The Polycrisis

May 8, 2026

Analysis

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Global shockwaves from the war on Iran are accelerating the energy transition

At the end of April in Santa Marta, Colombia, two months into the US-Israeli war on Iran, fifty-nine countries attended the first high-level conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels. The attendees agreed that decarbonization was more than energy sovereignty.…

The Canadian auto industry is in a state of existential crisis, facing new US tariffs and pressures. What does this mean for organized labor?

Lula’s overhaul of the tax system represents a challenge to the Brazilian oligarchy which goes beyond the distributive policies of previous PT governments.

Meridional

March 19, 2026

Analysis

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Reconciling cepalino and dependency theory, Aníbal Pinto developed a powerful framework for understanding the internal fractures in the working class.

Analyzing Venezuela's energy resources as a site of political struggle, from the nationalizations under Chávez to the ouster of Maduro.

Meridional

February 13, 2026

Analysis

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How the PT's environmental crackdown undermined its own ambitions for the biome.

The neoliberal world order is collapsing. In its wake, powerful states have abandoned multilaterialism in pursuit of national aims.

Labor & Logistics

January 22, 2026

Analysis

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Is brick-and-mortar retail bound to lose ground to the new portals of infinite choice and doorstep delivery? The picture is more complex than it might seem.

Meridional

December 20, 2025

Analysis

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Introducing a new newsletter on the political economy of Latin America.

Vast lithium deposits offer Argentina a chance to pursue development and reindustrialization—but the Milei government is letting it go to waste.

Gabriel Boric's government has revived industrial policy to upgrade Chile's role in the green transition. Yet serious obstacles remain.

Poised between Western and Eastern power blocs, Brazil is at the forefront of contemporary debates on geopolitics, development, and the green transition.

AMLO's government emphasized the importance of state-owned enterprises for reviving Mexico's energy sector. With her announced regulatory reforms, President Claudia Sheinbaum is reorienting these enterprises towards an even more ambitious purpose: decarbonization. Sheinbaum's proposals not only have the potential to…

Years of international isolation and sanctions have prompted Iran to structure its economy to survive various kinds of onslaught. Though it remains exposed to further interruption, Iran’s economy has proven itself resilient in the face of Israel’s campaign. What explains…

A general finding in the study of rebel politics is that groups that come to power without a clear hegemonic position within the rebel movement are vulnerable to spoilers or coups d’etat that push the country back into civil war.

Since the 1970s, steel production across the Global North has dramatically declined. But steel remains essential to industrial development—and the Green Transition. The history of steel production in Europe and the US, as well as its contemporary rise in China,…

The Aadhaar digital identification project was launched in 2009 with the promise of eradicating corruption. Over 1.3 billion Indians today hold Aadhaar numbers, making it the world’s largest biometric ID program. Aadhaar has transformed not only state-citizen relations, but also…

The Polycrisis

October 2, 2025

Analysis

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At the Polycrisis, we’ve taken a special interest in the question of  how India has been positioning itself in the new world order that has been emerging since 2022. Our inaugural essay featured India’s nonalignment in the Ukraine war as…

Earlier this year, El Salvador quietly put an end to its infamous “Bitcoin experiment.” In an economy dependent on remittances from the US, the project promoted the adoption of crytocurrencies under a financial inclusion framework. But it was ultimately unable…

The confrontation between the two largest global economies leaves Mexico in a fragile and complex triangular relation.

Chinese firms are going out. As the US withdraws from green tech industries and pressures its allies to follow suit, Chinese companies are stepping in to power the developing world’s green transition—at a staggering scale.

The rise to power of a new urban progressive politics has been a hallmark of the Trump era. From the City Council of Los Angeles and the Board of Alderman of Chicago to the State Legislatures in Sacramento, Springfield, and…

Carbon markets—purported pricing of the social costs of emissions—have been for decades a favored mitigation strategy in global climate governance. There is clear evidence that markets and carbon taxes have failed to price emissions in line with the climate mitigation…

Mortgage insurance has traditionally been the method the federal government has used to induce investment in owner-occupied housing. But for multifamily rentals, the history of mortgage-insurance programs shows the costs of relying on profit incentives for expanding the housing supply.

Since Donald Trump announced in July that the US would impose 50 percent tariffs on Brazilian imports, there has been much speculation about the future of Brazil’s foreign trade, both with China and the US. One particular area of focus…

How can a Sánchez administration that enacts a successful progressive agenda—and a PSOE party that retains and even increases its share of voters while handling a succession of unprecedented crises—become so fragile electorally? To grasp the extent of this vulnerability,…

Amid India’s grand ambitions for manufacturing growth, Tamil Nadu stands out as an outlier. The state ranks first in the number of factories in the country and accounts for one out of every seven manufacturing jobs in the country. Tamil…

The institutionalization of European defense policy has navigated tenuous terms since the Treaty of Rome and the formation of the EU. Concerns over national sovereignty have typically stood in the way of a coherent supranational industrial policy and effective defense…

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Saudi Vision 2030 promises to transform the oil power’s economy and society. The plan has prompted an enormous wave on construction—in just a few years, Saudi Arabia is poised to host the largest construction market…

With the onset of the Washington Consensus in the 1980s, Brazil’s economy began grinding to a halt. The extraordinary growth that had set it apart in the decades after the Second World War quickly came undone as public investment receded,…

Dispatches from Seville

July 24, 2025

Analysis

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The fourth UN Financing for Development conference, which concluded in Seville earlier this month, was a high-stakes event. The climate crisis is accelerating while climate commitments are weakening; official development assistance is shrinking while debt service is eviscerating poor countries’…

The Polycrisis

July 5, 2025

Analysis

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Within the BRICS group, two competing global models of energy, growth, and influence. The future of the world’s majority will be decided by the pace of the contest between green technologies and fossil fuels.

Dispatches from Seville

July 3, 2025

Analysis

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Ten years after the 2015 Addis Ababa Conference on Financing for Development, the finance development doctrine of “Billions to Trillions,” popularized by the World Bank, is alive and kicking. At the Fourth Conference on Financing for Development, taking place in…

Dispatches from Seville

July 2, 2025

Analysis

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Ajay Banga, the World Bank Group’s president, has a favorite line: “Poverty is a state of mind.” It was in his speech at the IMF/World Bank Annual meeting last October, and he repeated it at the opening ceremony of the…

Dispatches from Seville

July 1, 2025

Analysis

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The fourth Financing for Development Conference officially kicked off in Seville this Monday, as world leaders gathered with broad smiles to congratulate one another for the good work already achieved. That work was the FfD4 outcome document, which had been…

Dispatches from Seville

June 28, 2025

Analysis

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Multilateralism might be broken, but it is not dead yet. Or so we should conclude from the multilateral negotiations ahead of the fourth edition of the UN Financing for Development conference, about to begin in Seville. A once in a…

Since assuming office in May 2022, Costa Rican president Rodrigo Chaves has announced his intentions to revamp the country’s electricity sector. By October, his government had given private companies a more prominent role in the currently state-dominated energy sector, both…

More than 2500 industrial policies were recorded in 2023, but they are being deployed asymmetrically across the global economy. The pace at which advanced economies and less-developed countries are adopting industrial policies is diverging, with the former better positioned to…

The rise of green offshore finance threatens to encase biodiversity and climate policymaking within global South states and across the multilateral system, locking in a standardized set of biodiversity and climate financing, governance, and policy measures for decades to come.

While OPEC's economic stratagem has always trumped the political orientation of some of its members, wide geopolitical shifts have diminished the role of some nations while allowing for new partnerships unimaginable in the twentieth century. As an expanded organization, OPEC+…

The struggle for rights of Brazilian workers, and its fierce public presence since the end of the Second World War, reached its apogee early in the 1960s. In a climate shaped by the Cold War, many in Brazil's middle and…

With derisking regimes falling short of meeting governments' pledges to reach net zero carbon emissions, what lessons can we learn from governance through indicative planning? Historically strong coordination between states and corporate elites in Denmark, France, the Netherlands, and Japan…

Amid the intensifying retreat of American hegemony, an alternative geo-economic and geopolitical arrangement is coming into view: a battery-powered globalization with Chinese characteristics. Chinese EV manufacturer has recently raced ahead of Tesla in global EV sales. How will China’s EV…

Indonesia is the world’s largest palm oil producer, contributing to 60 percent of global market. But is the country’s cash crop a developmental dead end?

The construction of a post-neoliberal order is underway. As with the rise of liberalism and neoliberalism, the solidification of a post-neoliberal international order will not unfold homogeneously across the globe. Scholarship exploring neo-extractivism has elaborated on the persistence of dependency…

Trump’s vows to “take back” the Canal are part of a broader push to return to the heyday of American expansionism, throughout which Panama served as a key neocolonial outpost. Over the past two decades, Panamanian control of the canal…

We often hear that the new Trump administration inaugurates the age of technofeudalism. But the gutting of USAID represents a continuity from the Biden years. DOGE is turbo-charging the lesser known but increasingly dominant agenda within development finance: “mobilizing private…

Since 1999, the European Union (EU) and Mercosur have been negotiating a bi-regional partnership agreement comprising three pillars: trade, cooperation, and political dialogue. A quarter century later, in December 2024, the parties announced the conclusion of negotiations during the Mercosur…

For over 150 years, mining has constituted a core feature of the South African economy. The seemingly inexhaustible bounty of the earth made the country the wealthiest in the continent and financed one of the most all-encompassing systems of racial…

The world economy has seen a resurgence of industrial policy in recent decades. National development programs are at the center of a variety of polarizing geopolitical axes: carbon emissions, world manufacturing shares, and integration into rival trade and investment blocs.…

The ideas of the Jamaican political leader Michael Manley had a global impact that continues to be felt today. As the leader of the People’s National Party (PNP) from 1969 to 1992, and particularly in his first period as prime…

Recent years have seen an astonishing resurgence of industrial policy as a legislative agenda and topic for lively debate. Thanks in large part to the waning political fortunes of neoliberalism, deliberate efforts by governments to shape the economic trajectories of…

Endogenous dynamics have crippled the current growth wave that began in the 1980s—yielding the period of decay in which we are now living. Rather than achieving a new stability of horizontal competition, the turn toward the market brought about a…

Over the past years of escalating trade disputes between China and the US, the latter has repeatedly highlighted a practice it considers anathema: technology transfers that US companies need to offer to their Chinese collaborators if they want to do…

The Polycrisis

December 18, 2024

Analysis

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The reelection of Donald Trump to the presidency has sent shockwaves around the world. And just hours after results came in, the ruling three-party German coalition government, which had been teetering for months, collapsed. The survival of dominant political coalitions in…

The same water produces electricity twenty times over the course of a basin. But these very low costs do not translate into benefits for the people.

Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) has been integral to Nicolás Maduro’s government and the greater Chavista project. Despite the state-owned oil company controlling the largest crude oil reserves in the world, its production capabilities have fallen sharply since 2014: the country…

The IMF claims that the debt crisis is one of liquidity, requiring money thrown at the problem, rather than one of solvency, compelling debt forgiveness that should be absorbed by losses to the financiers. In Sri Lanka, this political fix…

In a global financial system underpinned by the US dollar, the Federal Reserve's interest rate hikes can push much of the global South to the brink of a full-blown debt crisis. The exposure of Southern countries to such external risks,…

The Polycrisis

October 11, 2024

Analysis

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At September’s UN General Assembly in New York, Brazil’s President Lula described the international financial system as a “Marshall Plan in reverse” in which the poorest countries finance the richest. Driving the point home, Lula thundered, “African countries borrow at…

The Polycrisis

August 30, 2024

Analysis

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Last month, young people in Bangladesh revolted against their government over a jobs quota bill that would have reserved 30 percent of public-sector jobs for family members of veterans of the 1971 war with Pakistan. Protestors did manage to drive…

In the age of climate emergency, the developmental drawbacks of being a primary goods exporter may intensify. Besides barriers to climbing the value chain on the world market, the economic cost of becoming the world’s stockyard is compounded by its…

The Polycrisis

July 4, 2024

Analysis

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On June 25, crowning a dramatic, nationwide tax revolt, demonstrators in Nairobi stormed Kenya’s parliament buildings. President William Ruto’s new finance bill, introduced in Parliament in May, sought to increase levies on everything from bread and money transfers to sanitary…

One of the concerns in American policy circles in recent years has been the long-term impact of foreign trade and industrial policies on the health and strength of American manufacturing. The Trump and Biden administrations tried to address this weakness…

In the Summer of 2022, Viktor Orbán sparked international outrage by lamenting that countries where Europeans and non-Europeans mingle were “no longer nations.” Amid the uproar, a dramatic pronouncement in the same speech largely escaped notice: Orbán declared his ambitions…

Since President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into law in August 2022, the Mexican auto assembly and parts industries have been booming. Tesla and the Chinese state-owned carmaker Jetour announced the construction of new factories for electric vehicles…

Standard development economics anticipates that the composition of a country’s labor force will go hand in hand with the composition of output, reflected in the division between the primary, secondary, and services sectors. But contemporary India, as well as several…

In the 1960s and 70s, the Colombian national government embarked on an ambitious agrarian reform program to address poverty in the increasingly violent countryside. Under the bipartisan project of the National Front, which alternated power between the Conservative and Liberal…

With general elections continuing into early June, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are poised to begin a second decade in power. In the realm of political economy, it is meant to be the…

The election of Prabowo Subianto to the Indonesian presidency two months ago has been warmly welcomed by business and political elites in the country. The day following the result, the Jakarta composite index rose by 1.3 percent, a tacit sign…

Contemporary debates around the governance of the global economy often center on the role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), arguably the most powerful international organization that—among other responsibilities—provides loans to countries in economic crisis. The most recent iteration of…

The rise of the Chinese EV industry has been enabled not only by generous government subsidies but also by profound changes in strategy and organization, and in particular by a distinctive revival of vertical integration—at both individual firm and national…

On January 24, 2024, Argentina’s General Confederation of Labor (CGT) called for a twelve-hour general strike—the first in almost five years—just forty-five days into President Javier Milei’s term. This action was a direct response to the first measures proposed by…

Since the discovery of some of the world’s largest oil reserves in 2015, Guyana has entered a period of economic and geostrategic reconfiguration. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), Guyana holds the sixth-largest oil reserves in the Americas and…

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s campaign for his third term as Brazil’s president was defined by the idea of reconstruction. This encompassed both a political recovery from the antidemocratic reign of Jair Bolsonaro as well as the promise of reindustrialization…

Oil and gas producers in Africa face unique challenges in pursuing state-led development. The resource curse, and specifically the phenomenon of “Dutch disease”, which inflates the value of the local currency, makes exporting local products abroad difficult. As long as…

In December 2023, Brazil began presiding over the G20. The one-year presidency, which will culminate in the annual summit being hosted in Rio de Janeiro in November 2024, is the third of four terms from the global South—following Indonesia in…

Since late 2021, the Turkish economy has been shattering conventional economic expectations. With deeply negative real interest rates, high inflation, a large and persistent current account deficit, an external debt stock exceeding 50 percent of GDP, and a central bank…

The South Korean economy has widely been recognized as the paragon of the East Asian miracle, with rapid economic growth and a fairly equal income distribution. The country continued its upward growth trajectory even in the aftermath of the 1997…

Since the early 2000s, Argentine development finance has undergone a profound transformation. Amid cyclical debt defaults and endless negotiations with Western investors and the IMF, Chinese overseas investment loans have slowly crept to the fore. Between 2007 and 2020, Argentina…

The Polycrisis

December 21, 2023

Analysis

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When we launched The Polycrisis a year ago, we set out to examine the intersecting crises in the economy, energy system, commodities markets, geopolitics, and climate. Our aim was to break intellectual and political silos to give a fuller picture…

The Polycrisis

December 15, 2023

Interviews

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An interview with Navroz Dubash on COP28, the history of international climate diplomacy, and the developmentalist turn in climate politics

Industrial policy in Africa is back. Beginning last January, Nigeria moved forward with the second phase of  its “Sugar Master Plan,” a flagship industrial policy that began in 2013 to stimulate domestic production. It does this by offering numerous incentives…

A pillar of Indonesia’s unprecedented economic growth over the last decade has been its ban on the export of raw nickel ore. This national experiment in downstream industrial policy began with the 2009 Mining Law signed by former president Susilo…

In the run-up to the general elections of 2014, Narendra Modi was hailed across mainstream quarters of journalism and policy-making as the crusader of economic reform and growth in India, a spirit that was only bolstered by the resounding majority…

The Polycrisis

September 2, 2023

Interviews

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A new American industrial policy—“Bidenomics”—has arrived, consisting of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act. The proclaimed goals of Bidenomics are to propel a green energy transition to confront climate…

The Polycrisis

August 31, 2023

Analysis

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The precursor of 2022’s energy crisis was 2020–2021’s vaccine apartheid. These shortages were in no way natural but reflected financial and geopolitical hierarchies: those with more power and resources bid up prices and developing countries lost out in the process.…

The Polycrisis

August 26, 2023

Analysis

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The world urgently needs financing for renewable energy, infrastructure, public transit, land restoration, and much more to face the storm of climate change. But these necessary capital investments in the green transition face real barriers, such as a high cost…

Over the past two decades, Brazilian media and political discourse have exalted the uncontroversial success of a magical entity known as “agribusiness.” Closely associated with the rise of commodity exports such as soy, sugarcane, and corn, “agribusiness” has come to…

Pranab Bardhan is Professor Emeritus of Economics at University of California, Berkeley. Among the foremost global scholars of development, distribution, and trade, his twelve books and more than one hundred fifty journal articles cross disciplinary boundaries in an effort to…

On August 5, 2019, Indian Home Minister Amit Shah presented the draft of the Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) Reorganization Bill in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s parliament. The bill threatened to permanently alter the legal, political, and…

At the start of her three-nation tour of Africa this January,  US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen spoke to the Associated Press in Senegal, bemoaning the “piling, unsustainable debt” that, she said, “plagued” many African countries. This was a “problem,” she…

The Polycrisis

June 29, 2023

Analysis

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Negotiations at the Summit for a Global Finance Pact in Paris last week took place between fifty heads of state. They revolved around how poor countries might develop and decarbonize, within the confines of the existing financial system. A common…

The Polycrisis

June 21, 2023

Analysis

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A brewing sovereign debt crisis threatens to engulf as many as sixty-one countries in debt distress over the coming year. Aid flowing from the global North—which carries the most responsibility for the atmospheric carbon stock—to the global South—which bears the…

The Polycrisis

June 15, 2023

Analysis

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Next week, a couple of dozen heads of state—from countries including China, Brazil, Indonesia, and almost a dozen African countries, among them Kenya, Zambia, and Senegal—will gather in Paris for the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact. Instigated by…

The Biden administration’s multifaceted industrial strategy of the past two years has ushered in an ill-defined transition away from neoliberalism. In response to the lingering supply chain constraints created by the pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine, as well as…

The latest US experiment with industrial policy—exemplified by the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act—has sparked outright opposition and pleas for restraint, but also calls for a far more ambitious action.

The Polycrisis

May 18, 2023

Analysis

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Leaders need followers. Last month, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan delivered a speech outlining the Biden administration’s international economic policy at the Brookings Institute in Washington. The “New Washington Consensus” was not directed at citizens but at capitals abroad.…

The Polycrisis

May 5, 2023

Analysis

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Watch the Korean Peninsula. It is in South Korea that the New Cold War has most visibly upset the delicate balance between industry, security, and domestic politics. South Korea’s growth miracle has been based on deterrence and detente between China,…

The Polycrisis

April 20, 2023

Analysis

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We are quietly witnessing the largest shift to austerity undertaken in this century. Debt-strained developing countries are making further cuts to already ragged budgets, in many cases as they battle to meet punishing new conditions demanded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which held…

The Polycrisis

April 6, 2023

Analysis

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This is the twelfth edition of The Polycrisis newsletter, written by Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay. Subscribe here to get it in your inbox. The maiden flight of a new cargo route between Shenzhen and São Paulo took off on…

Since his election in 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron has periodically committed to resetting France’s relationship with Africa. In 2020, his so-called Macron Doctrine denounced the Washington Consensus for creating a “capitalism that has become financialized, that has become over-concentrated…

Massive demonstrations that swept Sri Lanka last year exposed the serious challenges at the heart of the global economy. In July 2022, former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was forced to flee the country, only a few months after announcing a hasty…

The Polycrisis

February 23, 2023

Analysis

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The subcontinent’s embattled debtor isn’t merely the passive victim of the climate crisis—it is being plundered by its elites.

The Polycrisis

February 15, 2023

Analysis

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In the eyes of the IMF, a G20 panel, and, lately, the US Treasury Secretary, the time has come for multilateral development banks to adapt their development mandates to the logic of derisking. This tactic—lauded as a solution for “mobilizing”…

The Polycrisis

January 26, 2023

Analysis

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Debt, diplomacy, and the risks of a new Cold War.

The Polycrisis

January 25, 2023

Analysis

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This essay first appeared in GREEN, a journal from Groupe d’études géopolitiques. When NATO held its two-day summit in Madrid in June 2022, the Spanish government deployed ten thousand police officers to cordon off entire parts of the city, including…

Few scholars have done more to elucidate the relationship between democracy and economic development in the United States and its corresponding regional—or “sectional”—antagonisms than Richard Franklin Bensel, the Gary S. Davis professor of government at Cornell University. Among Bensel’s published…

Most of Zambia’s grid electricity is generated by hydropower. Over the past decade, recurring droughts—in 2015, 2016, 2019, and now again in 2022—have exposed the deep vulnerabilities in the system. These droughts have unleashed unprecedented power outages, with low reservoir…

The Polycrisis

December 8, 2022

Analysis

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The conclusion of COP27 reflected persisting uncertainties around coordinated global action towards decarbonization. Major agreements—including the establishment of a loss and damage fund—were reached, but the burden of mounting debt among global South countries continued to limit climate ambition. The…

At COP26, US Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry sanguinely declared the need to “de-risk the investment, and create the capacity to have bankable deals. That’s doable for water, it’s doable for electricity, it’s doable for transportation.” UN Special Envoy…

The Polycrisis

November 9, 2022

Analysis

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This essay first appeared in GREEN, a journal from Groupe d’études géopolitiques. In March of this year, as Russia’s war in Ukraine intensified, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi made a trip to New Delhi to speak with his Indian counterpart…

The Polycrisis

October 13, 2022

Interviews

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The material economy is back. Economists and commentators in recent decades had heralded (or lamented) the arrival of an automated, redundant, frictionless system of international commerce. But over the past two years, multiple global crises have exposed the fragile physical…

On May 1, 2014, Nigeria’s then-president, Goodluck Jonathan, addressed a crowd of workers in the country’s capital Abuja.  He declared that “the challenge of the country is not poverty, but redistribution of wealth.” The prompt for his comment was a…

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’ foreword to the UN’s Inter-agency Task Force on Financing for Development’s 2021 Financing for Sustainable Development report, speaks to a prevalent piece of common sense in global development: Financing for sustainable development is at a crossroads.…

This month China narrowly missed its growth targets, sparking speculation over the economic impacts of its zero-Covid policy. The contraction was heavily shaped by local governments, who, struggling to get loans from institutional bond investors, have begun to offer high…

Across Latin America, a recent wave of left electoral victories has drawn comparisons to “Pink Tide” of the early 2000s. The current moment, however, coincides with a global push towards decarbonization, and much of the world’s supply of commodities essential…

In December 2021, President Joe Biden announced a proposed consumer tax incentive for electric vehicles (EV) made in the US by unionized autoworkers. The tax incentive aims at tackling climate change while also strengthening unionized jobs. It promises to support…

Fifty years on from the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, the role of the international monetary system and international financial institutions in managing the global economy are in question.

Among the most notable innovations in trade union strategy since the late 20th century has been the rise of shareholder activism. The approach leverages trillions of dollars in trade union pension funds to navigate the financial sector on behalf of…

Though it failed to resolve a number of contentious issues, the COP26 meeting in Glasgow solidified a consensus around the need for a global transition towards clean energy. Implicated in this transition is the widescale adoption of renewables—we must build…

In Spring 2018, two significant labor disputes broke out at opposite ends of the earth. The first, in Brazil, was a two-week-long mass strike of 400,000 truckers in response to successive price increases unleashed by the state oil company, Petrobras,…

In recent decades, the global financial system has undergone a series of profound crises. While the impact of these crises has been felt globally, comprehensive reforms have been less immediate.

The election of Jair Bolsonaro in 2018 commenced a long agenda of environmental destruction in Brazil. Before taking office, Bolsonaro had openly threatened Indigenous communities with racist attacks, commenting that Indigenous peoples should not have “an inch of land” and…

News around the potential reversal of Roe v. Wade in the United States has brought renewed attention to abortion rights movements in other parts of the globe, and in particular, Latin America. After decades of court cases, legislative efforts, and…

In recent months Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro appears to have shape-shifted. From a staunch ally of business interests, he now presents himself as a president of the poor. The basis of this transformation is his new conditional cash-transfer programme Auxilio…

A top economic advisor in the Dominican Republic recently estimated that the loss of Russian and Ukranian visitors would cost the country $400 million in tourism revenue. With 9.5 percent of GDP traced back to tourism reciepts, the DR is…

After weeks of rising domestic pressure, a spiraling economic crisis, and the swift loss of crucial military support, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan was removed from office last weekend following a vote of no confidence. The political turmoil is the…

Brazil's nearly 70-year-old national oil company, Petrobrás, faces criticism from across the political spectrum for its simultaneous price hikes and record breaking annual profits.

In 2006, the government of Ethiopia embarked on a mission to construct half a million condominium apartments over a twenty-year period in its capital of Addis Ababa—a city of only five million. Now, sixteen years later, the initiative has transformed the…

In December 1973, Richard Nixon announced the Emergency Daylight Saving Time Energy Conservation Act as a response to the oil crisis, arguing that making the time change permanent would reduce energy usage with "only a minimum of inconvenience." Nearly fifty years…

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's suspension of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project has provoked numerous commentaries on potential geopolitical, growth-related, and inflationary ramifications.

The pandemic imposed major stress on municipal budgets around the world, with many local governments facing a mix of decreasing revenues and increasing expenditures. In the United States, municipal budgets—which saw smaller revenue losses than expected—reflected a range of taxing…

South Africa has one of the most carbon-intensive economies in the world. It is also in a staggering and protracted unemployment crisis—the real unemployment rate, including discouraged work-seekers, is near 50 percent. But there remain tens of thousands of workers…

In 2003, led by the government of Néstor Kirchner (2003–2007), Argentina’s developmental agenda regained momentum. From the ashes of privatization, deregulation, and liberalization emerged a consensus agenda that put the public sphere at the center of the growth engine. The…

This week, the Indian megaconglomerate Adani Group and South Korean steel company POSCO announced plans to build a "green" integrated steel mill in Gujurat, India. The mill marks the latest in the Adani Group's efforts to move into the green industrial sector…

According to a survey on free trade from the University of Chicago, economists overwhelmingly agree that free trade’s net effects are good. A recent article by several  IMF economists affirms that, “perhaps more than on any other issue, there is…

Wednesday, November 3, was private finance day at COP26. For those who follow central banks closely, the event was a chance to gauge whether their recent turn to climate-conscious policy making would translate into ambitious decarbonization announcements. After all, private…

On June 11, leaders at the G7 summit signed the Build Back Better World (B3W) Partnership, an agreement which commits signatories to meet the infrastructure needs of low- and middle-income countries. The deal is an explicit response to China’s Belt…

As the Fed moves towards tightening its post-pandemic monetary policy, developing countries around the world face growing risks of capital flight. The deep political constraints posed by this risk are not new, but their implications for contemporary policymaking are persistent.

2021 marked the centenary of the creation of the Chinese Communist Party, born of the May Fourth Movement of 1919. History textbooks tend to claim that the Movement emerged out of a widespread realization that China’s rights as a victorious…

What is the legacy of the First Globalization of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries on the economic fortunes of countries during the Second Globalization? To what extent have countries’ positions in the international economic order been persistent across the…

Earlier this week, the EU published a series of proposals aimed at reducing its carbon emissions by 55 percent by 2030. The legislation has revived debates on the economic models best suited to facilitating investment and decarbonization.

former congresswoman and daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori. The contest has revealed deep polarization in the country between social movements opposed to foreign investment and those who favored market liberalization that has defined Peruvian politics since the 1990s.

In January 2021, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman unveiled plans to build ‘The Line’, a $/500bn futuristic 170km carbon-free city strip in Neom destined to be fully automated, fueled by clean energy, linked to neighboring Jordan and…

Amid the global Covid-19 vaccination campaign, a debate has emerged around intellectual property (IP) and stark inequalities in vaccine distribution. Wealthier nations have opposed a petition to waive the 1995 Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement, which imposes…

Earlier this week, the blockage of the Suez Canal by the giant Ever Given container ship prompted renewed discussions on the weakness of our supply chain infrastructure, the future of globalization, and the region's colonial past.

The simultaneous integration of global markets and decentralization of government within nation states has been a hallmark of the age of globalization. In a 2004 article, NEIL BRENNER looks to Europe to argue that through processes of decentralization and localization,…

The deep divisions in American political and social life have long been thought to explain the unique weakness of America’s welfare infrastructure, and the absence of an integrated system of universal benefits. But on their own, demographic divisions need not…

Amit Bhaduri was internationally selected professor at Pavia University and visiting Professor at the Council for Social Development, Delhi University. His six books and more than sixty journal articles have consistently scrutinized the foundations of neoclassical economic theory and presented…

Since the first export processing zone was established in Puerto Rico during the 1940s, special economic zones (SEZs) have proliferated to number 5,400 across 147 countries and employ more than 100 million workers. While the zones have been lauded for…

Contrary to common beliefs on fiscal fundamentals, the current debt crisis in the global periphery demonstrates that the solvency of sovereign states is determined by their monetary power. Crucially, liquidity has a cyclical character in the periphery of global capitalism…

Brazil's Bolsa Familia is widely credited with lifting more than 20 million people out of extreme poverty, making it a global model for anti-poverty initiatives. Developed as part of a broader theory of equitable development, it serves as the basis…

Before Covid-19 hit, we'd become used to reports about Amazon's robotics innovations and the impending large-scale automation of warehouse jobs. But recent strikes and protests by Amazon's very human workers have exposed how far we are from robotic warehouses.

Among the many corona-induced shocks rippling through the global economy is the crash in remittance payments to developing countries. The World Bank predicts that remittance flows will fall 20% this year—a decline of $100b—largely as a result of shutdowns and…

Among the diverse local and national policy responses undertaken to combat the pandemic in recent months, Kerala's has been notable. Within the broader context of Indian economic development, Kerala's government has a tradition of successful redistributive development policies, sometimes referred…

Nathan Lane is an economist working on political economy, development, and economic history.

Deindustrialization is a global phenomenon taking place more rapidly in middle- income countries than in high-income ones. Despite the global decline of manufacturing employment, "industrial policy" is increasingly salient in research and policy debates. But deindustrialization poses significant challenges for…

Alice Evans is a Lecturer in the Social Science of International Development at King's College London, and a Faculty Associate at Harvard's Kennedy School. She is writing a book on “The Great Gender Divergence”, which explores why European countries rapidly…

Infrastructure lies at the heart of development. From transportation and telecommunication networks to electrical grids and water pipelines, large-scale infrastructure projects play a pivotal role in the global development landscape.

Last week, we considered how social and political standards can pressure climate scientists to under-report their findings, introducing an underestimation bias into published climate research. In a recent thread, Nicholas Loubere examines the development buzz around mobile money, showing how…

The most visible discourse on universal basic income focuses squarely on the labor market. Unconditional cash transfers are understood above all as a potential policy solution to wage stagnation, rising inequality, and labor displacement. This framework, which responds to rising…

There is renewed debate around the merits of protectionism and free trade, spurred by political rhetoric from the left and right in the US, and in Europe and Latin America. Active disagreements over the consequences of free trade date back…

MIDDLE WAGE Questioning the great transition into a "global middle class" Economist STEVE KNAUSS, in a new paper published by the CANADIAN JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT STUDIES, examines the "myth" of the global middle class and the claim that the $2/day…

TARGET VARIABLE Big data's effect on the credit-scoring industry A lengthy 2016 article from the Yale Journal of Law and Technology delves into credit-scoring then suggests a new legislative framework. Since 2008, lenders have only intensified their use of big-data…