Category Archive: Sources

  1. Discomfort

    Comments Off on Discomfort

    This is an archived version of the PW Sources newsletter from Saturday, May 6. Sign up to receive PW Sources directly to your inbox here.

    LITHIUM

    Last month, the Chilean government announced plans to nationalize the country’s lithium industry, which is dominated by two companies, Sociedad Química y Minera (SQM) and Albemarle. 

    SEBASTIAN CARRASCO and ALDO MADARIAGA highlight the Chilean state’s failure to enforce regulations on these companies. 

    From their article:

    “Even if one believes in the capacity of the state to modernize the lithium industry and green the mining sector, it is not clear that the Chilean state is able to make private companies comply with its new policies and regulations. By openly bypassing existing regulations, firms have long mocked the state’s regulatory efforts, showing that the state significantly lacks the capacities that could make it a truly developmental leader in the country’s—and the world’s—green transition. In 2013, the state promotion agency in charge of enforcing lithium exploitation contracts, CORFO, started an audit of SQM after evidence came to light that it was illegally altering information on company earnings to reduce its royalty and rent transfers to the state. According to the audit, SQM failed to pay the state at least $17 million between 2009 and 2013 . . . The Bachelet government added a clause to its contract with Albemarle stipulating that up to 25 percent of new lithium production had to be sold at a preferential price to companies investing in value-added production in Chile. In 2018, Albemarle unilaterally chose not to comply with the government requirement.” 

    +  “In Chile, the recent history of lithium has been full of conflicts and complaints of various causes, such as fraud to the treasury, environmental damage, anti-union practices, breach of contracts with CORFO, and illegal brine export.” By Bárbara Jerez, Ingrid Garcés, and Robinson Torres. Link. 

    +  Felix Malte Dorn and Hans Gundermann on conflict between Indigenous communities in the Atacama Desert, lithium mining companies, and the Chilean state. Link. 

    +  “The extractivist structures put in place during the Pinochet years continue to influence lithium supply chains in Chile.” By Donald V. Kingsbury. Link. And Oliver Hails on international regulation of lithium mining. Link. 

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Industrialization

    MARINA MAVUNGU NGOMA is a PhD student in economics and public policy at Tufts University. In her job market paper, she examines how Chinese imports affect manufacturing employment in Ethiopia. 

    From the abstract: 

    “The rise of China in the global economy has been linked with negative impacts on employment across many high and middle-income countries. However, evidence for African countries is limited. This paper investigates the causal relationship between Chinese imports and manufacturing employment in Ethiopia. Imports may harm domestic firms through a revenue effect (lower market shares) or benefit them, either indirectly if competition spurs innovation or directly through access to better quality or cheaper inputs. I find that a 1 unit increase in import penetration leads to a 15.2 percent increase in industry employment. I disentangle the inputs effect from the other two effects by decomposing total Chinese imports by their end-use category using input-output tables and find evidence that imported intermediate inputs are driving the employment gains. I find evidence consistent with the idea that employment gains are a result of productivity gains and increases in capacity utilization. These employment gains appear to disproportionately benefit large firms and labor-intensive industries.”

    + + +

    +  “Jake Sullivan’s phrase ‘high fence, small yard’ evokes surgical precision, but Asian supply chains and economies are so interconnected that bans and ensuing retaliations will be far messier than it looks from Washington.” From the latest Polycrisis newsletter on the Cold Peace in Asia. Link. 

    +  Germán Feierherd, Patricio Larroulet, Wei Long, and Nora Lustig on the Pink Tide and income inequality. Link

    +  “The Republican attorneys general trying to stop student debt cancellation for 43 million borrowers have at no point been obliged to verify the basic facts of this case.” By Thomas Gokey, Eleni Schirmer, Braxton Brewington, and Louise Seamster. Link. 

    +  Tim Barker on the lineages of political capitalism. Link. 

    +  “In general, Nordic and Continental European welfare states with strong upstream systems and minimum income support (MIS) show better outcomes in core socio-economic outcomes such as poverty and exclusion risks.” By Werner Eichhorst, Holger Bonin, Annabelle Krause-Pilatus, Paul Marx, Mathias Dolls, and Max Lay. Link.

    +  Nelson Oppong on mining and job creation in Africa. Link.

    +  “Research consistently shows that hospital consolidation results in worse outcomes for patients.” By Sara Sirota. Link.

    +  “What is most interesting about the new regulatory review proposals is that they appear as but one piece of a much wider set of governance reform efforts that the Biden Administration has set in motion.” By K. Sabeel Rahman. Link.

    +  Dalia Marin on the threats facing Germany’s automobile sector. Link.

    +  “Before hops were used, breweries were subjected to a so-called ‘Grutrecht’ or ‘flavoring license’ in many regions. This Grutrecht was named after the ‘grut’, a
    combination of herbs that were used to flavor beer (or to ‘disguise faults’ in the brew) and to preserve the beer. The ‘Grutrecht’ was determined by the local authorities and was used to tax breweries. All brewers were obliged to buy grut for their brews from the local rulers and brewing beer without grut was forbidden. To avoid tax evasion, the exact composition of grut was kept a secret. While the addition of hops improved the taste and preservation of the beer and allowed for transportation over longer distances, hops threatened the Grutrecht. By using hops, brewers no longer needed grut (or less of it). Hence, the innovation of hops threatened local rulers’ revenue from the Grutrecht tax on beer. Therefore, in many regions, including Britain and Holland, the use of hops was prohibited for a long time. In fact, it took several centuries before the use of hops became commonplace in some European regions. Only after the Hundred Years’ War between France and England (1337–1453), one was allowed to use hops inbrewing English ales.” By Eline Poelmans and Johan F.M. Swinnen. Link. 

  2. Horse Thief Park

    Comments Off on Horse Thief Park

    This is an archived version of the PW Sources newsletter from Saturday, April 29. Sign up to receive PW Sources directly to your inbox here.

    G20 COMMON FRAMEWORK

    The G20’s Common Framework is meant to help poor countries restructure their debts following the expiration of Covid-era measures like the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI). The Framework notably sought to coordinate debt relief between “Paris Club” creditors and states like China and India. 

    Zambia is one of only a few countries to request relief under the Framework, but negotiations have stalled. LAYNA MOSLEY and PETER ROSENDORFF highlight the voluntary participation of private creditors as a central factor. 

    From their article:

    “Progress on the Common Framework requires the participation of private creditors, which may—as the DSSI experience suggests—be even more difficult to obtain than the cooperation of official creditors. Private lenders account for the largest share of Zambia’s external debt, holding approximately 46 percent of the total. More than half of the Sri Lankan government’s outstanding debts are owed to bondholders, many of them US- and European-based institutional investors. In its current form, the Common Framework’s sequencing arguably leaves these private creditors out in the cold. Commercial creditors are only informed of the size of the haircut (the loss imposed on creditors in a debt restructuring) after official creditors have reached an agreement among themselves. Private creditors may question the debt sustainability analysis’s assumptions, as they did with Zambia’s in September 2022. They may not want to share the costs of debt restructuring and relief, despite their involvement with a sovereign borrower. Their motives typically differ from those of official creditors, which may have strategic reasons to offer relief and worry less about material returns. A voluntary mechanism such as the Common Framework faces real difficulties in compelling these private creditors to act.” 

    +  Stephen Connelly, Celine Tan, Karina Patricio Ferreira Lima, and Chris Tassis examine the role of commercial creditors in the DSSI. Link. And Andreas Kern and Bernhard Reisberg on Chinese lending and IMF bailouts. Link. 

    +  “Between 2008-2021, emerging market and developing economies’ sovereign debt increased by 178 percent.” Cited in a proposal for “Debt Relief for a Green and Inclusive Recovery,” by Luma Ramos, Rebecca Ray, Rishikesh Ram Bhandary, Kevin Gallagher, and William Kring. Link.

    +  Two PW events on sovereign debt and IMF reforms: a Polycrisis conversation after the close of COP27, and a discussion on IMF and the legacy of Bretton Woods. Link, link. 

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Small Firms in Mexico

    DIANA SVERDLIN LISKER is a PhD student in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A recent paper co-written with Daniel Ramos-Menchelli examines the prevalence of small firms in Mexico.

    From the abstract: 

    “The retail sector in developing countries is dominated by small firms. We explain this fact with a spatial model in which high transport costs lead to small effective market sizes and, consequently, the proliferation of smaller and lower-quality firms. We show that low costs of entry are key for this result. With a new, confidential panel of firm-level data surveying the universe of mom-and-pop shops in Mexico, we test the predictions of our model. We exploit the deregulation of the Mexican gasoline market in 2017 as an exogenous shock to consumer transport costs. Where gas prices increased, the number of mom-and-pop shops differentially increased while their average size and quality fell. We provide evidence of fragmentation as the mechanism driving these effects. With our estimated model, we evaluate the welfare consequences of a licensing program that increases costs of entry for mom-and-pop shops. We show that the presence of fewer stores in the market yields a 1.4% welfare gain.”

    + + +

    +  “While they do render the market more transparent, the rulings may also destabilize equity markets in the coming years.” In her second PW post on market microstructures, Elham Saeidinezhad examines the new SEC rules on retail trading. Link. 

    +  “The sudden popularity of neomercantilist policies—typically characterized by forms of trade protectionism and activist economic policy—has been deeply disorienting to economic liberals whose preferences for free trade and free markets have dominated global politics in recent decades.” Also new on PW, Eric Helleiner on the revival of neomercantilism. Link. 

    +  “The Municipal Bank of Los Angeles can harness a small but growing slice of Los Angeles’ financial and economic might and direct it toward socially productive, democratically accountable ends.” The first report in a new joint series by JFI and the Berggruen Institute, by Halah Ahmad, Paul Katz, and Yakov Feygin. Link. 

    +  Luke Patey examines EU reliance on China’s rare earth minerals. Link. And see Jojo Nem Singh’s PW essay on the EU’s critical raw materials strategy. Link. 

    +  Alain Chaboud, Dagfinn Rime, and Vladyslav Sushko on rapid growth in the global foreign exchange market. Link. 

    +  “The World Bank’s opacity allows it to obscure much of its fossil fuel funding.” By Heike Mainhardt. Link.

    +  Tomicah Tilleman and Chris Lehane on America’s approach to digital assets. Link.

    +  “Cross-border bank credit causes higher domestic activity in emerging market economies and looser financial conditions.” By Iñaki Aldasoro, Paula Beltrán, Federico Grinberg, and Tommaso Mancini-Griffoli. Link.

    +  “The fact that colonizers also struggled to control night soil reveals an important facet of hygienic modernity. In Hong Kong from the late 1860s through 1911, British hygienists’ dreams of instituting flush toilets were repeatedly thwarted. Colonial officials instead sold licences for dry public toilets to the highest bidder and gained some revenue, but Chinese toilet entrepreneurs enjoyed far greater returns on their investment. This granted them sufficient political clout to become ‘strategic partners of the state’ and enjoy a near monopoly. Despite a terrible plague epidemic in 1894 during which tests showed plague bacillus in the contents of some public toilets, the Sanitary Board lacked the regulatory power to ensure proper cleanliness of the facilities. In Tianjin, from 1907 through 1933, Chinese night-soil porters retained sole control in the Japanese concession and thwarted colonial authorities’ sewage-system plans, despite the latter’s conceit that they had a higher standard of cleanliness.'” By Nicole Elizabeth Barnes. Link. 

  3. Silent City

    Comments Off on Silent City

    This is an archived version of the PW Sources newsletter from Saturday, April 22. Sign up to receive PW Sources directly to your inbox here.

    CAPITAL ACCUMULATION

    Italian scholar Giovanni Arrighi (1937-2009) was one of the foremost proponents of the discipline of World Systems Theory. His research subjects included decolonization in Africa, industrial and agricultural change in Italy, and state capitalism in China—all developments he analyzed in the light of global economic relations. 

    Arrighi’s classic 1994 study, The Long Twentieth Century, charts the development of capitalism from the seventeenth century to the present.

    From the text:

    “The successful development of formally organized and regulated Venetian capitalism called forth as a countertendency the formation of informally organized and regulated Genoese diaspora capitalism. The full expansion of Genoese capitalism, in its turn, called forth the Dutch revival of formally organized and regulated capitalism through the formation of powerful joint-stock chartered companies. And as the expansion of these companies attained its limits, informal capitalism triumphed once again under British free-trade imperialism, only to be superseded in its turn by the formal capitalism of US big government and big business. The structures that have emerged out of the successive swings were larger and more complex than earlier ones. Each one of them combined features of the structures which it superseded with features of the structures which it revived. Moreover, the speed of each swing has increased steadily with the scale and scope of the leading agencies of systemic processes of capital accumulation.”

    +  “The failure of the Project for a New American Century and the success of Chinese economic development, taken jointly, have made the realization of Smith’s vision of a world-market society based on greater equality among the world’s civilizations more likely than it ever was.” From Arrighi’s Adam Smith in Beijing. Link. 

    +  “Unlike Britain, at the height of its industrial supremacy the United States did not play the role of global financial entrepôt.” By Arrighi and Beverly J. Silver. Link. And a 1968 paper about economic development in tropical Africa by Arrighi and John S. Saul. Link. 

    +  “Building Gramsci’s ideas outwards from the national plane of classes to the international system of states, Arrighi transformed Gramsci’s legacy more radically and creatively than anyone.” By Perry Anderson. Link. And a special issue of Journal of Agrarian Change focuses on Arrighi’s agrarian political economy. Link. 

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Groundwater commons

    JONAH ALLEN is a research fellow at the Jain Family Institute. A recent paper co-written with Steven M. Smith examines how collective action can drive market-oriented solutions for groundwater commons.

    From the abstract: 

    “What drove stakeholders in Northwestern Kansas (NWKS) and San Luis Valley, Colorado (SLV) to adopt local groundwater policies, and why were different management pathways chosen? Further, why is more heterogeneity observed between local management organizations in SLV as compared to NWKS? To investigate these questions, we employ grounded theory to interpret the rules in reference to local hydro-agro-economic statistics and interviews with stakeholders in each region selected by expert sampling. We find that the additional goals of groundwater rules in SLV, partially driven by key contrasts in the resource system compared to NWKS, and higher resource productivity in SLV, creates both the need for and efficacy of a price-centered policy. Furthermore, variation in the resource systems and associated farm characteristics between subdistricts drives higher heterogeneity in rule design between local management districts in SLV compared to NWKS. More generally, we find the local flexibility afforded through the collective-action process as critical, even if it were to arrive at alternative, non-economic based incentives.”

    + + +

    +  “The sanctions applied against Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine signal a new era of economic coercion.” New on The Polycrisis, Frankie Bond on the emerging geopolitical order after the Russia sanctions. Link. 

    +  “Austerity does not cut debt-to-GDP ratios or help meet climate goals. It is costly and deadly.” From the latest Polycrisis newsletter on the IMF and austerity. Link. 

    +  Phenomenal World is seeking applications for a full-time Publishing and Operations Associate associate, with fluency in Spanish or Portuguese strongly preferred. Please share widely! See details on how to apply here. 

    +  JFI’s affiliate initiative, the Center for Active Stewardship, has launched a newsletter about shareholder proposals at public companies, which have become a venue for activists to challenge the private sector on climate change. Sign up for weekly updates. Link. 

    +  Pablo Carlos Rojas Gómez on neoliberal democracy in Mexico. Link.

    +  Two on debt in Africa. A Tricontinental Institute dossier on Africa’s debt crisis. And Tim Zajontz, Ricardo Reboredo, and Pádraig Carmody on the growing exposure of African economies to Chinese debt. Link and link.

    +  Marcelo Paixão on racial discrimination in Brazil’s credit markets. Link. 

    +  “Potential investors and people who used to do business with the Afghans are reluctant to send their money into the country again for fear of the sanctions and the difficulties involved in international transfers.” By Lina Golestani. Link.

    +  Saibal Ghosh on zombie state-owned banks in India. Link.

    +  “While executive compensation is still overwhelmingly based on financial performance, we do observe a rise in bonus payments contingent on meeting social and environmental objectives.” By Raghuram Rajan, Pietro Ramella, and Luigi Zingales. Link.

    +  “Prior to the 15th century, pepper was regarded as a rarity. In Europe it was literally worth its weight in gold, and was often used for the payment of customs duties, rents, taxes and even court fines. In China it was as highly valued for medicinal purposes as ginseng and cassia bark are today. During the T’ang dynasty, in the 12th year of Ta Li (777), Prime Minister Yuan Tsai was executed for the crime of collusion with foreign countries and bribery committed by his sons. His property, when confiscated, turned out to include 500 liang (ounces) of stalactites, and as much as 800 tan (piculs) of pepper. That we find pepper mentioned side by side with stalactites, one of the most valuable drugs of the time, is an indication of how highly the spice was valued. From that time, the expression “800 piculs of pepper” came to be synonymous with riches and luxury. Among the poems of Su Tung-p’o the following verse is to be found: ‘One ounce of pepper will season many a plate; / What should we do with eight hundredweight?'” By T’ien Ju-kang. Link. 

  4. Collective Cut

    Comments Off on Collective Cut

    This is an archived version of the PW Sources newsletter from Saturday, April 15. Sign up to receive PW Sources directly to your inbox here.

    IRAQ WAR

    In 1990, the United Nations Security Council, led by the US, imposed a broad swathe of sanctions on Iraq in response the country’s attack on Kuwait. Most of the sanctions remained in place when the US launched a ground invasion of Iraq in 2003. 

    In her 2012 book, JOY GORDON examines the economic effects of the sanctions. 

    From the text:

    “The comprehensive sanctions imposed by the Security Council crippled Iraq’s entire economy. According to 1990 testimony before Congress, the sanctions eliminated 90 percent of Iraq’s imports and 97 percent of its exports. As a result, per capita income went from $3,510 in 1989 to $450 in 1996. In 1989 Iraq’s GDP was $66.2 billion; in 1996 it was $10.8 billion. Lost income and productivity for the period from 1990 to 1995 was estimated at $265.3 billion. Before the Gulf War, Iraq’s annual oil sales were more than $10 billion, representing 61 percent of the GDP. After the war, Iraq could generate only $800 million per year from smuggling small quantities to Turkey and Jordan, liquidation of hidden assets, and government gold reserves. The situation for individuals mirrored that of the Iraqi economy as a whole: even when goods were available, few people had enough income to buy them. This was due in large measure to the collapse in purchasing power of the Iraqi dinar, which depreciated by over 5,000 percent.”

    +  “During 14 months in office, the Anglo–American government of occupation, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), spent over $20 billion in Iraqi oil revenue, most of which was disbursed to US corporations.” By Dave Whyte. Link. And Yousef K. Baker finds that the CPA passed legislation to to privatize large parts of the Iraqi state. Link. 

    +  Zeinab Shuker on Iraq’s declining wetlands and growing oil dependency, from MERIP’s new special issue on the invasion. Link and link. 

    +  In a PW essay from last year, Simon Hinrichsen examines the politics of Iraqi debt restructuring after the US invasion. Link. 

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Public transport in South Africa

    LUCAS CONWELL is a PhD student in economics at Yale University. In his job market paper, he analyzes the privatized provision of public transport in Cape Town.

    From the abstract: 

    “Workers in low- and middle-income countries waste significant time commuting, partly due to gaps in public transit. In many African cities, privately-operated minibuses provide 50–100% of urban transit, at the cost of long wait times and poor personal safety for riders. Which externalities does the private provision of transit generate, and can policy interventions improve the market allocation? I build a microfounded modelofprivatized shared transit subject to externalities in matching between buses and passengers, security provision, and road congestion. I then estimate the model with newly-collected data on minibus operations in Cape Town and stated user preferences for exogenously-varied commute attributes. I find that an optimal subsidy on minibus entry corrects matching externalities and particularly benefits low-skill workers on long routes. Government actions to improve security bring even more substantial welfare gains.”

    +  Phenomenal World is seeking applications for a full-time Publishing and Operations Associate associate, with fluency in Spanish or Portuguese strongly preferred. Please share widely! See details on how to apply here. 

    +  “I take the black box as my primary point of departure—examining the intricate workings of financial stability through market microstructures underlying financial flows.” New on PW, Elham Saeidinezhad on the infrastructure of the financial system. Link. Stay tuned for more pieces from Saeidinezhad examining different facets of market microstructure. 

    +  “The so-called ‘social market economy’ was a concession made by the CDU to the popular movements which had forcefully repudiated Erhard’s market fundamentalism.” In a new contribution to PW’s series on the price level, Uwe Fuhrmann challenges the founding myth of modern Germany. Link. 

    +  JFI’s affiliate initiative, the Center for Active Stewardship, has launched a newsletter about shareholder proposals at public companies, which have become a venue for activists to challenge the private sector on climate change. Sign up for weekly updates. Link. 

    +  Two on the Russia sanctions. Katrina Nothrop on how China circumvents sanctions to sell microchips to Russia. James K. Galbraith on the effect the sanctions are having in Russia. Link and link. 

    +  Joshua Craze on South Sudan’s war economy in the 21st century. Link.

    +  “The ways in which welfare states distribute benefits, and credit regimes provide access to credit, affect how individuals address social risks and, as a consequence, shape patterns of indebtedness.” By Andreas Wiedemann. Link. 

    +  Lee Harris on the rise of climate rating agencies. Link. 

    +  Cavit Baran, Eric Chyn, and Bryan A. Stuart on the great migration and educational opportunity. Link.

    +  “Beginning in the sixth and seventh centuries BCE, the relations of production and the patriarchal family form of the early modern Mediterranean world contributed to the near-universal homosexuality of its men. Although many archaeologists now date specialized craft production for trade to the middle and late Bronze Age, there is little doubt that the discovery of iron transformed craft production. This form of labor, based on apprenticeship and relations of dependency, persisted long into the development of industrial capitalism. Craftsmen and servants of one kind or another made up the majority of the working population of cities during the early modern period. Historians are in agreement that nearly 20 percent of the population lived in conditions of extreme poverty. Guilds and apprenticeships created demographic patterns of late marriage. The mode of production was, in this way, directly responsible for pederasty.” By Christopher Chitty. Link. 

  5. Can Fire in the Park

    Comments Off on Can Fire in the Park

    This is an archived version of the PW Sources newsletter from Saturday, April 8. Sign up to receive PW Sources directly to your inbox here.

    FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE CORPORATION

    After the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) announced that it would protect all depositors, including those with amounts over $250,000.

    In a 2014 article, CHRISTOPHER W. SHAW charts the origins of the FDIC in the Banking Act of 1933.

    From the text:

    “The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is the product of everyday Americans’ demand that government secure their bank deposits. Ordinary citizens overcame vested financial interests and the preponderance of the national political establishment in their pursuit of guaranty. But leading opponents of guaranteed deposits managed to extract something they wanted in return: branch banking. Americans no longer dread the prospect of their life savings vanishing in a bank failure, but they are increasingly aware that a handful of financial institutions are ‘too big to fail.’ The Banking Act of 1933 not only secured bank deposits, by sanctioning branching it also encouraged banking concentration in the future. And the elimination in 1999 of the Act’s prohibition against banks of deposit participating in other realms of the financial sector elevated systemic economic risk. In 2010, the six larges banking corporations in the nation held assets equivalent to 63 percent of the Gross Domestic Product, as opposed to only 17 percent in 1995. The likelihood of banks plunging Americans into financial insecurity has returned with a vengeance.”

    + “Is the federal agency with the largest say over the national economy at risk of a coup, putsch, revolt, or revolution by associate governors?” By Todd Phillips. Link. 

    +  Haelim Anderson, Gary Richardson, and Brian Yang on how the establishment of deposit insurance affected public perceptions of the overall health of the economy. Link. 

    +  “Having worked for ten FDIC chairmen and served for many years as a buffer between political appointees and career staff, I saw the inherent tension between the two groups.” By former FDIC Chief Operating Officer John V. Bovenzi. Link. 

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    US Air Carriers & Freight Service

    ZOE LAULEDERKIND is a PhD student in economics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. In a recent paper, she examines the cost structure of US air carriers.

    From the paper: 

    “While this group of carriers consistently provided both freight and passenger services as early as 1964, the freight component of their operation remained a relatively small part of their transport services. For instance, other than for 1994, freight’s share of combination revenue rarely exceeded 20 percent from 1990 to 2014. However, freight service increased dramatically by 2021 as combination air carriers transported an average of 984 million revenue ton miles of freight and mail (RFTM) in 1990 and that number increased 68% to 1.68 billion RFTM. Freight-share information shows this growth in air-freight transport outpaced the change in passenger service following 2014, as freight’s share of air transport service in the US increased fairly regularly from 2015 to 2021, reaching nearly 30 percent of all revenue-ton-miles for combination carriers. Freight’s increasing share of business has provided these combination carriers with a source of additional revenue growth, however, it is not obvious, a priori, whether expanding services to include increasing amounts of freight hauled is costly. For instance, coordinating freight service to match with passenger service could limit the amount of freight hauled such that combination carriers are shipping freight appreciably below capacity levels.”

    + + +

    +  JFI’s affiliate initiative, the Center for Active Stewardship, has launched a newsletter about shareholder proposals at public companies, which have become a venue for activists to challenge the private sector on climate change. Sign up for weekly updates. Link. 

    +  “After decades of complacency and austerity, the embrace of explicit industrial strategies in the EU marks a significant break.” New on PW, Roy Cobby tracks Europe’s quest to produce a microchip, from the 1980s to the present. Link. 

    +  “New protectionist industrial policy in the rich world is in tension with the agenda of developmentalist states in Asia.” New on The Polycrisis, Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay on the challenges of decoupling from China. Link.

    +  “Using panel data from 45 countries from 1985–2019, we find that capital controls combined with reserve accumulation—strategic capital account policy—contribute to growth in real GDP.” By Paul Bergin, Woo Jin Choi, and Ju H. Pyun. Link. 

    +  Adewumi Damilola Adebayo on electrification in Lagos Colony, among the earliest British colonies in West Africa. Link. 

    +  “This article is concerned with aspects of sourcing coolies wide and far and confined labour relations in Asia from colonialism until today.” By Jan Breman. Link.

    +  “We find that labor markets in the services sector are less sensitive to changes in interest rates, increasing the lag for monetary policy transmission.” By Karlye Dilts Stedman and Emily Pollard. Link. 

    +  Mateo Crossa and Nina Ebner on Tesla’s planned gigafactory in Monterrey, Mexico. Link. 

    +  “My most basic aim here has been to explain why the discovery of petroleum and growing use of other fossil fuels did not end whaling. Since fossil fuels provide potential substitutes for the main products of whaling—whale oil most notably—rising petroleum production could have ended whaling. However, to the contrary, fossil fuels allowed for the development of modern whaling technologies, which greatly expanded the capacity to kill whales. Additionally, a variety of other technological innovations, like hydrogenation, allowed for the development of new commodities, such as whale oil–based margarine, that expanded the market for the products of whaling. Due to these changes, most whales that were ever killed were killed in the twentieth century, in the era of plentiful fossil fuels and substitutes for whale products. Tragically, widespread whaling did not end until most whale stocks were driven to commercial extinction and many species to the brink of biological extinction.” By Richard York. Link. 

  6. Nocturne

    Comments Off on Nocturne

    This is an archived version of the PW Sources newsletter from Saturday, April 1. Sign up to receive PW Sources directly to your inbox here.

    UNITED AUTO WORKERS

    Last week, Shaw Fain won the presidency of the United Auto Workers (UAW), defeating incumbent Ray Curry of the Administration Caucus. The election comes in the wake of a federal investigation that discovered widespread corruption among UAW leadership. 

    In a recent article, DAVID WITWER argues that the absence of electoral democracy led to a culture of corruption in the UAW.

    From the text:

    “Despite Walter Reuther’s progressive stance, and despite his personal honesty, the UAW acted like a one-party state, demonstrating its underlying similarity to a union like the Teamsters. The decision to prioritize political unity had long-term implications for the UAW, as the Reuther Caucus, which came to be known as the Administrative Caucus, completely dominated the union’s leadership ranks for the last seventy years. Over that time period the emphasis on party loyalty eroded internal controls within the UAW, creating an organizational culture in which union officials chose to look the other way as union funds were misused and other forms of corruption proliferated. There are compelling reasons for organizations not to want to address the existence of corruption within their ranks, and ironically this is especially true for groups with a progressive agenda, such as nonprofit organizations and unions. The current UAW corruption scandal, however, highlights the problem with the strategy of simply downplaying the significance of union corruption.”

    +  “The UAW had seen its bargaining power sharply decline from the 1980s on in part due to the growing share of US auto production that was taking place in non-union ‘transplants’ (US assembly plants owned by foreign-based auto companies).” By Harry C. Katz and Arthur Wheaton. Link. 

    +  Two from Nelson Lichtenstein on post-war militancy and foreman participation in the UAW. Link, link. 

    +  “Despite the male dominance and to a certain extent the male orientation of the UAW, however, women’s activism and union efforts on behalf of women have long been hallmarks of the union.” By Nancy Felice Gabin. Link. 

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Labor market dynamism

    SADHIKA BAGGA is a PhD student in economics at the University of Texas at Austin. In a recent paper, she compares internal and external labor market dynamism in the US.

    From the abstract: 

    “Over the last four decades, employment composition has shifted towards large firms in the US. This has occurred amidst a decline in employer-to-employer transitions. A natural question is, are workers in large firms climbing job ladders internally rather than externally? Using data from various supplements of the Current Population Survey, I find evidence of the prevalence of internal job ladders within large firms. I document that job stayers in large firms, relative to small ones, realize a larger annual pay growth and a higher probability of internal job switching. Accounting for internal job ladders amplifies labor market dynamism and offsets part of the decline in external employer-to-employer switching rates. At the same time, there has been a decreasing trend in the rate of internal job switching, suggesting that the forces affecting declining external dynamism could have also had implications on internal job ladders. I hypothesize that the decline in internal dynamism could be driven by the firm’s endogenous response to decreasing labor market competition.”

    + + +

    +  “This distinction between traditional, uninformed depositors and modern, informed ones reflects a revolution in the structure of contemporary banking.” New on PW, Elham Saeidinezhad examines the shifts in banking exemplified by the fall of Silicon Valley Bank. Link. Stay tuned for a forthcoming PW series from Saeidinezhad on market microstructure. 

    +  “The history of America’s banking institutions demonstrates how global military and economic networks have shaped the development of nation states, as much as the reverse.” Also new on PW, Nic Johnson on the interimperial and pan-American origins of the Fed. Link.

    +  “ZPMC’s cranes are tech products as much as they are pieces of physical infrastructure.” Grady McGregor on Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries (ZPMC), whose cranes dominate ports around the world. Link.

    +  Johanna Bozuwa, Sarah Knuth, Grayson Flood, Patrick Robbins, and Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò propose a Federal Public Power Program. Link. 

    +  “Democrats in particular are both especially opposed to and especially supportive of business engagement in politics, indicative of the veracity of the competing narratives.” By Eitan Hersh. Link.

    +  Irene Dingeldey and Ilana Nussbaum Bitran examine the impacts of the proposed European Minimum Wage Directive on trade unions and employer associations. Link. 

    +  “The recent IMF bailout package has significantly shifted Sri Lanka’s foreign policy with major players such as China, India and the United States, though such shifts do not seem to bode well for its people.” By Uditha Devapriya. Link. 

    +  “This paper provides the first estimates of the relationship between Reconstruction-era tax policy and the violent attacks against Black politicians. Using unique data on Black politicians, political violence, and local tax revenue, I find that areas with higher local per capita tax revenue were much more likely to have violent acts committed against Black policymakers. Before the Civil War, the range of public goods provided by state governments in the South was relatively small and tax rates were low. Wealth and political inequality were pronounced, with a small number of Whites controlling the majority of wealth as well as the political infrastructure. Following the Civil War, Black enfranchisement led to the election of Black officeholders who pursued a dramatically different policy agenda, with local taxes financing public schools, repairs and construction of public works projects, and humanitarian aid. The resistance of Whites to these policies was highly organized.” By Trevon D. Logan. Link. 

  7. Dream of a Dream

    Comments Off on Dream of a Dream

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

    SOVEREIGNTY

    British scholar Susan Strange (1923-98) is a founding figure of the discipline of International Political Economy (IPE). Beginning in the 1970s, she combined insights from the fields of economics and international relations to show how the integration of national financial markets and cross-border capital mobility was transforming the geopolitical order.  

    Strange’s classic 1986 study, Casino Capitalism, argues that an unregulated international monetary system was undermining national sovereignty. 

    From the book:

    “Political leaders, and their opponents, like to pretend that they are still in control of their national economies, that their policies have the power to relieve unemployment, revive economic growth, restore prosperity and encourage investment in the future. But recent years have shown again and again how the politicians’ plans have been upset by changes that they could not have foreseen in the world outside the state. The dollar has weakened—or become too strong. Interest rates have made the burden of servicing a foreign debt too heavy to sustain. The banks have suddenly decided to lend the country no more money. Oil prices have suddenly risen—or fallen. Other commodity prices, on which export earnings may depend, fall, because the major economies of major consuming countries are going through a recession. The uncertainty that rules in the financial world spills over not only into individual lives but into the fortunes of governments and of countries—and sooner or later into the relations between states.”

    +  “Perhaps the most fundamental change of all has been the internationalization of production.” Strange on global political economy from 1959 and 1984. Link. 

    +  “This is one of the comparatively rare occasions on which the perceived outcome of an academic debate actually has some significance and impact outside the classroom and beyond the pages of professional journals.” 1988 article by Strange on the changing nature of American empire. Link. 

    +  Nate Dyer on how Strange foresaw the 2008 financial crisis. Link. And Benjamin Cohen on the intellectual history of IPE. Link. 

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Poverty reduction in Brazil

    IGOR B. MARTINS is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Cambridge. A paper co-written with Andrés Palacio Chaverra explores the causes of poverty reduction in twenty-first century Brazil.

    From the abstract: 

    “Our contribution lies in the introduction of a structural change perspective to assess the evolution of poverty by considering the sectoral impact of growth and the social policies at the federal, state and municipal level. By structural change we mean the recomposition of output and employment over time. We run a first difference model to estimate the effects of mean income per capita by sector and of disaggregated public expenditures, without any attempts to infer causality. We confirm previous findings in the literature that the service sector rather than agriculture contributes the most to the sustained poverty reduction. Strikingly, the public administration is the leading sub-sector. We also find that state and municipal expenditures in human capital contribute more to poverty reduction than federal expenditures associated with conditional cash transfer programs; investment in infrastructure does not seem to contribute to poverty reduction. In short, we conclude that the payoffs of decentralized policies associated with human capital can be seen in the short run and therefore raise the bar for politicians to maintain and care for these policies.”

    + + +

    +  “Carried by neoliberal ideology, competitive elections, and the polity-economy distinction, Western regimes could break promises, whereas Eastern ones could only buy time.” New on PW, Max Krahé reviews Fritz Bartel’s The Triumph of Broken Promises. Link.

    +  “These new investment alliances between wealthy countries and Gulf fossil-fuel exporters are coinciding with a period of reckoning about the cost of climate change to countries that did little to contribute to it.” New on the Polycrisis, Tim Sahay and Kate Mackenzie on outsourcing the energy transition to the Gulf. Link.

    +  Three on Silicon Valley Bank: Matt Klein on bailouts; James K. Galbraith on underlying systemic problems; and former CEO Ken Wilcox on SVB’s challenges in Asia. Link, link, and link. 

    +  “The analysis finds that the Amazon Fund is an alternative to Northern controlled national REDD+ funds.” Claudia Horn on Brazil’s Amazon Fund. Link. 

    +  Thomas J. Emery and Rok Sprukat on the long-term effects of sectarian politics in Lebanon. Link. 

    +  “Using novel data on Black elected officials between 1962 and 1980, we assess the impact of the Voting Rights Act on the racial makeup of local governments in the Deep South.” By Andrea Bernini, Giovanni Facchini, and Cecilia Testa. Link. 

    +  “Although the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador is the most powerful the young Mexican democracy has ever seen, it is far from dismantling neoliberalism.” By Ramón I. Centeno. Link. 

    +  Hasan Cömert and T Sabri Öncü on the post-2018 Turkish currency crisis. Link. 

    +  “Piano production formed clusters in the late 18th and early 19th century, notably in Soho, central London. Such clustering allowed access to a pool of skilled labor, and a London location gave easier access to materials but, most importantly, was originated due to the dominance of demand from the country’s capital. Once such a cluster formed, it was perpetuated by the clustering of makers of piano parts: key makers; pin makers; sellers of key leads; hammer coverers; piano hammer and damper cloth makers; incisors, who cut the fretted wooden fronts; truss carvers; gilders; marquetry workers; French polishers, veneer, timber, and ivory suppliers; makers of castors; and candle-sconces and piano-backs. All were essential suppliers to the main piano fabricators. Many also supplied elements that differentiated pianos, both in terms of prices and in terms of appearance, catering for different tastes in ornamentation.” By Francesca Carnevali and Lucy Newton. Link. 

  8. Family Group

    Comments Off on Family Group

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

    FORCED LABOR

    The South Korean government recently announced that it would compensate Koreans who served as forced laborers for Japanese corporations under colonial rule. The reparation funds will be raised domestically; Japanese corporations will not contribute. 

    In a 2016 chapter, DAVID PALMER examines how the Mitsubishi corporation used Korean forced laborers for war-time Japanese state projects. 

    From the chapter:

    “Mitsubishi Shipbuilding, a division of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, owned and operated the Nagasaki and Hiroshima Shipyards, along with a number of other shipyards in Japan. Mitsubishi used Japanese workers who were paid regular wages, had relative freedom of movement, but who were denied the right to have free trade unions; Korean workers conscripted under forcible conditions from villages in Korea and confined to company dormitories under armed guard; and at the Nagasaki yard Allied prisoners-of-war (POWs) used as slave labor and housed in separate POW camps. This dual waged/forced labor system characterized much of wartime industry in Japan, including infrastructure construction, coal mining, and dock work. This system was very much like the even more extreme labor regime used in Nazi Germany.”

    +  “The Court’s rationale has shifted the restitution paradigm from disparate individual claims to collective redress.” A 2015 article by Steven Nam. Link. 

    +  “Corporations thereby became ‘triple winners’ by directly benefiting from unpaid labor during the war and receiving public money for it afterward.” A 2006 article by William Underwood on reparation claims from Chinese forced laborers. Link. 

    +  Seokwoo Lee and Youngkwan Cho on judicial activism around forced labor in Korea and Japan. Link.  

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Female Labor Participation in Jordan 

    ALMA BOUSTATI is a financial manager at Lloyds Banking Group. In a recent paper, she explores why female labor participation has remained consistently low in Jordan.

    From the paper: 

    “The purpose of this paper is to describe the history of female labour force participation in Jordan and to infer from it the different factors that may have affected its evolution. This exploration concludes that the combination of economic and institutional developments in Jordan repeatedly ‘sheltered’ women from the need to become wage earners, especially women who did not progress beyond secondary education. Whenever demand opportunities arose, women were unable to take advantage of them because of various economic policies that substituted them for other workers. More importantly, a government desire to maintain its end of a social contract that was rapidly becoming unfeasible resulted in a distorted labour market and we which relied on high male wage and non-wage wage income. This is all underpinned by patriarchal institutions and labour laws and regulations that motivated these economic policies, creating a cycle of reinforcement.”

    + + +

    +  “Financial integration at the expense of autonomy in a speculative and crisis-ridden global market can be perilous.” New on PW, Lin Chun reviews wartime communist monetary policy in China. Link. 

    +  A new study finds that cradle-to-grave emissions from food loss and waste represent half of total greenhouse gas emissions from food systems. Link. 

    +  “Caste from Field to Factory: 100 years of accumulation, exploitation and caste oppression in rural Uttar Pradesh.” A lecture by Jens Lerche. Link. 

    +  Skanda Amarnath at Employ America on “three dimensions of the Fed failure.” Link. 

    +  “A devaluation and resulting inflation of any magnitude would puncture the aura of macroeconomic invincibility so central to the tenure of the MAS, and especially Arce.” Charles Dolph on the Banco Central de Bolivia. Link. 

    +  Eliot Chen on Nvidia chips and an “AI lockout” for China. Link. 

    +  “We find that East Asian economies have been important suppliers of technology goods for Russia.” By Heli Simola and Aino Röyskö. Link. 

    +  “In addition to the soul revisions, many seigneurs ordered periodic enumerations of the serfs on their estates. The origin of the resulting household registers (podvornie opisi or vedomosti) has been traced to the eighteenth century and efforts of the Russian Free Economic Society to foster rational estate management. Treatises, which included detailed sample tables and graphs, urged the registration of serfs and their material resources as the first step toward improving seigneurial economies. Naturally, the detail and the quality of such registers vary enormously from landowner to landowner. In addition to duplicating information contained in the soul revisions, the household registers of Mishino provided information about the peasants’ horses, cattle and pigs, grain reserves, labour dues and arrears, crafts and trades, the condition of dwellings and outbuildings, physical handicaps and deportment.” By Peter Czap Jr. Link. 

  9. Complication

    Comments Off on Complication

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

    SOCIAL MEDIA REGULATION

    Last month, in order to enforce stronger content moderation and transparency rules, the European Union’s 2022 Digital Services Act began requiring major social media platforms in Europe to self-report their user size. Days later, the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Section 230, which protects platforms from being liable for content recommended by algorithms. 

    In a 2023 paper, PHILLIP VERVEER compares American and European attempts to regulate social media, arguing that the latter have seen more success. 

    From the article:

    “The European Union and the United States were in roughly similar positions with respect to open mic platform services at the turn of the 21st century. Section 230 protected platforms from most liability in the United States and the Electronic Commerce Directive of 2000 protected platforms from most liability in the European Union. More than two decades later, with the accumulation of experience about the consequences of relieving platform operators from exposure to tort and other claims, things are different. The European Union has legislated significant changes in its approach and the United States has not. The divergence reflects differences in legal and government culture. The European approach utilizes increased state direction while the United States’ approach relies more on individual initiative to suppress negative externalities. One dramatic manifestation of the differences is that Section 230 occupies approximately two pages in the U.S. Code and the Digital Services Act occupies 100 pages in the European Union’s Official Journal.”

    +  “We have seen how the EU manages to closely intertwine concerns for human rights, economic growth and Single Market integration.” Troels Krarup and Maja Horst on the EU’s artificial intelligence policy. Link. 

    +  “What if a firm had to demonstrate that its AI met clear requirements for security, non-discrimination, accuracy, appropriateness, and correctability, before it was deployed?” A 2022 paper by Gianclaudio Malgieri and Frank A. Pasquale. Link. 

    +  A report from the Corporate Europe Observatory on the tech industry’s growing lobbying power in the EU. Link.

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Strategic minerals

    ROBERT KONKEL is a postdoctoral fellow at the Jackson School of Global Affairs at Yale University. In a recent paper, he explores the global scramble for strategic minerals in the decades leading up to World War II.

    From the abstract: 

    “Building Blocs charts a global history of the last great crisis of globalization—the transwar decades from the 1880s through the 1940s—centering strategic minerals needed to make steel. Little-studied, but critically important, alloying minerals like tungsten and manganese were only needed in small amounts, but they were essential to the very foundations of national prosperity and security—steel and military production. Herein lay a fundamental problem: none of the industrial powers possessed adequate domestic deposits of these minerals, which were concentrated in remote locations—like central India, the Caucasus, southern China, Brazilian jungles, the Australian outback, and southern Africa. In a world in which steel was power, I show how resource anxieties motivated interwar quests for autarky and autonomy in the form of self-contained blocs. The scramble for strategic minerals escalated tensions and put rivals on the road to war, while reshaping the forms and structures of geopolitical entities and international institutions throughout the transwar period.”

    + + +

    +  “The conclusion seems inescapable that a tight monetary policy cannot stop administrative inflation without creating excessive unemployment, and may not be able to do so even then.” New in PW’s ongoing series on the price level, excerpts from economist Gardiner Means’s congressional hearings and public lectures from 1957-61 on inflation and monetary policy, with an introduction by Andrew Elrod. Link. 

    +  “The energy transition from an economic system run on fossil-fuels into a new metals-based one will reshuffle winners and losers, and blow up both domestic and international political orders.” New on the Polycrisis, Tim Sahay and Kate Mackenzie sketch out three decarbonization plots. Link. 

    +  “Never in the past seven decades has India witnessed such an economic reversal.” R. Nagaraj on India’s deindustrialization. Link. 

    +  “Transitioning to a net-zero energy system by 2050 is likely to be economically beneficial.” A new paper by Rupert Way, Matthew C. Ives, Penny Mealy, and J. Doyne Farmer. Link. 

    +  “The long history of China’s engagement with state capitalism as a concept and program dating back to the late Qing reformers has been overlooked for the most part.” A new paper by Isabella Weber. Link. 

    +  Stefania Albanesi, Claudia Olivetti, and Barbara Petrongolo review how family policies have have affected women’s careers over the past half century. Link. 

    +  “The sustained profitability of Iranian companies under sanctions represents an extraordinary and ongoing transfer of economic welfare from households to firms.” By Esfandyar Batmanghelidj. Link. And see Batmanghelidj’s PW essay on “the backfire” of US sanctions. Link. 

    +  “This shock was the 1876 conversion of hereditary samurai stipends (aka, chitsuroku) into government bonds (aka, kinroku) worth 173.9 million yen, motivated by the drain on public finances from samurai payments. There were some immediate consequences. First, interest payments by the government fell from 34.6 million yen before the 1868 Meiji restoration to 12.8 million yen after the 1876 stipend conversion. Second, the banking system expanded rapidly since chartered national banks were allowed to accept these commutation bonds as investment capital. These banks increased from 6 in 1876 to 153 over the next three years, with samurai contributing three times more capital in these banks compared to all other classes combined. Their dominant position in bank ownership remained in place through the 1880s, which coincided with the start of modern economic growth and Japan’s subsequent transition to an industrialized economy.” By Sergi Basco and John P. Tang. Link. 

  10. Camouflaged Apocalypse

    Comments Off on Camouflaged Apocalypse

    This is an archived version of the PW Sources newsletter from Saturday, March 4. View the full archive and sign up to receive PW Sources directly to your inbox here.

    TURKEY’S CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

    On February 6, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck large parts of Turkey and Syria. Since then, the death toll has risen above 50,000 and over 160,000 buildings have collapsed. 

    Turkey’s construction industry is closely linked to the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP). In a 2012 article, OSMAN BALABAN surveys the hundreds of legal changes that allowed for a boom in private construction. 

    From the article:

    “The construction boom of the 2000s took place largely in an unplanned manner. In many cities, profit-oriented and speculative attempts of developers were regarded as signs of ‘good business climate’ and welcomed by public bodies without questioning their potential impacts. In this sense, public sector has supported recent construction boom by adopting various legal arrangements and amendments. Most of these were in form of deregulation in order to facilitate real estate and construction investments. The results of thorough review of archives of TBMM indicated that 78 laws and 10 by-laws, totally or partially concerning the production of built environment were enacted from 2002 to late 2007. 198 legal arrangements, majority of which can be considered as attempts and measures for deregulation, have been identified in these laws and by-laws. Certain institutions like Ministry of Public Works and Settlement (MPWS) were given the authority to prepare land-use plans without being amenable and restricted to the rules and conditions of existing urban development legislation.”

    +  “Mass housing and construction-generated mass employment contribute to the material basis of consent for the Turkish regime.” Cihan Tuğal on Erdoğanist megaprojects. Link. And İsmail Doğa Karate on the construction sector and the AKP. Link. 

    +  “The state of emergency declared after the attempted coup d’état of 2016 has not only given the state even more power to silence dissent but has also opened up the possibility of overriding existing legal mechanisms that can be used to stop the implementation of new extraction or construction projects.” A 2018 paper by Fikret Adaman, Murat Arsel, and Bengi Akbulut. Link. 

    +  Volkan Yilmaz examines the housing boom and labor conditions for construction workers. Link.

    NEW RESEARCHERS

    Ghost cities

    LINSEY LY is a Presidential postdoctoral fellow at the Henry Luce Foundation. In a recent paper, she examines modern “ghost cities,” empty or abandoned urban landscapes, in Inner Mongolia.

    From the abstract: 

    “This paper reads the topography of Inner Mongolia—a province situated in China’s semi-colonial periphery—as an archive holding a repertoire of chronopolitical forms, material substrates of empire, accumulation, violence, and trauma. Throughout the twentieth century, this region has provided the ground for anxious stagings in the state’s campaigns to enact modernity, from the years following agrarian collectivization during Maoist socialism to its current designation as a special economic zone (SEZ) for national urban, financial and environmental experimentation. Today, it is the center of the rare earths mining industries producing 95% of the global supply, a key commodity chain that makes green technology possible. In Baotou and Ordos, where extreme environmental degradation resulting from the mining of mineral ore and rare earths processing competes with demand and massive infrastructural investment over the use-value of broken land, the region confronts and conjoins the twinned contradiction of imminent environmental collapse and long-term interest in urban futures.”

    + + +

    +  “Derisking evangelists have conjured a state that replicates the price mechanism of a competitive order without disciplining the private recipients of subsidies and guarantees.” New on PW, Daniela Gabor and Ndongo Samba Sylla on France and the One Forest Summit in Gabon. Link. 

    +  “Will the IMF face any pressure to reverse the measures that have turned the crisis into a slow-moving social, economic, and potentially even political disaster?” Also new on PW, Devaka Gunawardena, Niyanthini Kadirgamar, and Ahilan Kadirgamar on Sri Lanka’s crisis. Link. 

    +  “We argue that the US COVID-19 inflation is predominantly a sellers’ inflation that derives from microeconomic origins, namely the ability of firms with market power to hike prices.” A new paper by Isabella Weber and Evan Wasner. Link. And Francesco Canepa reports on the ECB’s views on profits and inflation. Link. 

    +  Marie Carpenter and William Lazonick on the financialization of Cisco. Link.

    +  “Hindu nationalists fashioned a program of small-scale local industrial development and intranational trade as a more authentic alternative to the economic planning being pursued in India and elsewhere.” By Aditya Balasubramanian. Link. 

    +  “We find that papers and patents are increasingly less likely to break with the past in ways that push science and technology in new directions.” By Michael Park, Erin Leahey, and Russell J. Funk. Link. 

    +  “The World Bank stepped up during the pandemic.” By Brad W. Setser. Link. 

    +  “Major EME governments have gradually reduced their reliance on foreign currency debt by borrowing more in their own currencies overall.” A new paper by Mert Onen, Hyun Song Shin, and Goetz von Peter. Link. 

    +  Oleksandr Svitych on USAID in Ukraine’s Donbas. Link. 

    +  “Janissaries were paid in regular quarterly installments, in solemn ceremonies in the second yard of the Topkapı Palace. As for the provincial garrisons, their wages were transported across the country with a security guard. Nevertheless, this precious load was sometimes attacked by bandits—this could happen even at the apogee of the empire, during Suleyman’s reign. Any shortcoming in these payments or any adulteration of the distributed money led to riots among the troops. Besides these regular wages, they received a special bonus (bakhşiş) at every new enthronement. Extraordinary grants were also expected during the campaigns, as an incitement or a reward. To neglect these traditional grants was a serious risk for the sultan. Selim II experienced the consequences when he refused to give the bakhşiş to the janissaries at the beginning of his reign, as did Osman II who, among other foolish mistakes, was not generous enough during the Polish campaign, resulting in his being deposed and in the end in his death.” By Gilles Veinstein. Link.