know. In many societies it is regarded as such by the poor, who consequently protect the bandit, regard him as their champion, idealize him, and turn him into a myth: Robin Hood in England, Janošik in Poland and Slovakia, Diego Corrientes in Andalusia, who are probably all real figures thus transmuted. In return, the bandit himself tries to live up to his role even when he is not a conscious social rebel. The tough man, who is unwilling to bear the traditional burdens of the common man in a class society, poverty and meekness, may escape them by joining or serving the oppressors as well as by revolting against them. In any peasant society there are ‘landlords’ bandits’ as well as ‘peasant bandits’ not to mention the State’s bandits, though only the peasant bandits receive the tribute of ballads and anecdotes. Moreover, as the experience of Southern Spain between 1850 and 1875 shows, one sort of bandit can easily turn into another—the ‘noble’ robber and smuggler into the bandolero, protected by the local rural boss or cacique.” By Eric Hobshawm. Link. 

  3. Blind Qasim and His Beautiful Buffalo

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    This is an archived version of the PW Sources newsletter from Saturday, November 18. Sign up to receive PW Sources directly to your inbox here.

    SPECIAL RELATIONSHIPS

    Israel, Egypt, and Jordan are among the world’s largest recipients of US foreign aid. Last month, President Joe Biden requested an additional $14.3 billion in assistance to Israel in the context of the war in Gaza. In 2023, Jordan received a total of $1.65 billion in foreign assistance from the US, while Egypt received $1.3 billion in military aid. 

    In a 2009 chapter, FRIDA BERRIGAN examines the nature of US aid to Israel. 

    From the text:

    “Israel has been the largest recipient of US security assistance since the early 1970s, when the Nixon administration cemented the ‘special relationship’ that endures to this day. Most of this aid takes the form of Foreign Military Financing (FMF), which are US grants for weapons purchases. Crucially, Israel is the only country allowed to use a substantial portion of this money to build domestic military industry, a privilege that includes developing indigenous weapons systems based on US designs. While FMF is doled out to other countries in quarterly allotments, Israel receives all of it in one lump sum early in the year. This practice creates a loan burden, as it necessitates borrowing from the Treasury long before Congress actually releases the monies promised. Israel is one of few nations that enjoys ‘fast-track’ status for weapons sales, meaning it can bypass the Pentagon’s intermediary role. Between 1998 and 2008, the Israeli government devoted $75 billion to its military budget, of which FMF alone accounted for nearly $25 billion. The bulk of Israel’s current arsenal is composed of equipment supplied by the US, including 226 F-16 fighter and attack jets, more than 700M-60 tanks, 6,000 armored personnel carriers, and scores of transport planes, attack helicopters, and utility and training aircrafts. Israel is allowed to spend 26 % of FMF on weapons systems manufactured domestically. The US role in the Israeli defense industry is particularly significant because Israel is also a weapons-exporting nation. This poses the risk that US technologies will be transferred to other countries. To cite one example, the Chinese Air Force flies a Jian-10 fighter plane almost identical to the Israeli Lavi (or Lion), a joint Israeli-US design based on the F-16. Although the joint production of this fighter plane was canceled in 1987 because of cost overruns, the design and technology ended up in Beijing.”

    +  “US security assistance to Egypt, whose nominal dollar amount hasn’t changed for the past 35 years, has lost most of its proportional economic value, causing the US to loose influence over the military regime’s domestic policies.” By Zeinab Abul-Magd. Link. And an interview with retired Maj. Gen. F.C. Williams about US military aid to Egypt. Link. 

    +  “What explains the continuous growth of USAID’s ‘democracy promotion’ portfolio in Jordan—the biggest in the world, in absolute terms—considering the absence of any meaningful political liberalization?” By Benjamin Schuetze. Link. And Marta Vidal on US aid and Jordanian human rights violations. Link. 

    + “US assistance to Egypt, Jordan, and Israel has been central to the survival strategy of the aid recipient’s incumbent leaders, whether distributive or nondistributive.” By Anne Mariel Zimmermann. Link. 

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Electoral rules

    MOYA CHIN is an economist in the Western Hemisphere Department at the International Monetary Fund. In a recent paper, she explores the economic consequences of electoral rules.  

    From the abstract:  

    “Electoral rules determine how voters’ preferences are aggregated and translated into political representation. Using a regression discontinuity design, I contrast single- and two-round elections in Brazil. In two-round elections, the eventual winner must obtain at least 50% of the vote. I show that two-round elections provide incentives for candidates to secure a broader base of support and provide public goods more broadly. Candidates represent a more geographically diverse group of voters, public schools have more resources, and there is less variation in resources across schools. Effects appear to be driven by strategic responses of candidates, rather than differential entry into races.”

    + + +

    +  “The Fed’s post-2008 monetary policy was effectively a massive bailout of the buyout fund business model.” New on PW, Carolyn Sissoko explains why “derisking” finance is an oxymoron. Link. 

    +  “Fiscal rules form part of the infrastructure of contemporary capitalism, both in the global North and in the global South.” Also new on PW, a transcript of last month’s event on the politics of fiscal rules, featuring Max Krahé, Clara Zanon Brenck, Pedro Romero Marques, and Alexandros Kentikelenis. Link. 

    +  “Insurance firms are finally starting to price those climate risks into premiums, which are rising nationwide.” By Jonathan Mingle. Link.

    +   Renaud Lambert and Dominique Plihon on the threat to dollar hegemony. Link.

    +  The 2023 Production Gap Report finds that “governments, in aggregate, plan to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C.” Link.

    +  “With the African state framed as corrupt, and African miners as unproductive criminals, the path was cleared for the en masse arrival of transnational mining corporations.” By Ben Radley. Link.

    +  Two on Bolivia: Stasiek Czaplicki Cabezas on the political economy of forest fires; and Huáscar Salazar Lohman on growing schisms within Movement Towards Socialism (MAS). Link and link. 

    +  “There is a well-established trend in the grocery industry that consolidation results in higher prices for consumers.” By Krista Brown. Link. 

    +  “The Mesopotamians recorded their loans on clay tablets, which listed the names of creditor and debtor, the loan amount, the date of the loan and when repayment is due, and, in most cases, the amount of interest to be charged. Various types of collateral were demanded as surety for the loan and might take the form of houses, land, and slaves. In one case, the lender takes as collateral the wife of the borrower to live in his house—an early example of debt bondage. Credit transactions were commonplace in the Ancient Near East during the third and second millennia BC. Interest was generally paid in the same commodity as the loan, commonly silver or barley. It might also be paid in kind, with another commodity (dates, firewood, etc.) or labour services. Each tablet was marked with a seal and witnessed. Many loans were defaulted on, and disputes between debtors and creditors often ended up in court. In fact, since debt tablets were destroyed when loans were repaid, the archaeological record is of unpaid debts—of which there seem to have been a great number.” By Edward Chancellor. Link. 

  4. Assimilate and Destroy

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    This is an archived version of the PW Sources newsletter from Saturday, November 11. Sign up to receive PW Sources directly to your inbox here.

    CORRUPTION

    On Nov 7, Portugal’s Prime Minister António Costa, of the Socialist Party, resigned as state prosecutors launched an investigation into alleged corruption and “influence peddling” in the context of hydrogen and lithium projects. 

    In a 2003 chapter, JOSÉ M. MAGONE examines the structural factors that have entrenched political corruption in Portugal. 

    From the text:

    “Portuguese MPs receive only £2,000 per month—a low salary compared to the UK, France, or Germany. This can lead to the pursuit of other interests. Parties are legally required to publish financial reports and accounts annually. In reality, as this requirement was never enforced, private donations go unscrutinized, as became particularly observable in the period after 1995, when the Social Democrats lost the absolute majority they had enjoyed since 1987. New leader Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa had to introduce stringent organizational changes in order to repay the debts accumulated in power. The party lost 201.47 million escudos as a result. An absence of clear criteria for public appointments has led to widespread clientelistic practices in the distribution of senior-level jobs in the health, public television, and public telecommunications sectors—part of a patrimonial culture in which private and public interests are mixed to support friendships or personal enrichment, known as amiguismo. The flow of European structural funds since 1986 has opened up new opportunities for fraud, which the main trade union confederation, the General Workers’ Union, which is closely linked to both the Socialist Party and the Social Democratic Party, has also partaken in. Less easily detected is influence peddling. Some ministers may become dependent on a single interest group for the development of policies or the distribution of funds. During the Cavaco Silva government, members from the main agricultural associations sat on the decision-making boards of the Financial Institute for Support of the Development of Agriculture and Fisheries, which was responsible for allocating structural funds from the European Community’s program for the financial support of agricultural associations and cooperatives.”

    +  “Some of the most relevant corruption scandals in Portugal involve defendants that fit within the profile of a business politician looking for personal capital.” By Susana Coroado and Luis de Sousa. Link. 

    +  “Revolving doors abound in Portugal’s financial sector, with a disproportionate share of regulators of that sector coming from, and moving back, to the industry.” By Susana Coroado and Pedro C. Magalhães. Link. 

    + An investigation by Khadija Sharife and Mark Anderson into how Angolan elites launder money through Portuguese banks. Link. 

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Foreign capital liberalization

    NATALIE BAU is an associate professor of economics at UCLA. In a recent cowritten paper, she shows how capital market integration reduces misallocation in India. 

    From the abstract:  

    “We show that foreign capital liberalization reduces capital misallocation and increases aggregate productivity for affected industries in India. The staggered liberalization of access to foreign capital across disaggregated industries allows us to identify changes in rms’ input wedges, overcoming major challenges in the measurement of the effects of changing misallocation. Liberalization increases capital overall. For domestic rms with initially high marginal revenue products of capital (MRPK), liberalization increases revenues by 23%, physical capital by 53%, wage bills by 28%, and reduces MRPK by 33% relative to low MRPK rms. The effects of liberalization are largest in areas with less developed local banking sectors, indicating that ineffciencies in that sector may cause misallocation. Finally, we propose an assumption under which a novel method exploiting natural experiments can be used to bound the e ect of changes in misallocation on treated industries’ aggregate productivity. These industries’ Solow residual increases by 3-16%”

    + + +

    +  “Since the financial crisis of 2008, increasing transparency has been a crucial goal. It took a lot of work to know where interest rate swaps were located, who was facing whom, and what collateral types were used.” New on PW, Elham Saeidinezhad interviews interest rate strategist Ralph Axel. Link. And read her related essay on interest rate swaps. Link. 

    +  “Only after Netanyahu’s resignation will a window of opportunity be opened up to create a more stable settlement between Israel and the Palestinains living in Gaza and the West Bank.” New on The Polycrisis, an interview with Guy Laron. Link. 

    +  “The fervor of the debate over expanding the CTC to families without any income from work is misaligned with the scale of benefits going to this group.” JFI’s report on the expanded child tax credit, by Jack Landry. Link. 

    +  John Lindsay-Poland on the growing firearms trade in the Americas. Link.

    +  Three by Joshua Craze: on the follies of humanitarianism, on the civil war in Sudan, and on military violence in South Sudan. Link, link, and link. 

    +  Bas van Aarle, Joep Konings, and Aaron Putseys lay out a policy framework for regulating European energy prices. Link.

    +  “The dire conditions an incoming government would inherit—a stagnant economy, a threadbare state, a delayed transition, and millions of children growing up in families routinely skipping meals—at once make Labour’s victory more likely, and their task in office more difficult.” By Mathew Lawrence and Alfie Stirling. Link.

    +  A Common Wealth report on the responsibility that the US and UK militaries bare for the climate crisis. Link. 

    +  “The 2010 US sanctions reduced multinational banks’ lending to neighboring countries of Iran and its politically aligned states by approximately 14% and 12% respectively.” By Abraham L. Newman  and Qi Zhang. Link.

    +  “Following the discovery of large quantities of alluvial gold in the interior of Brazil in the early 1690s, the Portuguese crown struggled to govern the many frontier settlements that sprang up throughout the backlands of the Brazilian West. Having little or no allegiance to Lisbon, early explorers rushed deeper and deeper into the wilderness like drunken men fleeing a plague. In the midst of this great gold rush, social networks played multifaceted roles in the relationship between colony and crown. On the one hand, patron-client networks permeated every facet of the system—from the crown’s councilors in Lisbon to local governors, magistrates, and municipal officials in Brazil. And yet, the personal nature of the bureaucracy provided a medium in which other associations could take root and grow. Indeed, conspiracies involving graft, bribery, and corruption all sprang from the same teeming earth. In the backlands of Brazil, royal government had traditionally been weak, enabling individuals to exploit the bureaucracy for personal gain.” By Erik Lars Myrup. Link. 

  5. Lines VI

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    This is an archived version of the PW Sources newsletter from Saturday, November 4. Sign up to receive PW Sources directly to your inbox here.

    TIERED WAGES

    After six weeks of sit-down strikes, the United Auto Workers (UAW) has reached tentative contract agreements with each of the Big Three automakers: Ford, Stellantis, and General Motors. Many of the wage tiers the Big Three installed over a decade ago to reduce labor costs have been removed.  

    In a 2014 chapter, HARRY C. KATZ, JOHN PAUL MACDUFFIE, and FRITS K. PIL examine how labor conditions in the auto industry were transformed in the aftermath of the 2008-09 financial crisis. 

    From the text:

    “The UAW is the primary union representing workers in the auto industry. In 2008 and 2009, a crisis of historic proportion hit the industry, particularly the Big Three, who were already suffering from longer-term market share declines. GM and Chrysler went through bankruptcies they escaped only with the help of federal bailout funds. Under government pressure to lower labor costs, the UAW agreed to unprecedented concessions. These included the transfer of retiree health care liabilities to union-managed funds, a lower wage for new “non-core” hires ($14/hour versus $28/hour), a pay freeze for current workers, and six-year collective bargaining agreements that included no-strike and binding interest arbitration provisions. The lower entry tier was initially limited to so-called non-core jobs but this restriction did not last long. By spring 2009, all new hires were being hired into the lower pay tier. The managed bankruptcy of GM and Chrysler with support provided by federal TARP funds helped those companies recover. In addition, the Big Three launched new products, leading to strong vehicle sales. As auto sales rose so did sector employment, to 642,700 in 2012—a rise of 14 percent from the 2009 low. Yet auto sector employment remains far below previous levels and average hourly wages continue to fall, declining from $29.65 in 2007 to $28.13 in 2012. Contributing to this fall was the hiring of workers at the lower pay tier.”

    +  “The UAW is transitioning from a union that primarily threatens to withhold labor to one that primarily enables work, bringing expertise to discussions of quality, safety, predictive and preventative maintenance, workforce development, and team-based operations.” By Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, Dan Brooks, and Martin Mulloy. Link. And see their study of collaboration between UAW and Ford. Link. 

    +  “Could the Teamster and UAW contract campaigns be a bellwether in this new environment, in which excitement for organized labor is appearing to grow?” By 
    Andrew Elrod. Link. And see Beverly J. Silver’s study of how workers’ movements shape labor negotiations. Link. 

    + A UAW white paper from July examines labor conditions at factories manufacturing EV battery cells. Link. And listen to an Odd Lots podcast about UAW strategy vis-a-vis electrification. Link. 

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Primitive accumulation

    ALINA-SANDRA CUCU is a research fellow at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry in Berlin. In a recent paper, she offers a novel conceptualization of state socialism in Romania. 

    From the paper:  

    “Drawing on the Romanian case, this article argues against looking at state socialist regimes through the lens of exceptionalism, and assesses the merits of analyzing them from the perspective of primitive accumulation. Integrating socialist projects into a longer history of modernization, capital formation, and struggles over labour and land allows me to develop a four-step argument about primitive socialist accumulation in Romania. First, I argue that, in Romania, peasant dispossession had underpinned capital formation for roughly 150 years before the communist takeover. Second, these mechanisms of primitive accumulation constituted crucial matrices for class formation that were irreducible to ideal-typical processes of proletarianization. Third, the articulation between peasant dispossession and strategies of keeping labour cheap was state-led, mandated, or protected, and stood at the core of all modernization projects for the whole period under discussion. And fourth, seen through these lenses, the communist collectivization and nationalization in the 1950s appears as one instance, among others, in a longue-durée history of primitive accumulation in the region.”

    + + +

    +  “The substitution of interest rate swaps for repurchase agreements represents a new market structure, which involves more complex funding and higher reliance on risky firms to provide affordable liquidity.” New on PW, Elham Saeidinezhad on interest rate swaps. Link.

    +  Sean H. Vanatta on the “financialization of US public pension funds.” Link.

    +  “How, when, and why did women in the US obtain legal rights equal to men’s regarding the workplace, marriage, family, Social Security, criminal justice, credit markets, and other parts of the economy and society?” By Claudia Goldin, winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize for Economics. Link. 

    +  Noemí Peña-Miguel and Beatriz Cuadrado-Ballesteros on how public-private partnerships exacerbate inequality in developing countries. Link.

    +  “A world of multipolar sanctioning could suppress innovations in global governance meant to address entrenched inequality and precarity.” By Ryan Martínez Mitchell. 
    Link.

    +  The United Nations Adaptation Gap Report 2023 estimates that the global “climate adaptation finance gap now stands at between $194 billion and $366 billion USD per year.” Link.

    +  Rachel Cheung on the Chinese government’s attempts to regulate its domestic AI industry. Link. 

    +  “Our analysis of whose interests have been prioritized and marginalized in Timor-Leste is based on three major factors: regulation of class relations, organization of gender relations, and the governance of the petroleum industry.” By Selver B. Sahin and Stepan Verkhovets. Link.

    +  Ely Melchior Fair on the Freedman’s Bank Crisis of 1874. Link.

    +  “No durable or substantial agrarian reform ever occurred in the Roman Republic, despite constant agitation and turbulence over the question in the final epoch of its existence. The political dominance of the nobility blocked all efforts to reverse the relentless social polarization of property over the land. The Roman equivalent of the hoplite category—men who could equip themselves with armor and weaponry necessary for infantry services in the legions—were the assidui or ‘those settled on the land.’ Below them were the proletarii, propertyless citizens, whose services to the State were merely to rear children (proles). The increasing monopolization of land by the aristocracy was thus translated into a steady decline in the numbers of the assidui, and an inexorabe incrase in the size of the proletarii. The result was that by the end of the 3rd century BC, the prolietarii were probably already the absolute majorit of citizens, and had to themselves be called up to deal with the emergency of Hannibal’s invasion of Italy.” By Perry Anderson. Link. 

  6. Rain

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    This is an archived version of the PW Sources newsletter from Saturday, October 28. Sign up to receive PW Sources directly to your inbox here.

    HAZARDOUS WASTE

    Driven by urbanization, increased consumption, and rising populations, the global waste and recycling market grew to $57.69 billion last year. Plastic, electronic, and iron waste are among major commodities traded, often from developed to developing countries. 

    In a 2010 chapter, Sarah A. Moore examines how uneven regulation shapes the global hazardous waste trade. 

    From the text:

    “Between 1976 and 1991, the cost of disposing of hazardous waste in industrial countries increased by a factor of 25. This contributed to high levels of both legal and illegal transboundary shipments of waste, much of it from more developed countries with stricter environmental regulations to less developed countries with less strict regulations. In a ‘first-best’ world of equal trade relationships, international trade in hazardous waste would beneficial all countries involved. Such logic was echoed in the late 1990s by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which argued that hazardous wastes should be exported as it ‘constitutes raw material inputs into industrial and manufacturing processes.’ In the ‘second best’ world of environmental economics, insufficient regulation distorts the market, making international hazardous waste trade more harmful to the environment and to public health in less developed countries. One way to prevent uneven transboundary waste shipments is through international agreements such as the 1992 Basel Convention, which prevents richer countries from exporting hazardous wastes to poorer countries. It has been ratified by 172 countries, not including the United States. But these regulations only apply to legal trade of hazardous waste, overlooking the significant illegal trade. Free trade agreements are often said to bring regulatory standards of developing countries up to those of developed ones. In the case of agreements like North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), however, articles about environmental quality are less significant than free trade articles. Increasingly, free trade agreements focus on eliminating non-tariff barriers to trade (NTBs). Because environmental regulations have the potential to limit activities and profits of companies investing in foreign countries, such measures are considered NTBs. Many American corporations have cited NAFTA regulations to avoid environmental regulations pertaining to waste disposal.”

    +  “Materials disposed of as e-waste in the United States become sources of value in Ghana when commodities are transformed through reuse, repurposing, and/or breakdown as raw materials.” By Richard Grant and Martin Oteng-Ababio. Link. And see Peter C. Little’s ethnography of e-waste labor in Ghana. Link. 

    +  “The typical structure of informal municipal waste economies in India’s cities (and with local variations, across cities in the global South) takes the form of a pyramid, with waste pickers at the base and re-processing units at the apex.” By Vinay Gidwani. Link. And see Kaveri Gill’s study of Indian “scrap trading entrepreneurs.” 
    Link. 

    +  “In this paper we analyse waste picking by Roma communities in Turin and Marseille, showing that this activity not only provides them with an income from the sale of recycled objects and materials but also allows them to access the city and its multiple resources—people, objects, spaces.” By Elisabetta Rosa and Claudia Cirell. Link. And Alexander Clapp on a Romani sludge waste entrepreneurs. Link. 

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Mining innovation

    BEATRIZ CALZADA OLVERA is an economics researcher and lecturer at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. In a recent paper, she examines innovation paradigms in the mining sector. 

    From the paper:  

    “The mining industry innovates through processes because there is little space for product innovation, and producers, i.e., miners, cannot control prices. This has resulted in innovation being driven mostly by cost-cutting and regulation compliance. Significant changes in the corporate strategy and environment within mining companies have led to substantial reductions of R&D groups and other intramural innovation efforts, which are now largely focused on providing services to operations. These factors contribute to a new paradigm in which innovation is developed through partnerships and collaborations, from weekend hackathons to year-long projects, such as the Mine of the Future. The de-verticalization of the industry has resulted in an intricate collection of industries: Junior firms are specialized in exploration activities, engineering firms provide Engineering, Procurement, Construction Management (EPCM), Operations and Maintenance (O&M), and environmental services, and mining firms stick to a portfolio of activities closely aligned to the core business.”

    +  “The fears now are of a complete collapse of the political institutions and the end of the democratic experiment that started forty years ago with the fall of the last dictatorship.” New on PW, Matías Vernengo on Javier Milei, dollarization, and Argentina’s election. Link.

    +  “Carr, Polanyi, and Mitrany all recognized that a functioning global economy could not rely on the principles of laissez faire for its organization.” Also new on PW, Randall Germain revisits E.H. Carr’s “The Twenty Years’ Crisis.” Link. 

    +  “We are facing something completely new, a world which is now embarking on an energy transition in various messy, incomplete, but nevertheless highly dynamic ways.” On The Polycrisis, a transcript of our panel discussion about global oil politics in the “mid-transition.” Link. 

    +  “The decline in homeownership rates among young borrowers in D.C., from 22.1
    percent in 2010 to 13.7 percent in 2022, is closely linked to the surge in student loan
    debt.” A new JFI-Economic Policy Institute report on student debt in DC, by Eduard Nilaj and Kyle Moore. Link. 

    +  Sign up for the newsletter of our JFI partner organization, the Center for Active Stewardship, to get a weekly briefing of corporate governance and climate news. Link.

    +  Cédric Durand and Céline Baud chart the “uneven trajectories” American retail giants Carrefour, Amazon, and Walmart. Link.

    +  “Greater integration of the Brazilian food market with the global food market not only raises land use and environmental concerns, but also requires a discussion of development strategies that can ensure national food.” By Georges Flexor, Karina Yoshie Kato, and Sergio Pereira Leite. Link. And read a PW essay by Leite on the “reprimarization of the Brazilian economy.” Link. 

    +  Pablo Ospina Peralta on the victory of banana magnate Daniel Noboa in Ecuador’s presidential elections. Link. 

    +  “Through greater centralisation, co-ordination and rationalisation, trucking platforms in Brazil and China further serve to proletarianize their owner-operator workforces, driving down costs and eliminating barriers to the geographical circulation of capital.” By Wei Wei, Jörg Nowak, and Steve Rolf. Link. And read a PW essay by the authors. Link. 

    +  “In the Ptolemaic Period (332-30 BC), private property disputes that did not involve royal revenues were usually handled by the court system, which applied traditional Egyptian and Greek property laws. There were in fact two sets of courts in Ptolemaic Egypt. The provincial Houses of Judgment, linked to local Egyptian temples; and courts of Greek judges for the benefit of Greek immigrants. The relationship between these two sets of courts is discussed in a royal decree issued in 118 BCE after the civil wars among Ptolemy VIII, Cleopatra II, and Cleopatra III. Official copies of the decrees were circulated throughout the country. The decree can be read to state that disputes arising from notarized contracts written in Demotic should be judged by the Egyptian judges, while disputes arising from contracts written in Greek should be judged by the Greek judges, and that the ethnicity of the parties involved was irrelevant.” By Brian Muhs. Link. 

  7. The Blind Prophesier

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    This is an archived version of the PW Sources newsletter from Saturday, October 21. Sign up to receive PW Sources directly to your inbox here.

    GAZA

    Following a violent attack by Hamas on October 7, the Israeli state has laid siege to the Gaza Strip: thousand of bombs have been dropped, electricity has been cut, and food, water, and fuel supplies are running dangerously low. Over 3,785 Palestinians and 1,400 Israelis have been killed in the past two weeks of conflict. 

    In a 2021 chapter, Ahmed Tannira examines how Israel’s policies towards Hamas transformed the Gaza Strip after 2006.

    From the text:

    “After victory in the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in 2006, Hamas formed its own government. Consequently, Israel withheld the transfer of Palestinian tax revenue, which in 2006 constituted approximately 40 percent of the PA’s budget, and enforced further punitive measures that included tightening control over Gaza’s six land crossings. This collective punishment had an immediate impact on Gaza’s industrial sector. It was estimated that more than 90% of factories in the Strip had closed and the remaining 10% continued to work with minimum workforce capacity. Exports saw a huge decrease because only 259 trucks were allowed to leave Gaza in the period between 2007 and 2010. Gaza’s economy shrank from US$1.7 billion in 2005 to US$1.1 billion in 2008. This deterioration continued through 2009 resulting in more than 65 percent of the labor force becoming unemployed. The private sector had witnessed the highest level of damage, where employment fell by almost 75%. Poverty reached approximately 80 percent and by 2010, when 1.1 million people were receiving food assistance, almost 60 percent of  the population. Furthermore, 35% of agricultural land has been lost as a result of Israel’s land grabs. Almost on a regular basis, Israel floods Palestinian agricultural lands located on the borders with Gaza with sewage water, rendering it unsuitable for growing food. Israel also systematically digs deeper wells near Gaza’s artesian aquifers, to drain its water. Simultaneously, the lack of sufficient fuel entering Gaza has disrupted water treatment plants, resulting in waste being discharged directly into the sea, causing extensive contamination of the beaches.”

    + “Through a dual process of containment and pacification, Hamas has been forcefully transformed into little more than an administrative authority in the Gaza Strip.” Tareq Baconi in 2018. Link. And read a recent interview with Baconi in The New Yorker. Link. 

    + “In Gaza, the de-development of the economic sector has, over two decades of Israeli rule, transformed that economy into the auxilliary state of Israel.” Sara Roy in 1987. Link. And Roy’s updated edition of The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development from 2016. Link. 

    +  “The emergence of a Gulf role in the Palestinian issue coincides with a cautious Egyptian-Iranian rapprochement in recent weeks.” In MadaMasr, “Egypt’s difficult questions in the Gaza war.” Link. 

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Pound sterling

    MAYLOS AVARO is a postdoctoral fellow and invited lecturer in history at the University of Pennsylvania. In a recent paper, she revisits the history of the Pound Sterling during the Bretton Woods period. 

    From the paper:  

    “A ‘Zombie bank’ commonly refers to a failing financial institution which continues to operate, backed by public guarantees. This paper examines the international role of sterling during the Bretton Woods period and characterizes it as a Zombie international currency. Using both quantitative analysis and archival findings from recently declassified documentation, I provide a new narrative on the decline of the pound sterling: from 1945, the pound was surviving only in the captive market of the sterling area. These results challenge the view of a multipolar monetary world for the Bretton Woods era. Sterling’s key currency role stopped during the interwar period. After WWII, sterling’s role did not compare with the dollar on the international stage as the presence of in global foreign exchange reserves was the result of artificial barriers built by British monetary authorities around the sterling area. In the countries free from British imperial influence, the dollar was the only key international reserve currency.”

    + + +

    +  “What accounts for this stunning decline of the Polish left, which has extended not only to the fortunes of party politics, but to the strength of its labor movement and its civil society institutions?” New on PW, Jan Toporowski on Poland’s recent elections. Link. 

    +  “The oil shock must be understood through its socio-economic and anti-colonial origins, reminding us of the long history of efforts to reform Bretton Woods and the international monetary system.” Also on PW, Duccio Basosi and Giuliano Garavini reflect on the 40th anniversary of the oil price shock of 1973. Link. 

    +  Dawn Marie Paley on mining and land struggles in Mexico’s Sonora Desert. Link.

    +  “Our empirical findings suggest that the establishment of independent welfare ministries was a product of wartime turbulence and the political, economic and social shockwaves set off especially by World War I.” By Klaus Petersen, Carina Schmitt, and Herbert Obinge. Link. 

    +  Adéwálé Májà-Pearce on housing, inequality, and climate change in Lagos. Link.

    +  “This paper finds that U.S. finance owns approximately 60% of U.S. listed companies and 28% of the equity of all globally listed firms.” By Albina Gibadullina. Link.

    +  A brief from the American Economic Liberties Project on how group purchasing organizations (GPOs) fuel drug shortages. Link.

    +  Evan Hansen on farmer-herder relations and the rise of Jihad in Mali. Link.

    +  “Through an econometric evaluation of eighteen advanced economies from 1980 to 2019, we demonstrate that household debt is determined by house price inflation, and that rising household debt contributes to GDP growth, while business debt has negative growth effects.” By James D. G. Wood and Engelbert Stockhammer. Link.

    +  “This paper assesses the role of Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCAs) in China’s pre-modern economic development, as well as their potential contribution to more recent economic growth. ROSCAs are a kind of small-scale, community-based financial institution found in underbanked populations throughout the world. In China, ROSCAs have existed since at least the Tang (618‒907 AD) or Song (960‒1279 AD) dynasties. By the Qing (1644‒1912) and Republican (1912‒49) periods, they were found in communities throughout the empire, from southwestern Yunnan to Hong Kong to Shanxi in the north. On the eve of the Communist revolution, ROSCAs continued to be a critical vehicle for accumulating savings and accessing credit for rural communities, even more important than modern banks or credit cooperatives. Though ROSCAs were suppressed during the Mao era, after Reform and Opening they came roaring back, particularly in areas of the country with the most vibrant private sectors.” By Matthew Lowenstein. Link. 

  8. 1.32 Meter Square

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    This is an archived version of the PW Sources newsletter from Saturday, October 14. Sign up to receive PW Sources directly to your inbox here.

    AGRARIAN CHANGE

    Evolving property regimes, labor market structures, and waves of financialization have transformed agriculture in the global South. In recent Phenomenal World essays, authors reveal the different forms by which agriculture is shaped by state policies and increasingly subordinated to global capital markets. 

    In a 2023 article, Guilherme C. Delgado and Sérgio Pereira Leite analyze the “reprimarization” of the Brazilian economy:

    “The emergence of the reprimarized economy can be traced to the early 2000s, when state policies promoted agricultural and mineral commodity exports as a prominent component of Brazilian foreign trade. This phenomenon has since transcended the conventional politics of economic policies, evolving into a consensus state policy program spanning two decades. This has borne significant socioeconomic and environmental repercussions, which have albeit largely been hidden from public discourse. Additionally, the swift financialization of agriculture has transformed tangible assets, such as commodities and land, into targets for speculative investment.  ‘Primary specialization’ does not enhance Brazil’s autonomy in external economic relations or foreign trade. Rather, it intensifies an economy-wide dependence on primary goods exports, gradually displacing other sectors.” 

    + In PW essay from last year, Maria Luisa Mendonça expands on the role of international finance in Brazil’s agricultural lands. “After the global financial crisis of 2008, international agribusiness and financial corporations formed alliances with rural oligarchies to operate in the Brazilian farmland market.” Link. And see her latest book on agribusiness in Brazil. Link. 

    + “Defying the conventional development narrative, increased investment in the agricultural sector has not automatically led to industrial development .”Also in PW, Shreya Sinha on Indian Punjab. Link. And from Samir Amin: “Increases in productivity can only imply labour-saving technologies, without the possibility of absorbing the marginalized into other economic activities, or of outmigration, as was practised by the West.” Link. 

    + “The character of Zimbabwe’s land reform has been redistributive, and the extent of this has been wide enough to trigger significant progressive changes in the agrarian structure.” Sam Moyo on land redistribution and agrarian change. Link. And see a recent PW newsletter on the subject. Link. 

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Traffic

    LÉA BOU SLEIMAN is a postdoctoral researcher at the National Bureau of Economic Research. In her job market paper, she studies the displaced environmental effects of road-closures in Paris. 

    From the abstract: 

    “This paper shows that road-closing policies may have adverse short-run effects on pollution by reallocating traffic toward more congested roads. I study the impact of the 2016 closure of the Voie Georges Pompidou, a one-way expressway crossing downtown Paris, on traffic and pollution displacement. To do so, I rely on a difference-in-difference strategy based on the directi on and the timing of traffic, which I implement on detailed road-sensor data. I show that the closure lowered average speed by over 15% on two sets of substitute roads: central streets nearby and the already congested southern ring road. Using air quality data, I show that NO2 emissions increased by 6% near the ring road and by 1.5% near local roads.  The reduced-form results on traffic are quantitatively consistent with a calibrated model of shortest route choice, which allows me to recover the underlying rerouting patterns. Even though few displaced commuters diverted to the ring road, they triggered a massive pollution increase because of the U-shaped relationship between emissions and traffic speed. Overall, I estimate that up to 90% of the pollution cost was borne by lower-income residents around the ring road, who lived far away from the new amenity created by the closure and mostly outside the jurisdiction responsible for the closure decision.”

    + + +

    +  ” In practice, Labor has effectively taken renters for granted while prioritizing the preferences of homeowners.” New in PW, Max Kiefel on the politics of homeownership in Australia. Link. 

    +  This coming Tuesday, October 17, at 1pm ET, join us for the book launch of A Thousand Cuts: Social Protection in the Age of Austerity by Alexandros Kentikelenis and Thomas Stubbs. Link to register.

    +  Dimitar Bechev on the green transition in the Western Balkans. Link.

    +  A memo from Climate+Community Project on “funding a Green New Deal for public schools.” Link. And read a PW essay by David I. Backer on “green investment for school infrastructure.” Link. 

    +  Xiaojun Feng on agricultural e-commerce in China. Link.

    +  “With an original dataset on appointments to finance ministries worldwide (1972–2017), we show that women are more likely to first come to power during a banking crisis.” By Brenna Armstrong, Tiffany D. Barnes, Daina Chiba, and Diana Z. O’Brien. Link.

    +  Stephen Greenberg charts the evolution of South Africa’s commercial farming sector since the fall of apartheid. Link.

    +  “The latest engagement of EU public policy, aiming to select and nurture start-ups with the potential to become unicorns, we argue, must be understood as a new layer in this trajectory of foundational market investment.” By Dan Mocanu and Matthias Thiemann. Link.

    +  “The Indian television audience for cricket—more than the combined population of all the other full members of the International Cricket Council and twice the population of the United States—is the driving force behind the Board of Control for Cricket in India’s financial strength. The BCCI’s net worth, as of 2021–22, is Rs 23,159 crore. An examination of the numbers, however, does not reveal much. A lot of public attention is given to million-dollar rights and sponsorship deals, or the crores paid to star players as wages. Almost ninety percent of the BCCI’s 1,041 registered domestic players do not play in the Indian Premier League. Most of them are on ad hoc wages, unconnected to either performance or a share of the BCCI’s revenues. While the BCCI’s arrogance has been moored around money, it has also benefited from cross-party political connections—the organization has usually featured politicians from both sides of the aisle. What is now at play, however, is something different. In what already was a monopsony, an oligarch has taken over the cartel. We are witnessing for the first time in the BCCI the gradual solidification of the soft power of not politicians as a lot but of a single political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party.” By Sharda Ugra. Link. 

  9. Persimmons

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    This is an archived version of the PW Sources newsletter from Saturday, October 7. Sign up to receive PW Sources directly to your inbox here.

    REMITTANCES

    Remittances, which surpass half a trillion dollars globally, can dramatically shape recipient economies. India alone received almost $100 billion in remittances in 2022, and the state of Kerala in particular has undergone major shifts as a result of these financial flows. 

    In a 2020 article, Muskan Mustaqeem examines the impact of remittances on gender relations and women’s economic roles in Kerala. 

    From the text:

    “One of the findings of the study is that the traditional social status of women and gender relations between wife and husband seem to change due to their husband’s migration to the Gulf countries as they are somehow able to negotiate their social role in the patriarchal society. The increased social status of women and seemingly changed wife-husband relations exhibited through their decision-making power in the household, financial independence to some extent in terms of where and how expanding money, and increased mobility in the female head of household, could unfold the female’s agency on a whole. These left-behind wives enjoy autonomy, better access, and control over resources on one hand, and on the other, they are becoming more self-reliant and self-confident. This change has given them a sense of self-dependence and financial independence that they are able to manage their lives, children, and home.”

    +  “Early ‘90s remittances to the Kerala economy assumed a significant share of state income. This ranged from 17% during 1991-92 and 24% during 1997-98.” By KS Hari and KP Kannan. Link. And KC Zachariah and S. Iduraya Rajan compare the earnings of male and female migrants from Kerala. Link.

    +  “Any government would be perfectly justified in attempting to direct as large a portion as possible of the savings out of remittances into what are considered as priority investments from the national point of view.” A 1983 paper by IS Gulati and Ashoka Mody estimates early remittance flows to Kerala. Link. 

    +  “Worker remittances undermine the capacity of autocratic regimes to mobilize electoral support through the delivery of goods and services to voters.” Abel Escribà-Folch, Covadonga Meseguer, and Joseph Wright on the political effects of remittances in the global South. Link.

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Land-related Reforms 

    ROSINE TCHATCHOUA DJOMO is a PhD student at the African Studies Centre in Leiden University. In a 2018 paper, she examines the ambiguous effects of land reform in Burundi.

    From the abstract: 

    “Reforms in land governance are assumed to significantly enhance the security of tenure in conflict-affected countries, through stimulating the resolution of land disputes, contributing to better control of property rights and reorganising the institutional framework for land management. Yet, this paper highlights the ambiguous outcomes of such reforms in situation of institutional multiplicity. Fieldwork in Ngozi province in northern Burundi points out how land-related reforms such as decentralising the administrative authority at the communal and hill levels and policy reforms in the formalisation of property rights have positive impacts in terms of dealing with specific land disputes and fostering local feelings of tenure security in the aftermath of the 2000 Arusha Peace Agreement. However, land governance reforms have also fuelled the proliferation of land governing institutions and fostered confusion among state and non-state authorities about which rules to apply and their roles in mitigating tensions over landownership and enforcing property rights. Actually, while introducing new laws, policies, institutions and practices, land governance reforms have produced mixed effects in securing local tenure for most community members and increased contestations against the authority of government representatives at the local level.”

    + + +

    +  “National strategy on nickel smelting has led to a boom for industry, but it has also incurred important economic, political, and social costs.” New on PW, Alvin Camba on Indonesia’s export ban on nickel. Link. 

    +  “Fiscal rules reduce the space for the working class, whenever in power, to influence fiscal policy decisions and pursue redistribution.” Also new on PW, Clara Zanon Brenck and Pedro Romero Marques on three decades of rule-based fiscal policy in Brazil. Link. 

    +  This coming Wednesday, October 11, at 10am ET, join us for “Rules of Restraint,” an event with our friends at Made and Dezernat Zukunft, on fiscal rules in Brazil and Germany. Link to register.

    +  Daniela Gabor and Benjamin Braun on emerging “green macrofinancial regimes.” Link.

    +  “Ultimately, only the weight of federal legislation can end the subminimum wage for tipped workers once and for all and send a clear message to ascendant industries like Uber and Doordash.” By Inayat Sabhikhi Link.

    +  Han Qiu, Hyun Song Shin, and Leanne Si Ying Zhang map “the realignment of global value chains.” Link.

    +  “We argue that periods of high inflation are always periods of significant redistribution of income.” By Rafael Wildauer, Karsten Kohler, Adam Aboobaker, and Alexander Guschanski. Link.

    +  William D. Hartung on retired generals and admirals employed in the arms industry. Link.

    +  “The automobile industry provides us with an egregious example of the difference between “estimated fair value” (EFV) and “actual realized gains” (ARG) measures of pay.” By Matt Hopkins and William Lazonick. Link.

    +  Christine Chaumeau on inequality and climate change in Phnom Penh. Link.

    +  “During the waning years of the Sierrea Leone civil war, there was a boom in local music production—initiated in 1999 when Jimmy Bangura, popularly known as Jimmy B, returned to Sierra Leone after a life spent travelling and making music in the US, England, and South Africa. By bringing in technical skills and encouraging youth to rap in local languages to beats that encompassed a mix of dance styles from around the Black Atlantic, he singlehandedly birthed Sierra Leone’s postwar youth music revolution. Jimmy B’s efforts were supported by various NGOs that were keen to engage former combatants in the demobilisation and reintegration process. The influx of foreign workers and money greatly affected the political economy of Sierra Leone. The local night life industry was boosted; new nightclubs mushroomed and foreign entities provided opportunities for the social advancement of youth.” By Boima Tucker. Link. 

  10. Rapids

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    This is an archived version of the PW Sources newsletter from Saturday, September 30. Sign up to receive PW Sources directly to your inbox here.

    MONOPSONY POWER

    Joan Robinson (1903-1983), who worked in an era when few women economists were respected in the academy, was a pioneering theorist of capitalism. She rejected the neoclassical notion that just wages were naturally determined through competition among workers and capitalists, instead arguing that monopsonies—a single buyer enforcing prices on sellers—were an endemic feature of labor markets. 

    In her classic 1933 book The Economics of Imperfect Competition, Robinson discusses how monopsony power leads to unequal or artificially low wages. 

    From the book:

    “Perfect discrimination is probably rare in buying labor, but imperfect discrimination may often be found. For instance there may be two types of workers whose efficiencies are equal but whose conditions of supply are different. It may be necessary to pay the same wage within each group, but the wages of the two groups may differ. A special case of discrimination arises when the men are organized in a trade union which enforces a minimum wage, and women are not. Then the supply of men is perfectly elastic and the supply of women is less than perfectly elastic. The amount of employment will be such that the demand price for labor is qual to the wage of the men. The marginal cost of each type of labor must be equal. Thus the number of women employed will be such that their marginal cost is equal to the minimum wage of the men; and the number of men will make up the difference between the number of women employed and the total amount of labor employed. Any rise or fall in the demand for labor would be met by fluctuations in the employment of men; the employment of women would remain constant until the demand curve for labor fell so low that no men were employed.” 

    +  “On the plane of theory, the Keynesian revolution lay in the change from the conception of equilibrium to the conception of history; from the principles of rational choice to the problems of decisions based on guesswork or on convention.” From Robinson’s 1974 essay. Link. And a coauthored paper by Robinson and Amit Bhaduri on accumulation and exploitation. Link.

    +  “The popular description of unemployment as ‘poverty in the midst of plenty’ contains a large element of truth.” From Joan Robinson’s Introduction to the Theory of Employment. Link.

    +  “For Robinson, the Keynesian theory of unemployment as the failure of effective demand can be complemented by Marx’s idea of non-employment: the supply of labor growing faster than the number of jobs offered by the capitalist economy.” By Carolina Alves. Link. And Michał Kalecki’s notes on Joan Robinson’s Essay on Marxist Economics, translated from Polish and introduced by Jan Toporowski. Link. 

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Migration and Trade

    ANNA BAIARDI is an assistant professor at ​Erasmus University Rotterdam. A recent paper coauthored with Christina Ammon examines how migration shapes trade in China. 

    From the paper: 

    “We empirically assess the long-term effect of migration on the exporting behavior of firms in the migrants’ origin country. We focus on ethnic migrant networks formed as a result of a mass migration wave of ethnic Cantonese people from the province of Guangdong in Southern China to the United States in the late 19th century. Using firm-level data for 2004 for Guangdong, we show that exposure to the Cantonese ethnic network has a positive effect on firms’ exports after several decades, both at the intensive and extensive margin. We also found that networks have a positive impact on other firm outcomes, such as employment, wages, high-skilled workers, domestic capital, and fixed assets.”

    + + +

    +  “The RSF itself is a neoliberal army. It is the privatized version of an army in the third world, in a rural periphery.” New, Adam Benjamin interviews Magdi el Gizouli about the war in Sudan. Link. 

    +  Next Wednesday, October 11, at 10am ET, join us for “Rules of Restraint,” an event with our friends at Made and Dezernat Zukunft, on the politics of fiscal rules. Link to register.

    +  And this coming Thursday, October 5, at 4pm ET, join us and The Polycrisis for a panel discussion on the global politics of energy in the “mid-transition.” Link to register. 

    +  “We find that in Brazil recessions led to the rise of religious fundamentalism in tandem with the transfer of political capital to elected Pentecostal leaders.” By Francisco Costa, Angelo Marcantonio, and Rudi Rocha. Link.

    +  A report from Private Equity Stakeholder Project on how “private equity firms affect incarceration.” Link.

    +  A report from Centre for Sustainable Employment on social identities and labor market outcomes in India. Link.

    +  “We compare the home-mortgage terms offered to middle-income Whites in the New Deal era, with a contemporary New York City policy offered in formerly redlined districts.” By Naomi Zewde, Raz Edwards, and Erinn Bacchus

    +  “A campaign to transfer the United States’ worst and most exploitative new labor laws and policies to Brazil has gone largely unnoticed.” Veena Dubal and Renan Kalil on the regulation of platform work in Brazil. Link.

    +  Ahmed Mehdi and Tom Moerenhout “assess the impact of IRA supply-side policies on US battery economics to date.” Link.

    +  “Race records were commercial recordings aimed strictly toward the Negro market. The Jazz Age can also be called the age of recorded blues and jazz because it was in the twenties that the great masses of jazz and blues material began to be recorded, and the race records sold in great numbers. Mamie Smith’s Crazy Blues sold for months at a rate of 8,000 records a week. Victoria Spivey’s Black Snake Blues, recoded six years later, sold 150,000 copies in one year. The success of race recordings soon led companies to record not only the classic blues singers but also a few boogie-woogie pianists and country singers as well. The larger record companies began setting up permanent Southern offices for the discovery of new talent, and some really ambitious companies like Columbia even had a mobile unit that roamed the South, recording people like Barbecue Bob, Peg Leg Howell, and Blind Willie Johnson. In October, 1929, the worst economic disaster this country has ever experienced shattered its relative prosperity. Not only did most night clubs and cabarets begin to close or lay off their performers, but the recording industry was ruined almost overnight. And predictably, it was the race records that were first to go.” By Amiri Baraka. Link.