All Articles
December 6, 2024
AnalysisEnergy Offshoots
Transformations in Petróleos de Venezuela and geopolitical realignments
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…
December 2, 2024
AnalysisClass Cleavages
The irrationality of American business partisanship is a symptom of its own success
Within the American business lobby, it seems there is no classwide consensus about the direction of the country’s future. The large blocs of organized money that found Trump a threat to democratic institutions in 2021 evidently no longer do—proposals once…
November 29, 2024
AnalysisLabour’s Choices
Policy experiments of the 1970s
The threat of a return to the 1970s has long been a rhetorical feature of the British establishment. From the New Labour government’s Third Way reforms, to Jeremy Corbyn’s ambitious manifestos, and through to the current Labour Government’s rather modest…
November 21, 2024
AnalysisBeyond Growth
Can Labour rise to the politics of growth after fourteen years of stagnation?
“At the election we promised there would be no return to austerity,” Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves explained to the British Parliament on October 30. “Today we deliver on that promise.” The remark came halfway through the newly elected…
October 31, 2024
AnalysisThe Florida Frontier
Education, real estate, and the rise of the “anti-woke” American right
In the evolving lexicon of the 2024 US Presidential election, Florida has stood for the ultimate “weird” of American politics—a place where legislation and executive action revolve around book banning; state protection of embryonic heartbeats, rather than Medicaid expansion; the…
October 23, 2024
AnalysisDebt’s Political Fix
Elections and bond deals in Sri Lanka
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…
October 22, 2024
Analysis“Greenwashing” Structural Adjustment
Should the IMF lead the global energy transition?
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,…
October 16, 2024
AnalysisBreaking Up Google
Antitrust, competition, and the intricacies of monopoly
In late August, Judge Amit P. Mehta of US District Court for the District of Columbia found Google guilty of maintaining an illegal monopoly in online search. Google had paid billions to device manufacturers and browser developers—including Apple, Samsung and…
Marshall Plans
New green industrial diplomacy?
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…
October 9, 2024
AnalysisAdaptation in the Sanctioned Economy
Domestic manufacturing, overcapacity, and the limits of Iran’s economic resilience
The oil boom of the late 2000s created significant headwinds for Iranian manufacturers. As the value of oil exports surged, the Iranian rial appreciated, real wages rose, and foreign goods flooded the Iranian market. Middle-class families relished in their newfound…
October 3, 2024
AnalysisAMLO’s Surrender
The military, the elite, and the Mexican left
Lopezobradorismo is without a doubt the most significant political movement to have emerged in Mexico over the past three decades. Since 2018, it has reconstituted the country’s post-authoritarian political system. The movement’s new leader, Claudia Sheinbaum won the Presidency with…
September 26, 2024
AnalysisWhat Was Bidenomics?
From Build Back Better to the national security synthesis
The Biden administration first embraced the slogan of “modern supply-side economics” six months before anyone uttered the phrase “Inflation Reduction Act.” Speaking before the World Economic Forum in January 2022, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen explained that what distinguished the Biden…
September 26, 2024
AnalysisPeripheral Conditionalities
A new dependency theory?
The need to reorganize global governance so as to make space for a growing China has long been apparent. With the financial crisis of 2008, another demand emerged: the reshaping of capitalism itself. The Covid-19 pandemic represented a strategic moment…
September 26, 2024
AnalysisSeeking Stability
The democratic politics of central banking
Central banking has been described as a “quest for stability” and with good reason. Nearly every major central bank today is charged with securing price stability. The Fed sees itself as responsible for securing price stability and maximum sustainable employment.…
September 12, 2024
AnalysisIndustry Preference
The incompatibility between the Workers’ Party program and the business lobby lay behind Dilma’s impeachment. Does Bolsonaro alter the calculus?
Despite their numerical minority as individual voters, in electoral democracies the economic elite wield significant political power. Through their investment decisions, those who control a nation’s wealth and credit have significant influence over its pace of economic growth, the value…
September 4, 2024
AnalysisLabor’s Gains?
What do large-unit elections tell us about the state of the American labor movement?
In 2023, a “banner year” for labor in many regards, only 115,551 workers voted in National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) representation elections, out of roughly 160 million workers in the United States labor force. In FY 2018, that number was…
The Contest to Shape “Country Platforms”
IMF reforms and Bangladesh’s revolt
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…
August 29, 2024
AnalysisTaking Money Seriously
Challenging orthodox assumptions of money neutrality
The relationship between money world and the concrete social and material world is a long-standing, though not always explicit, question in the history of economic thought. Do the money payments and prices we see all around us have their own…
August 29, 2024
AnalysisPatronage Partitions
South Africa after the 2024 elections
In South Africa’s watershed election last May, the African National Congress (ANC) failed to secure an outright majority for the first time in the country’s democratic history, sinking 17 percentage points from five years prior, obtaining just 40.18 percent of…
August 21, 2024
AnalysisThe World’s Stockyard
Agribusiness and the green transition in Brazil
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…
August 8, 2024
AnalysisThe Political Economy of Brazilian Inflation
The implicit income policy of central bank inflation targeting
Over the past two decades, Brazil has seen two great swings in its distribution of real national income. In the years between 2004 and 2014, the wage share increased progressively. This phenomenon faced severe political resistance. The momentous events of…
August 8, 2024
AnalysisDemocratic Defense
The economic and social foundations of India’s 2024 election results
Much ink has been spilled on the erosion of democracy in India, but the country’s most recent elections demonstrate such erosion has not gone unchecked. During the last decade, Indians across sectors of society have repeatedly stood up to a…
July 18, 2024
AnalysisMansfield is Open for Business
Market rule and Keir Starmer’s Labour Party
In 2017, the town of Mansfield pointed the way for the Conservative Party. The Conservative candidate defeated a longstanding Labour incumbent who had tried, among other things, to sue the Mansfield Town FC supporters’ association. Amid the density of local…
July 17, 2024
AnalysisWhy So High?
The institutional challenges of Brazil's interest rate policy
The clashes between Lula and Campos Neto illustrate something of the complex and controversial issue of interest-rate setting in Brazil.
July 11, 2024
AnalysisStrategic Interdependence
Supply chains and the US-China rivalry
Geopolitical rivalry and strategic competition are now common parlance in describing international politics and global business. Yet, a large part of misconception stems from a severe lack of understanding about the degree of interdependencies and healthy competition permeating important supply…
July 11, 2024
AnalysisTerms of Investment
The structure of the US rental housing market and the Inflation Reduction Act
Now two years old, the federal Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) sets the stage for billions of federal dollars to flow toward home energy upgrades through home energy rebates, grants, and tax credits. But in the US rental market, both the…
The View From Nairobi-Washington
Debt, austerity, and Kenya’s global positioning
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…
June 28, 2024
AnalysisTrade and the Manufacturing Share
Tariffs, manufacturing, and US capital controls
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…
June 27, 2024
AnalysisBattery Supremacy
Hungary's role in Europe's EV industry
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…
June 20, 2024
AnalysisDriving Capital
The USMCA, the IRA, and Mexico’s electric vehicle boom
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…
June 6, 2024
AnalysisKishida’s New Capitalism
Wage stagnation and the echoes of Abenomics
In September 2021, Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio was elected on an ambitious platform: “New Form of Capitalism.” As leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, he promised to achieve a new and better economic system where economic growth and income…
A Safe Haven for Hidden Risks
Inside the Treasury market
Perceptions are shifting regarding the US fixed-income market. In September 2019, interest rates on overnight repos unexpectedly spiked, leading the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to inject $75 billion in liquidity. In March 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic triggered a…
May 30, 2024
AnalysisBorder Traffic
Ecuador in the global drug trafficking chain
The rise of Ecuador in the transnational network of organized crime is a relatively recent phenomenon. Although the country has supplied chemical inputs for cocaine production in Colombia since the 1990s, there were few spikes in violence or power struggles…
May 23, 2024
AnalysisThe Productivity Gap
Rethinking corporate-led industrialization in India
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…
May 18, 2024
AnalysisUnderdevelopment and War
Dependency, neocolonialism, and the agrarian problem in Colombia
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…
Great Green Wall
Cat and mouse games are afoot
Biden’s announcement this week to sharply raise tariffs on Chinese imports is an escalation in the yearslong tariff war on China. The new tariffs specifically target green goods, most notably electric vehicles, duties on which have now quadrupled to 100…
May 9, 2024
AnalysisSupply-Side Healthcare?
The politics of hospital care and construction
In 2019, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law that deregulated new hospital construction and unleashed a “hospital-building boom.” Some 65 new hospitals were planned in the three years after DeSantis signed the bill ending decades-old regulations on…
May 2, 2024
AnalysisPartners in Growth?
Tata and the evolution of state-capital relations in independent India
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…
May 2, 2024
AnalysisThe Iron Farm Bill
Agricultural policy coalitions in the age of climate crisis
Agriculture directly accounts for 10 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions. These emissions, which do not include onsite fossil-fuel use, come from soil and manure management and the digestive processes of ruminants, mostly cattle. Worse, there is a substantial “carbon…
April 25, 2024
AnalysisIlliberal Developmentalism
Indonesia under Prabowo
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…
April 25, 2024
AnalysisDesenrola Brazil
Debt management as social policy under Lula 3
Credit in Brazil—and particularly consumer credit—is expensive, but ubiquitous. Exclusion from the credit market, where basic needs not covered by wages are increasingly financed, is now a threat to the very social reproduction of the working classes. Accordingly, the massive…
April 18, 2024
AnalysisThe Origins of Conditionality
How the IMF turned to austerity
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…
New World Order?
Lender(s) of last resort, dollar dominance, and the global financial safety net
We live in a dysfunctional system in which money flows out of the countries that need it most and into the coffers of the wealthiest. In 2023, the private sector collected $68 billion more in interest and principal repayments than…
April 11, 2024
AnalysisThe Electric Vehicle Developmental State
BYD exemplifies transformations in Chinese industrial policy
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…
April 5, 2024
AnalysisInflation as Distributive Struggle
Milei’s relationship with the unions will determine the fate of his government
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…
April 3, 2024
AnalysisThe Debt Poor
Financialization, debt and the underestimation of poverty in Brazil
The 2008 financial crisis was an unprecedented demonstration of financialization in capitalism today. In the US, the collapse of real estate values revealed how formal credit channels—imagined as mechanisms of wealth creation—had brought unsustainable levels of household indebtedness down into…
March 29, 2024
AnalysisThe Visible Hand
China’s investments into research and development
China has transformed into a leading force in science, technology, and innovation (STI). With rapidly rising research and development (R&D) expenditure, a larger and increasingly high-quality talent pool, and impressive scientific publication and patenting statistics, the country is set to…
March 28, 2024
AnalysisThe First New Deal
Planning, market coordination, and the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933
The National Industrial Recovery Act is commonly counterposed to antitrust. But at the time, the antitrust camp had little truck with the self-coordinating market ideal. Resistance to public price coordination experiments, meanwhile, particularly among conservative jurists, was also not based…
March 21, 2024
AnalysisOffshore Treasure
ExxonMobil, Venezuela, and the battle for Guyana’s oil
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…
March 21, 2024
Analysis100 Days of Milei
Argentina under the “chainsaw”
Javier Milei’s election to the Argentine presidency in November sent shockwaves throughout the country. While the media personality was not altogether an outsider, his party La Libertad Avanza (LLA), formed in 2021, fundamentally lacked political experience. Until Milei’s inauguration in…
Liberal Blindspots
An interview with Chris Shaw
Protests led by farmers have been roiling Europe for months. In Belgium, Germany, Romania, the Netherlands, Poland, and France, farmers—armed with grievances ranging from subsidized Ukrainian grain imports to the EU-Mercosur trade deal and falling prices—have been taking to the…
March 14, 2024
AnalysisEgyptian Leverage
The IMF invests in the Egyptian dictatorship’s structural payments imbalance
Cairo’s role in a US-backed regional security architecture makes the military dictatorship a regional giant too big to fail. The Sisi regime, like its predecessors, is keenly aware of this status and leverages it to secure the acquiescence of creditors…
March 2, 2024
AnalysisOil Linkages
State-led development in Angola and Nigeria
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…
February 29, 2024
AnalysisTotal Peace?
Gustavo Petro’s government negotiates with the ELN
Gustavo Petro’s presidency marks a turning point in Colombia’s democratic history. Not only is Petro the first leftist in government, but he has also made achieving peace a central objective of his progressive agenda. The Colombian armed conflict has been…
February 24, 2024
AnalysisThe G20 in the South
The Brazilian Presidency in 2024
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…
February 15, 2024
AnalysisRed Sea Rivalries
Egypt, Ethiopia, and histories of maritime war
Every few years, a crisis in the Red Sea makes global headlines. In 2014, the Yemeni Civil War spilled into the Red Sea after the Houthis captured the capital Sana‘a and dissolved the parliament. As a warning, the Houthis allegedly…
January 27, 2024
AnalysisThe Falling Lira
Turkey’s state of permanent crisis
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…
January 17, 2024
AnalysisMiracle in Reverse
The trials of South Korea’s growth models
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…
January 6, 2024
AnalysisExternal Imbalance
Inflation, exchange rates, and the Argentine peso
In August 2023, a week after winning Argentina’s primary elections, now-president Javier Milei, publicly stated that the Argentine peso was “worth less than excrement.” In the next two days, the dollar-peso parallel exchange rate climbed almost 20 percent, intensifying the…
December 22, 2023
AnalysisLearning Curves
The trials of offshore wind and tech forecasting
Over the last ten years, the surface of the Earth warmed by another 0.5°C. At the same time, renewable energy grew its share of world electricity production from 5 to over 11 percent. These are the basic coordinates for the…
December 21, 2023
AnalysisAnarcho-Capitalism
Argentina between the IMF and China
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…
A Year in Crises
Trade, war, labor, and South-North dynamics in 2023
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…
December 15, 2023
AnalysisConstitutional Odysseys
In the upcoming vote, a battle over Chile’s identity
On September 11, 1980—seven years after Augusto Pinochet seized power from democratically elected Salvador Allende in a brutal American-backed military coup—the dictatorship passed a constitution that laid the groundwork for one of the world’s earliest and most enduring neoliberal experiments.…
December 9, 2023
AnalysisClimate Divergence
The politics of green central banking at the Fed and ECB
Ten years ago, the current predicament of central bankers would seem unthinkable: to what extent should they contribute to society’s response to climate change? As the impacts of climate change have escalated, most central banks have begun to appreciate the…
December 5, 2023
AnalysisSectoral Strategy
Free trade and the resurgence of industrial policy in Africa
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…
November 30, 2023
AnalysisIndustrial Experiments
Variants of industrial policy in the global South
The turn of the twenty-first century brought a reassessment of development economics. The global commodity boom of the 2000s ushered in windfall profits for resource-rich countries in the global South, and with them came new agendas for growth. In 2002,…
November 22, 2023
AnalysisThe Doom Loop
Insurance markets and climate risk
Recent coverage of insurance markets has highlighted the industry’s involvement in the so-called “climate risk doom loop”: looming climate risks and greater disaster damages are raising the price of insurance for real estate and infrastructure assets, exacerbating their owners’ vulnerability…
November 16, 2023
AnalysisBearing Risk
Why “derisking” finance is an oxymoron
For the past two centuries in Britain, the US, and other high income countries, financial markets have been venues in which the government provides a relatively safe investment opportunity in the form of government bonds. At the same time, private…
October War
An interview with Guy Laron on the Gaza War, failure of the Netanyahu doctrine, and risks of Middle east conflagration
It is now over a month since Hamas launched its attack on Israel, killing an estimated 1,400 Israelis and taking more than 200 people hostage. Israel’s response has, in Netanyahu’s words, sought to “crush and destroy” Hamas, but the main…
Rate Transformation
Interest rate swaps are modern repos
On September 28, 2023, the Bank of England opened permanent liquidity facilities to nonbanking financial entities—such as pension funds, insurers, and investment funds— many of whom have a role in the interest rate swap market. The move is unprecedented. Historically,…
October 28, 2023
AnalysisThe Dollarization Threat
Javier Milei and Argentina’s pivotal election
The results of Argentina’s first-round elections on October 22 were not to be expected. Conservative former security minister and election favorite Patricia Bullrich came in third place, knocking her out of the running for the presidency, which will be decided…
October 25, 2023
AnalysisA Second Twenty Years’ Crisis?
Revisiting E.H. Carr one hundred years on
E.H. Carr’s The Twenty Years’ Crisis (1939), has a well-deserved reputation as a classic text that helped launch the academic discipline of International Relations (IR). Not only did Carr identify and dissect what would emerge as the two leading schools…
October 21, 2023
AnalysisDemocratic Preconditions
Post-Communism and Poland’s recent elections
Poland’s parliamentary elections last Sunday have led to victory for Donald Tusk and his party, Koalicja Obywatelska (Civic Coalition). Although the ruling Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Right and Justice, or PiS) Party received the largest share of the vote, 35.4 percent,…
October 17, 2023
AnalysisThe Oil Revolution
The myths and realities of the oil price shock of 1973
The abrupt quadrupling of the oil price in the final months of 1973 is widely held to have marshalled the end of “a golden age of world capitalism.” Eric Hobsbawm’s standard-setting interpretation defines 1973 as the turning point when the…
October 14, 2023
AnalysisThe Renters’ Constituency
The politics of homeownership in Australia
In developed economies around the world, housing has been transformed into a major asset. It is no coincidence that rates of homeownership have precipitously increased at the same time as governments in formerly social-democratic countries have reduced basic social safety nets.…
Hot Labor
Labor movements, labor markets, and mining
The energy transition is underway and the global North is putting up the cash. In our series, we have investigated questions about the international hierarchy of money, the distribution of economic power, and trade wars. Today, we turn to labor,…
October 7, 2023
AnalysisDownstream Industries
Indonesia’s export ban on nickel
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…
October 5, 2023
AnalysisThe Politics of Fiscal Restraint
Three decades of rule-based fiscal policy in Brazil
The adoption of fiscal rules has emerged as a global trend over the past four decades. While institutional constraints to fiscal policy were uncommon before the 1990s, recent data indicates that they have since been put in force in more…
September 16, 2023
AnalysisCrisis in the Bread Basket
Investment and agriculture in Punjab
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…
Trading Order
Protectionism and interdependence pact?
Export Bans. Sanctions. Investment screens. The liberal trading order has been weaponized; security, not efficiency, is the new watchword. And yet, 2023 has seen an all-time high of goods traded across borders. Even bilateral trade between the warring great powers,…
September 12, 2023
AnalysisLabor’s Green Capital
Pension funds, asset managers, and solar energy
Global investment in solar energy has skyrocketed in recent decades: from 1 TWh of solar power in 2000 to 1,284 TWh in 2022. The trend is likely to be magnified in the United States by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA),…
September 7, 2023
AnalysisThe IRA and Public Schools
Green investment for school infrastructure
Public school buildings in the United States are crumbling. National school infrastructure received a D+ rating from the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2021, and in serious cases, learning environments have become toxic. Given the segregated and unequal nature…
Grievance and Reform
Will the BRICS bargaining chip bear fruit for smaller and lower-income countries?
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 Investment Climate
The limits of private financing
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…
August 23, 2023
AnalysisCoercion and Inequality
The distributional effects of sanctions in Iran
“Plumbing” is an oft-used metaphor for understanding how sanctions work. Sanctions are intended to stop the flow of money to the targeted government; reserves are frozen, trade is blocked, export revenues dry up, and government budgets are drained. Even the…
Hockey Sticks and Crosses
Images that define the globalization debate
August 10, 2023
AnalysisElusive Boundaries
The politics of public-private relations in Brazilian water provision
In April 2021, private investors gathered at B3, Brazil’s stock exchange, to bid for water concessions in Rio de Janeiro. The former capital city and its surrounding municipalities had been divided into four “concession blocks,” all of which were up…
August 5, 2023
AnalysisThe Agribusiness Pact
The “reprimarization” of the Brazilian economy
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…
Global Boiling
Stocks and flows, action and inaction in the planetary impasse
This July has been the hottest in our recorded history and, most likely, over the last 120,000 years. Four “Heat Domes” across the northern hemisphere—over West Asia, North America, North Africa and Southern Europe—contributed to soaring temperatures, not just breaking…
Washington-Paris-London Calling
Modi, Mottley, Zelenskyy’s attempts to change the existing world order
On June 22, three leaders of developing countries made expeditions to three different Western capitals to plead their case for greater support from the rich world. Viewed jointly, these demands—largely successful—provide a neat panorama of the escalating global crises of…
Global Payments
Systemic risk and the end of LIBOR
The last day of June marked the final printing of the London Inter-Bank Offered Rate (LIBOR)—an average of anticipated interest rates among London banks which has thus far served as the benchmark for short term and off-shore lending around the…
July 8, 2023
AnalysisSolar Ambitions
Can Spain become a leading producer of renewable energy?
In Spain’s forthcoming snap elections, the energy transition is high on the agenda, and solar power at the forefront. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has often expressed ambitions to make Spain the lead producer of solar electricity on the continent, positioning…
July 5, 2023
AnalysisThe Myth of Underdevelopment
Legal autonomy and land reform in Jammu and Kashmir
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…
July 1, 2023
AnalysisParallel Systems
China, the IMF, and the future of sovereign debt financing
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…
Carbon Budget versus Fiscal Budget
What’s at stake in the fiscal rules debate?
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…
June 24, 2023
AnalysisSemi-Politics
Intel and the future of US chipmaking
Since the late 1970s, cutting edge semiconductors have figured at the heart of the political economy of the United States. Often called the “crude oil of the information age,” they have become increasingly ubiquitous and are now considered the basic…
Feasibility Pact?
Systemic reform, debt, and political feasibility at the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact in Paris
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…
Mottley in Paris, Modi in DC
Prospects for the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact
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…
June 7, 2023
AnalysisRisk Politics
ESG and the politicization of finance
In 2022, Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) accounted for 65 percent of all new inflows in exchange traded funds in Europe. Investments in the US are also projected to grow—PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) observes that more than eight out of ten…
Friends With (Metal) Benefits
Australia’s bid for “friendshoring” in the shifting green world order
When Americans ran short on baby food last year, President Joe Biden made use of a Korean War-era authority—the Defense Production Act (DPA)—to airlift goat milk from Australia, despite protectionist howls from American formula companies. Operation Fly Formula funded the…
May 31, 2023
AnalysisIndustrial Transformations
Lessons from development economics for industrial policy design
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.
May 27, 2023
AnalysisPecuniary Salvation
Monetary financing at the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve, and the European Central Bank
Monetary financing—the issuance of public money to support public expenditure—has in recent times become a policy taboo. The message from economists to politicians, policymakers, and society more broadly is often that any central bank support for public expenditure is likely to destroy…
Green Industrial Strategy
The scale and scope of Biden’s landmark climate investments
The Inflation Reduction Act is the most significant piece of climate legislation in US history. Alongside its three other major legislative achievements, the Biden administration has passed between $500 billion and $1.2 trillion worth of new climate spending, depending on…
A New Foreign Policy
Understanding the “New Washington Consensus”
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.…
May 13, 2023
AnalysisReforming the IMF
The global monetary hierarchy and steps towards change
In March 2023, the US Federal Reserve expanded its balance sheet by $300 billion. Following the run on Silicon Valley Bank, the Fed provided emergency lending through a brand-new bank lending facility that accepted US treasuries at face value (higher…
May 10, 2023
AnalysisTwo-Price Economy
Minsky, First Republic Bank, and the paradox of contemporary monetary policy
The crisis affecting US and some European banks shows little sign of abatement. Following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank earlier in the year, First Republic last week became the latest mid-size US bank to be bought up by a…
The End of the Cold Peace
Can the Asian growth miracle survive?
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,…
Best Execution?
SEC regulations and the future of retail trading
Recent years have seen the rise of the meme stock frenzy—a wave of stock purchases driven by social media trends. This tendency culminated with the Gamestop bubble of 2021, in which the value of the company’s stocks increased more than…
April 27, 2023
AnalysisThe Revival of Neomercantilism
Global rivalries and prospects for cooperation
Amid intensifying geopolitical and economic rivalries, policymakers around the world—including those in the United States and European Union—are increasingly turning to neomercantilist industrial policies to promote the wealth and power of their states. This trend has been reinforced by the…
The Gigantic Austerity Drive Underway
Two billion people are suffering austerity as governments follow IMF diktat
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…
Testing Loyalties
A year later, the Russia sanctions and an emerging geopolitical order
Pain and resolve: have we reached the beginning of the end of sanctions?
Inside the Black Box
Examining the microstructures of the financial system
We live in a period of unparalleled financial complexity, and, as the history of recent decades has demonstrated, unparalleled financial risk. The recurring crises which plague the global economy have brought theorists of systemic instability to the fore. Key among…
Illusions of Decontrol
The myth of Germany’s “social market economy”
The founding myth of modern Germany can be traced back to June 20, 1948, when Ludwig Erhard, economic director of the Anglo-American occupation zone in Germany, created the Deutsche Mark. To stabilize the new currency, he paired the paper issue…
Mercantilist Deals of the Great Powers
Decoupling from China is an uphill task in both the global North and the global South
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…
April 5, 2023
AnalysisThe Eurochip
The quest for the European microchip from the 1980s to the present
The headline “World trade war looms over microchip accord” might recall current commercial disputes around semiconductor supplies. In fact, it appeared in an issue of Nature in February 1987, when the US had signed bilateral agreements with Japan to promote…
April 1, 2023
AnalysisBanks as Hedge Funds?
The failure of Silicon Valley Bank
Silicon Valley Bank’s (SVB) short lifespan—from October 17, 1983 to March 10, 2023—has been witness to crucial transformations in the world of modern banking. The bank’s collapse has sparked wide ranging reflections on the roots of the crisis, the utility…
March 30, 2023
AnalysisThe Imperial Fed
Colonial currencies and the pan-American origins of the dollar system
The Federal Reserve is commonly depicted as an institution set up to fulfill domestic functions, only later taking on its significant international and geopolitical dimensions. This view sees the Fed’s origins in various domestic concerns, such as bankers’ desire to…
Stranded Countries and Stranded Assets
Outsourcing the energy transition to the Gulf
This is the eleventh edition of The Polycrisis newsletter, written by Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay. Subscribe here to get it in your inbox. The US routinely flouts its international climate financing commitments, rarely delivering on its promises. Last year, for example,…
March 16, 2023
AnalysisRed Finance
The wartime communist market experience in China
In terms of its size, dynamism, and degree of global integration, China’s market economy is extraordinary. Though it’s known officially as a “socialist market with Chinese characteristics,” its market features far predate the 1978 decision on “reform and opening.” The…
Profits, Prices, and Power
The first postwar tightening cycle and perspectives on today’s inflation
If they are remembered at all, the 1950s are now thought of as a lost golden age of stable growth and political economic consensus. But the second half of the decade saw rising prices, tightening financial conditions, diminished industrial employment,…
Cash, Cars, Chemicals (and Corn)
Three big decarbonization plots
This is the tenth edition of The Polycrisis newsletter, written by Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay. Subscribe here to get it in your inbox. Decarbonization—reducing the output of invisible CO2 molecules into the atmosphere—requires nothing less than remaking the chemical basis of…
March 3, 2023
AnalysisWall Street Consensus a la Française
Development agendas at the Gabon One Forest Summit
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…
March 1, 2023
AnalysisThe IMF Trap
Debt, austerity, and inequality in Sri Lanka’s historic crisis
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…
Debt and Power in Pakistan
The subcontinent’s embattled debtor isn’t merely the passive victim of the climate crisis— it is being plundered by its elites
The subcontinent’s embattled debtor isn’t merely the passive victim of the climate crisis—it is being plundered by its elites.
February 22, 2023
AnalysisCrisis Response
European Central Bank policy in 2008 and 2020
At the dawn of the newly implemented Eurozone, Lorenzo Bini Smaghi and Daniel Gros argued that three broad issues might present problems for Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Bini Smaghi, then Director for International Affairs at the Italian Treasury,…
Securitizing the Transition
The logic of privatization in climate finance
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 Carbon Triangle
China’s real estate bubble and global emissions
China has ended zero-Covid. The resultant viral tsunami is crashing through China’s cities and countryside, causing hundreds of millions of infections and untold numbers of deaths. The reversal followed widespread protests against lockdown measures. But the protests were not the…
The EU and the IRA
Supply and demand in the great powers’ decarbonization race
This is the eighth edition of The Polycrisis newsletter, written by Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay. Subscribe here to get it in your inbox. At Davos last month, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen announced Brussels’ “Green Deal Industrial…
February 8, 2023
AnalysisThe Long Run
Austerity’s impacts on GDP
Few economic terms over the last few decades have been more influential than “austerity,” invoked by governments and financial institutions as a blanket solution for economic crises, and inspiring intense debate in the public sphere. Austerity, defined by economists as “a…
February 1, 2023
AnalysisUnraveling Dollarization
State-building, accumulation, and debt in post-revolutionary Georgia
The financial crises of the 1990s in Asia, Argentina, and Russia sparked growing interest in the phenomenon of dollarization—the use of a foreign currency to perform national currency function. Dollarization, however, has a history dating back to the nineteenth history.…
January 28, 2023
AnalysisGender and the Great Resignation
Dynamics of gender and class in the Covid-era labor market
The much anticipated “return to normal” after the Covid-19 pandemic has been anything but. In contrast to the aftermath of previous economic crises, workers have not rushed back to work. Each month over a period of nine months in 2021,…
Don’t Say “Scramble for Africa”
Debt and diplomacy on the African continent
Militarized Adaptation
War, energy, and NATO’s new climate framework
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…
January 21, 2023
AnalysisUnmaking Orthodoxies
The reputational limits of central banks
After a decade of low or negative interest rates, central banks are back in the business of fighting inflation. One of the clearest signs of the change in monetary policy stance is the largely synchronized tightening across high-income countries—last year,…
The Dollar and Climate
How US dollar hegemony fuels the climate crisis
The climate crisis offers a new angle from which to evaluate US dollar hegemony, since carbon emissions are tied to economic activity.
Inflation and Energy
Can clean energy reduce inflationary pressures?
This is the sixth edition of The Polycrisis newsletter, written by Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay. Subscribe here to get it in your inbox. There has been little research into the inflationary implications of either climate change itself, or of responses to climate…
January 4, 2023
AnalysisThe Nokia Risk
Small countries, big firms, and the end of the fifth Schumpetarian wave
In the early 2000s, Finland was the darling of industrial and employment policy analysts everywhere. This small country with a population of 5.5 million and a GDP roughly equal to the state of Oregon experienced what looked like a high…
Facts on the Ground
Uncertainty and information in the global energy system
Assessing the crisis The energy system that underpins contemporary life is marked with blindspots. Take the fossil fuel sector. Facing simultaneous existential and geopolitical vulnerability—due to Russia invading Ukraine, advances in renewable energy, and the climate imperative—there is profound uncertainty…
December 20, 2022
AnalysisIndian Big Business
The evolution of India’s corporate sector from 2000 to 2020
“The systemic, long-term nexus between the political elites and big business will not go away anytime soon,” wrote journalist M. K. Venu in 2015. Writing in the aftermath of Obama’s second visit to India, Venu suggested that “crony capitalism” had…
December 17, 2022
AnalysisDroughts and Dams
The troubled future of World Bank-funded hydropower in Zambia
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…
Europe’s “Leap Into the Future”
Do exceptional crisis-fighting policies signal the arrival of an interventionist Europe?
This is the fifth edition of The Polycrisis newsletter, written by Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay. Subscribe here to get it in your inbox. In 2020, as demand for liquefied natural gas boomed in Asia, the shippable fuel was an afterthought in…
Money and the Climate Crisis
COP27 and financing the green transition
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…
December 3, 2022
AnalysisRealignments
Bolsonarismo and Brazil’s shifting middle-class vote
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva may have won last month’s presidential elections, but the strength of Bolsonarismo has been confirmed. In both houses of the National Congress, Bolsonarismo and its allies made gains, overcoming the traditional right wing. In the…
Development Bank Self-Sabotage
What’s stopping MDBs?
This is the fourth edition of The Polycrisis newsletter, written by Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay. Subscribe here to get it in your inbox. When the World Bank and IMF make radical noises, the US is typically the voice of restraint. So…
November 19, 2022
AnalysisThe Wall Street Consensus at COP27
The derisking roll-out at COP27
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…
Collective Action and Climate Finance
Can the COP move markets?
This is the third edition of The Polycrisis newsletter, written by Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay. Subscribe here to get it in your inbox. At UN climate summits, the items that appear on the agenda are usually those that advocates have fought…
November 12, 2022
AnalysisThe Sacrifice Zone
Mining communities in the wake of Chile’s constitutional referendum
In September 2022, 62 percent of Chilean voters rejected the country's proposed new constitution. The defeat took many by surprise—the demands to rewrite the existing charter had been loud and seemingly unanimous. For followers of Chile’s extractive industries, however, the…
A New Non-Alignment
How developing countries are flouting Western sanctions and playing the great powers off each other
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…
Domestic Politics & Planetary Change
Will a Lula victory be better for the climate than anything that happens at COP27?
Will a Lula victory be better for the climate than anything that happens at COP27?
October 26, 2022
AnalysisTown & City
Reading Brazil’s first round election results
Earlier this month, Brazilians went to the polls in an election billed as the most momentous since democratization in 1985. Far-right president Jair Bolsonaro faced off against former two-term president Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva. Though Lula did win the…
An Introduction
An introduction to The Polycrisis
This is the first edition of The Polycrisis newsletter, written by Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay. Subscribe here to get it in your inbox. What crisis? A year ago, one might be forgiven for thinking there was a moment of relative calm…
September 24, 2022
AnalysisAfrica’s Century of Growth?
On Morten Jerven’s The Wealth and Poverty of African States
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…
September 20, 2022
AnalysisThe Finance Gap
Poverty finance from colonial Kenya to microcredit markets
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.…
September 15, 2022
AnalysisTechnocracy and Crisis
Stagnation and technocratic rule in Italy
On September 25, Italians will be called to elect a new Parliament. The snap election follows on the heels of the forced resignation of the government in late July, led by former European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi. That…
August 24, 2022
AnalysisA Permanent Bailout?
Central bank interventions in noncrisis times
The 2008 crisis heralded a new age in central banking. The scale and nature of central bankers’ interventions was unprecedented. Traditionally, as lenders of last resort, central banks lend at escalating rates against good collateral to solvent institutions in times…
August 13, 2022
AnalysisRating Sovereigns
Sovereign ratings in a financialized world
As dark clouds gather on the horizon of the global economy in the third year of the pandemic—with debt stocks swollen, interest costs rising, and growth undermined by energy insecurity and war—policy makers and pundits are anxiously watching sovereign credit…
Pragmatic Prices
An excerpt from How China Escaped Shock Therapy
European and American traditions of economic theorizing on price control are intimately connected with war—practices and debates over price control peaked amid the two world wars. The experience of the First World War had been one of inflation and limited…
July 30, 2022
AnalysisOdious Debts
Iraq, Haiti, and the politics of illegitimate debt
In the aftermath of its 2003 invasion of Iraq, the United States was eager to restructure the ailing country’s sovereign debt. International sanctions since the Gulf War meant that Iraq was economically isolated, yet the country had a large stock…
July 16, 2022
AnalysisDevelopment Engines
NAFTA, electric vehicles, and the evolution of Mexico's auto industry
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…
July 9, 2022
AnalysisA New Labor Regime
The BJP's new labor reforms, the construction industry, and the mounting challenges for India’s trade unions
Since coming to power in 2014, India’s right-wing government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has introduced sweeping reforms aimed at strengthening the union government at the expense of the states, and catering to large corporations over smaller establishments and…
June 29, 2022
AnalysisGeographies in Transition
Mining-based development and the EU's critical raw materials strategy
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…
June 10, 2022
AnalysisLeapfrog Logistics
Digital platforms, infrastructure, and labor in Brazil and China
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,…
May 28, 2022
AnalysisFarmland Assets
International finance and the transformation of Brazil’s agricultural lands
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…
The Price of Oil
The history of control and decontrol in the oil market
In October 2021 the price of gasoline in the United States rose to its highest level in seven years. There were many reasons for this: surging demand following a year-and-a-half of lockdown, a slower than expected recovery of oil production,…
Politics and the Price Level
Inflation and the governance of prices
In 1959, the leaders of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC, now the OECD) appointed a Group of Independent Experts “to study the experience of rising prices” in the recent history of the advanced capitalist countries. Between the end…
May 14, 2022
AnalysisPersisting Paternalisms
The Auxilio Brasil in perspective
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…
May 12, 2022
AnalysisFinancing Schools
America’s kleptocratic public school divide
As the arrival of the pandemic forced schools shut, the Public Schools of Robeson County in North Carolina scrambled to save the rural district’s closed and crumbling buildings. At the same time, they faced the major task of providing education…
May 4, 2022
AnalysisWeimar Themes
Hilferding, Sohn-Rethel, and Hamilton
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has flung the international order into crisis. Understanding the causes of such cataclysms requires understanding not only the interests of states, but also the shape of society—its internal tensions, as well as its material and cultural…
April 30, 2022
AnalysisThe Whole Field
Markets, planning, and coordinating the green transformation
In recent years, an intense debate has unfolded over the policy and politics of the green transition. Politically, the tide appears to be receding: As the Biden agenda has lost momentum and rising inflation moves center stage, the near-term prospects…
April 27, 2022
AnalysisRegime Change?
The evolution and weaponization of the world dollar
The centerpiece of shock and awe of the West’s economic response to Russia’s invasion and bombardment of Ukraine was the freezing of Russia’s central bank assets. In the March 7 edition of his Global Money Dispatch newsletter, the Credit Suisse…
April 15, 2022
AnalysisEconomic War and the Commodity Shock
A discussion on sanctions and global commodity markets
The war in Ukraine has unleashed both geopolitical and economic strife, and nowhere is the latter clearer than in the volatile commodities market. Commodities prices have fluctuated wildly since the Russian invasion began and the US-led coalition retaliated with extraordinary…
April 13, 2022
AnalysisAusterity and Renewables
A new IMF-approved tax regime is crippling Pakistan’s green energy sector
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…
March 23, 2022
AnalysisA New Public Housing Model
Addis Ababa's Urban Transformation
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…
March 9, 2022
AnalysisBargaining Chip?
On the speed and scope of the Russia sanctions, and the prospects for off-ramps
For the global hegemon, pulling the trigger on crisis management seems to consist primarily of posting PDFs to government websites. During the March 2020 financial panic, as the coronavirus first spread throughout the Global North, the Federal Reserve feverishly published…
February 14, 2022
AnalysisEskom, Unbundling, and Decarbonization
The history of South Africa’s state utility and the future of the energy transition
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…
February 11, 2022
AnalysisA New Developmentalism?
On the stages of Argentine developmentalism.
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…
February 3, 2022
AnalysisAcute Dollar Dominance
The dollar system, original sin, and sovereign debt since the pandemic.
In early 2020, the “dash for cash” in the US Treasury market prompted the Fed to relaunch its dollar swap lines, which it eventually did in mid-March of that year. In the aftermath of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC),…
January 12, 2022
AnalysisControlled Prices
The history and politics of price controls and economic management in the United States
In the decades after the Civil War, Andrew Carnegie captured the American steel industry by pushing down prices. So effective was the Scottish-born telegraph operator at reducing costs, breaking cartels, and driving competition into bankruptcy during the downturns of the…
December 23, 2021
AnalysisStop, wait, go
Is Germany's new coalition government a return to the status quo?
The new coalition government in Germany, led by Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, is the first time that the SDP, the Greens, and the Liberals have joined together in a single government. The cooperation agreement, published on November 24, was the…
December 18, 2021
AnalysisHomeownership & the Student Debt Crisis
Rising student debt burdens in the past decade have contributed to a decline in homeownership for young adults.
The benefits of owning a home in the United States cannot be overstated. The housing market in the United States both reflects and causes widening cleavages in American society; owning a home is a functional prerequisite for financial security. The…
December 17, 2021
AnalysisDeath or glory?
New forms of fascism haunt Chile’s presidential election
In October 2019, a proposed thirty peso hike in public transport fares triggered protests in Santiago that spread to other major cities across the country, denouncing the country’s economic infrastructure with the slogan, “It’s not thirty pesos, it’s thirty years.” Chileans…
November 23, 2021
AnalysisTrade and Growth
Revisiting the effects of trade liberalization on economic growth
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…
November 18, 2021
AnalysisThe Wall Street Consensus at COP26
Finance Day at COP26 shows a ruthless dedication to voluntary decarbonization
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…
November 12, 2021
AnalysisGrowth Towns
The Evergrande crisis, “common prosperity,” and the transformation of the Chinese growth model
The ongoing crisis for Chinese property developer Evergrande has made the giant company the focal point of global concern. Creditors, investors, contractors, customers, and employees of Evergrande within and outside China have watched anxiously to see whether the Chinese government would…
November 6, 2021
AnalysisTitans
Tracing the rise and the politics of asset manager capitalism
In mid October 2021, when BlackRock revealed its third quarter results, the asset management behemoth announced it was just shy of $10 trillion in assets under management. It’s a vast sum, “roughly equivalent to the entire global hedge fund, private…
November 4, 2021
AnalysisNegotiations
The Federation of German Industries’ agenda in the formation of the new German federal government
The new German government will be called upon, at a highly critical time for the global and European economy, to draw up a new economic and political strategy not only for Germany but also for the EU/Eurozone. The outcome will…
November 4, 2021
AnalysisManufacturing Stagnation
Intellectual property, industrial organization, and economic growth
$5.3 trillion of US federal government stimulus and relief spending have returned the economy to its pre-Covid growth trajectory. But that growth trajectory was hardly robust—either before or after the 2008 financial crisis. Nor was the slow decay of GDP…
November 2, 2021
AnalysisThe Diverging Gap
The history of the global infrastructure gap
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…
October 30, 2021
AnalysisUneven Channels
Climate diplomacy and the global financial architecture
This year’s Conference of the Parties (COP), opening October 31, is hosted by the United Kingdom, whose agenda-setting privilege as host has made private finance a central focus of the 2021 meeting. The UK ambition to center the City of…
October 19, 2021
AnalysisGas and Labor
The UK‘s petrol shortage is also a labor shortage driven by worsening conditions of work
The United Kingdom is in the midst of a protracted crisis in the supply of petrol. In the face of a plummeting sterling and severe disruptions to essential public services, military tanker drivers have been deployed to transport fuel to…
September 18, 2021
AnalysisDevelopmentalisms
The forgotten ancestors of East Asian developmentalism
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…
How Schools Lie
The deceptive financial aid system at America's colleges.
No matter how talented, hard working, and committed a student is, if financing falls through, the dream of obtaining higher education can be dashed. But much of the financial data that prospective students receive is misleading. In the cost information…
August 24, 2021
AnalysisLegitimacy Gap
A history of central bank independence.
We live in the age of the central bank. The financial crisis of 2008 and the COVID-19 crash of 2020 have made visible the central role of the US Federal Reserve and its overseas counterparts in the international financial system.
August 11, 2021
AnalysisBuilt Trades
Employer claims of unavailable labor are rooted in an unwillingness to raise wages and the long-term decline of the nation’s system of training and allocating labor
As the American economy reopened in the first half of 2021, reports of a “labor shortage” spread throughout US industries. But there was one sector where employer panic about hiring was old news: the massive and decentralized US construction industry.
July 20, 2021
AnalysisPath Persistence
Global trade hierarchies across two eras of globalization
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…
July 2, 2021
AnalysisRepressing Labor, Empowering China
Cheap money will boost inequality and geopolitical tension but not inflation
Though the lockdown in 2020 threw many workers out of work, the big fiscal stimulus, fueled by government debt and an unprecedentedly large monetary expansion, offered stimulus checks and elevated unemployment benefits to millions of Americans.
June 24, 2021
AnalysisPreferred Shares
Inflation, wages, and the fifty-year crisis
In one of her first statements as Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen said that the United States faced “an economic crisis that has been building for fifty years.” The formulation is intriguing but enigmatic. The last half-century is piled so high…
Hysteresis & Student Debt
How the Great Recession fueled the student debt crisis.
The geographic character of the Great Recession of 2008–2009 is, by this point, well-known. While everywhere in the United States experienced a sharp increase in unemployment, some areas suffered disproportionate exposure to subprime mortgages and the consequent bursting of the…
June 8, 2021
AnalysisThe Crisis Canal
Trade, bond markets, Suez, and the Ever Given.
Why did the Ever Given capture our collective imaginations? At the end of its week in the spotlight, the poet Kamran Javadizadeh wrote: “I too am ‘partially refloated,’ I too remain stuck in the Suez Canal.” Two fluorescent yellow-vested construction…
May 13, 2021
AnalysisInvestment and Decarbonization: Rating Green Finance
A proposal for a public ratings agency for green finance
The Biden administration has committed the United States to cutting its carbon emissions in half by 2030 and achieving net zero emissions by 2050.
April 28, 2021
AnalysisReconstruction Finance
Popular politics and reconstructing the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.
Like the world system as a whole, segregated cities in the United States have their own finance driven core-periphery dynamics.
April 6, 2021
AnalysisRisks and Crises
On market makers and risk managers post-2008.
For a long time, Bagehot’s rule, “lend freely, against good collateral, but at a high rate,” restored the Fed’s control over the money market and helped end banking panics and systemic banking crises. This control evaporated on September 15, 2008,…
Democracy or the Market
Third wayism and the problem of representation.
The problem of democratic representation has always turned on the question of the “have-nots”—that is, not only those without wealth and property, but also those marginalized on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, origin, religion and education. Even in a…
Revolution, Reform, and Resignation
In the 1980s, the left abandoned its language of transformation. Can it be regained?
Some time in 1991 I was invited to give a talk to the Andalusian Confederation of the Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party (PSOE). Afterwards, the secretary of the confederation walked me back to my hotel. I asked him why there was…
François Mitterrand’s Austerity Turn
The rise and fall of the French Road to socialism.
The history of French socialism is filled with famous and heroic dates: 1789; 1848; 1871 1936; 1968. But less well remembered is another date of great significance: 1981. It was in May of that year that the French left achieved…
Transitions
Four voices on Spain's transition from the Franco dictatorship to parliamentary monarchy — and what didn't change.
It’s been some time since the term “transition” was fully incorporated into day-to-day usage in contemporary Spanish. It refers to the process of political change that began during the second half of the 1970s, a process which transformed Spain from…
The Italian Left After Keynesianism
From stagflation to the transformation of Italian left parties.
In 1977, Eric Hobsbawm published a book of interviews with Giorgio Napolitano, a leading figure in the Italian Communist Party (PCI)’s gradualist wing, the miglioristi. Hobsbawm proclaimed himself a “spiritual member” of the PCI and intended this book to depict…
January 22, 2021
AnalysisInflation, Specific and General
The many causes and effects of inflation.
Concerns over a generalized “inflation” loom in the recovery. Yet the prices that most heavily factor into the cost of living for US workers—housing, health, and education—have already been rising for decades. The question we should be asking is whether…
January 16, 2021
AnalysisSupercomputer
The Control Data Corporation and global value chains.
In March 1976, Deputy Secretary of the Department of Defense (DOD), William “Bill” Clements invited William “Bill” C. Norris, CEO and Chairman of the supercomputer producer Control Data Corporation (CDC) to a closed-door meeting at the Pentagon.
January 9, 2021
AnalysisThe Deflationary Bloc
Hyman Minsky and the politics of inflation
An effective way to write the history of the last thirty years of the twentieth century,” economist Albert Hirschman wrote in 1985, “may well be to focus on the distinctive reactions of various countries to the identical issue of worldwide…
The Student Debt Crisis is a Crisis of Non-Repayment
Borrowers are increasingly unable to pay down their student loans, leading to mounting balances and an intensifying debt crisis.
Think of the student debt crisis as an overflowing bathtub. On the one hand, too much water is pouring in: more borrowers are taking on more debt. That is thanks to increased demand for higher education in the face of…
October 16, 2020
AnalysisData as Property?
On the problems of propertarian and dignitarian approaches to data governance.
Since the proliferation of the World Wide Web in the 1990s, critics of widely used internet communications services have warned of the misuse of personal data. Alongside familiar concerns regarding user privacy and state surveillance, a now-decades-long thread connects a…
October 1, 2020
AnalysisA Popular History of the Fed
On Populist programs and democratic central banking.
Since Lehman collapsed in 2008, central banks have broken free of historical norms, channelling trillions into the banking system to prop up global finance and the savings of depositors from Germany to Hong Kong. The corona crash has only accelerated…
September 25, 2020
AnalysisDirect Effects
How should we measure racial discrimination?
A 2018 National Academy of Sciences report on American policing begins its section on racial bias by noting the abundance of scholarship that records disparities in the criminal justice system. But shortly thereafter, the authors make a strange clarification: “In…
Unceasing Debt, Disparate Burdens: Student Debt and Young America
JFI’s interactive map presents the geography of student debt.
Since the Great Recession, outstanding student loan debt in the United States has increased by 122% in 2019 dollars, reaching the staggering sum of $1.66 trillion in June of this year. Student loan debt has grown faster than other debt…
September 5, 2020
AnalysisHot Oil
Gardiner Means, administered prices, and why the Texas Railroad Commission should regulate oil production again.
Even at the depth of the Great Depression, oil producers were always paid a positive price for their product. But on April 20 of this year the price of West Texas Intermediate oil traded for negative prices, reaching a record…
August 15, 2020
AnalysisAnother Lost Decade?
The systemic character of the global periphery debt crisis.
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…
July 27, 2020
AnalysisEssential Infrastructures
The case for sovereign investment in telecommunications infrastructure
How should the fabric of social life, especially as it is rewoven by the pandemic, relate to the private ownership of telecommunications?
July 22, 2020
AnalysisLaws of the Land
Property rights and extraction in the mineral frontier
“The Mining Law of 1872,” reported California Democrat Alan Lowenthal in May 2019, "is one of the most obsolete laws still on the books.”
July 16, 2020
AnalysisThe Dollar and Empire
How the US dollar shapes geopolitical power
What does the US dollar’s continued dominance in the global monetary and financial systems mean for geo-economic and geo-political power?
July 10, 2020
AnalysisThe Crisis and the Free Market
On crisis, partisanship, and public policy
Will the current crisis transform America’s politics and economic institutions? With unemployment higher than at any point since the Great Depression, rising food insecurity, and an increasingly muscular role for government—are we witnessing the beginning of the end of the…
July 3, 2020
AnalysisPandemic and Poverty
What the pandemic teaches us about poverty measurements
Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States, more than 40 million people have applied for unemployment benefits.
Mapping concentration and prices in the US higher education industry During and after the Great Recession, public funding for higher education was slashed as part of state budget austerity. Staff and programs were cut and tuition rose; in many states,…
May 28, 2020
AnalysisDigital Scab, Digital Snitch
On automation and worker surveillance
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.
May 1, 2020
AnalysisThe Class Politics of the Dollar System
Managing an international public good
The global dollar system has few national winners. The typical frame for understanding the US dollar is that of “exorbitant privilege.”
April 17, 2020
AnalysisInside Out
Shaping the base of a renewable economy
The transition to a post-carbon energy economy will require extraction.
April 3, 2020
AnalysisCrisis and Recovery
The underlying problems in the US economy
Today’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report hardly registers the cataclysm in the US job market. The sharp 0.9 percent uptick in unemployment—itself newsworthy—only grasps the very beginnings of the shutdown of the American economy.
March 25, 2020
AnalysisThe First Services Recession
The shape of the Covid-19 recession
It is hard to see how the United States can avoid a recession. Unemployment insurance claims have already surged, and this week's numbers look to be in the millions.
February 27, 2020
AnalysisThe Economics of Race
On the neoclassical and stratification theories of race
Black America has had less wealth, less income, less education, and poorer health than white America for as long as records have been kept.
February 6, 2020
AnalysisDecision Making in a Dynamic World
Exploring the limits of Expected Utility
I once wrote a post criticizing modern microeconomic models as both overly complex and unrealistic, leading their practitioners into theoretical dead ends without much corresponding increase in explanatory power. I suggested the entire enterprise of Expected Utility (EU) was a…
January 30, 2020
AnalysisThe Long History of Algorithmic Fairness
Fair algorithms from the seventeenth century to the present
As national and regional governments form expert commissions to regulate “automated decision-making,” a new corporate-sponsored field of research proposes to formalize the elusive ideal of “fairness” as a mathematical property of algorithms and especially of their outputs.
January 23, 2020
AnalysisWhat Would a UBI Fund?
Lessons from the 1970s experiments in guaranteed income
One of the questions at the heart of contemporary debates over the merits of UBI is ‘what would it fund?’ In other words, what type of activities would it encourage? There are of course the widely debunked quibbles about guaranteed…
January 17, 2020
AnalysisUBI & the City
A new working paper models the effects of a basic income in New York City
Skeptics of guaranteed income tend to worry about the policy’s inflationary effects; absent rent regulation, for instance, one might expect housing costs to rise in proportion to the increase in disposable income generated by the policy.
January 16, 2020
AnalysisMacro Modeling in the Age of Inequality
On incorporating distributional concerns into macroeconomic models
Recent years have seen the revival of academic conversation around rising wealth inequality and its distributional consequences. But while applied, microeconomics-oriented fields like public and labor economics have long engaged with questions around inequality, macroeconomics has historically paid less attention…
Mapping market concentration in the higher education industry In much of the existing higher education literature, “college access” is understood in terms of pre-college educational attainment, social and informational networks, and financial capacity, both for tuition and living expenses. The…
November 22, 2019
AnalysisDevelopment and Displacement
The effects of big development initiatives
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.
November 7, 2019
AnalysisCollective Ownership in the Green New Deal
What rural electrification can teach us about a just transition
This year, we once again shattered the record for atmospheric carbon concentration, and witnessed a series of devastating setbacks in US climate policy—from attempts to waive state protections against pipelines to wholesale attacks on climate science.
October 17, 2019
AnalysisDisparate Causes, pt. II
On the hunt for the correct counterfactual
An accurate understanding of the nature of race in our society is a prerequisite for an adequate normative theory of discrimination.
October 11, 2019
AnalysisDisparate Causes, pt. I
The shortcomings of causal and counterfactual thinking about racial discrimination
Legal claims of disparate impact discrimination go something like this: A company uses some system (e.g., hiring test, performance review, risk assessment tool) in a way that impacts people. Somebody sues, arguing that it has a disproportionate adverse effect on…
September 12, 2019
AnalysisMoney Parables
Three competing theories of money
In the past year, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has shifted the policy debate in a way that few heterodox schools of economic thought have in recent memory.
August 23, 2019
AnalysisStatistical prediction is increasingly pervasive in our lives. Can it be fair? The Allegheny Family Screening Tool is a computer program that predicts whether a child will later have to be placed into foster care. It's been used in Allegheny…
August 1, 2019
AnalysisDecentralize What?
Can you fix political problems with new web infrastructures?
The internet's early proliferation was steeped in cyber-utopian ideals. The circumvention of censorship and gatekeeping, digital public squares, direct democracy, revitalized civic engagement, the “global village”—these were all anticipated characteristics of the internet age, premised on the notion that digital…
July 18, 2019
AnalysisStudent Debt & Racial Wealth Inequality
How student debt cancellation affects the racial wealth gap
The effect of cancelling student debt on various measures of individual and group-level inequality has been a matter of controversy, especially given presidential candidates’ recent and high-profile proposals to eliminate outstanding student debt.
July 3, 2019
AnalysisThe Politics of Machine Learning, pt. II
The uses of algorithms discussed in the first part of this article vary widely: from hiring decisions to bail assignment, to political campaigns and military intelligence.
Across all these applications of machine learning methods, there is a common thread: Data on individuals is used to treat different individuals differently. In the past, broadly speaking, such commercial and government activities used to target everyone in a given…
June 27, 2019
AnalysisThe Politics of Machine Learning, pt. I
On prediction, profits, votes, and militarism.
Terminology like "machine learning," "artificial intelligence," "deep learning," and "neural nets" is pervasive: business, universities, intelligence agencies, and political parties are all anxious to maintain an edge over the use of these technologies.
May 31, 2019
AnalysisCopyright Humanism
It's by now common wisdom that American copyright law is burdensome, excessive, and failing to promote the ideals that protection ought to.
It's by now common wisdom that American copyright law is burdensome, excessive, and failing to promote the ideals that protection ought to. Too many things, critics argue, are subject to copyright protections, and the result is an inefficient legal morass…
March 28, 2019
AnalysisExperiments for Policy Choice
If we wish to pick good policies, we should run experiments adaptively
Randomized experiments have become part of the standard toolkit for policy evaluation, and are usually designed to give precise estimates of causal effects. But, in practice, their actual goal is to pick good policies. These two goals are not the…
March 22, 2019
AnalysisThe Emerging Monopsony Consensus
On the theory of monopsony
Early on in The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith asked who had the edge in negotiations between bosses and wage laborers. His answer: the bosses. In the case of a stalemate, landlords and manufacturers “could generally live a year or…
March 19, 2019
AnalysisIdeology in AP Economics
Uncovering the ideology embedded in economics
When the media talks about ideological indoctrination in education, it is usually assumed to refer to liberal arts professors pushing their liberal agenda. Less discussed is the very different strain of ideology found in economics.
March 1, 2019
AnalysisThe Case for an Unconditional Safety Net
The 'magic bucket' of universal cash transfers
Imagine a system where everyone had a right to basic material safety, and could say “no” to abuse and exploitation. Sounds utopian? I argue that it would be quite feasible to get there, and that it would make eminent economic,…
January 24, 2019
AnalysisWhy Rational People Polarize
Explanations of political polarization
U.S. politics is beset by increasing polarization. Ideological clustering is common; partisan antipathy is increasing; extremity is becoming the norm (Dimock et al. 2014). This poses a serious collective problem. Why is it happening?
November 9, 2018
AnalysisBanking with Imprecision
How medieval financiers lent in the age of uncertainty
In 1596, Spanish troops under the leadership of the Duke of Medina-Sidonia set fire to their own ships in the waters near Cadiz. The sinking of these thirty-two vessels was a tactical necessity: a joint Anglo-Dutch navy had annihilated the…
October 18, 2018
AnalysisMachine Ethics, Part One: An Introduction and a Case Study
Artificial intelligence, ethics, and public health social work
The past few years have made abundantly clear that the artificially intelligent systems that organizations increasingly rely on to make important decisions can exhibit morally problematic behavior if not properly designed.
October 10, 2018
AnalysisWho cares about stopping rules?
Can you bias a coin?
Take a coin out of your pocket. Unless you own some exotic currency, your coin is fair: it's equally likely to land heads as tails when flipped.
October 2, 2018
AnalysisThe “Next Big Thing” is a Room
New realities in Dynamicland
If you don’t look up, Dynamicland seems like a normal room on the second floor of an ordinary building in downtown Oakland. There are tables and chairs, couches and carpets, scattered office supplies, and pictures taped up on the walls.…
October 1, 2018
AnalysisPhenomenal World is a new publication that distributes research, analysis, and commentary on applied social science. We chose this name for our blog because we hope to publish work that addresses the social world in all its apparent complexity. Our…