November 1, 2024
InterviewsWhere Americans Work
An interview with Gabriel Winant on the care economy in the 2024 election
Healthcare and education are two of the most important sectors of the US economy. Together they comprise over $8.44 trillion in annual expenditure. When including the $1 trillion-plus health insurance industry, these three industries of private education and healthcare, public…
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 5, 2024
SourcesPakistan and India are in a tit-for-tat trade dispute over rice exports, each matching the other's moves by withdrawing minimum export prices on rice products. Prime Minister Modi—caught between the needs of rural farmers and domestic consumers—had until recently curbed rice exports as…
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…
October 3, 2024
ReviewsBack to the ’90s
On Ganz’s “When the Clock Broke” and Lichtenstein and Stein’s “A Fabulous Failure”
New accounts of the 1990s locate the origins of today’s politics not in the accommodations and defeats faced by labor and liberals in the 1970s and 1980s, but in the unfinished struggle that defined federal policy in the Clinton years…
September 28, 2024
SourcesIn a series of INET-sponsored working papers written between 2015–2018, economists Peter Temin, Servaas Storm, and Lance Taylor took W. Arthur Lewis’s dual economy theory of development (which describes split labor markets between rural and urban sectors characteristic to developing countries) and reapplied it…
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 21, 2024
SourcesOn Thursday, a new multilateral treaty signed at OECD will allow early implementation of a global minimum tax rule for cross-border payments, as part of the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS). The framework is meant to update…
September 18, 2024
InterviewsPetro-Politics
An interview with César Loza, President of la Unión Sindical Obrera, representing Colombia’s oil and gas workers
In his bid to transform Colombia into a global leader of the green transition, President Gustavo Petro announced in 2023 that the country would stop signing new contracts for oil and gas exploration. Though celebrated by environmental advocates, the announcement…
September 14, 2024
SourcesIn July, UN Trade and Development released their Digital Economy Report 2024, which gives special attention to the intersection between environmental sustainability and production within the rapidly evolving digital economy. The report recommends "a more circular digital economy that would seek to reduce, reuse…
September 12, 2024
InterviewsIn the West Bank
An interview with Fathi Nimer
On August 28, Israel launched its largest military assault on the West Bank since the Second Intifada more than two decades ago. Targeting Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas—three cities in the north of the territory—“Operation Summer Camps” has killed thirty-nine Palestinians.…
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 7, 2024
SourcesA recent brief by the Penn Wharton Budget Model estimates that the Harris Campaign's tax and spending proposals would increase primary deficits by $1.2–2 trillion over the next ten years. While Vice President Harris's cost-of-living platform remains ambiguous, and Trump's disruptive policy proposals…
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…
August 31, 2024
SourcesRestrictions on the consumption of products associated with deforestation have been implemented by private companies via zero deforestation commitments (ZDCs), and have been adopted by developing countries for the incentive of result-based financing through REDD+. As of December 2024, the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) in…
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 21, 2024
InterviewsThe Nakba and the Law
An interview with Rabea Eghbariah
In the international legal system, the Palestinian cause has made significant headway since the start of the war in Gaza. In addition to legal processes that have arisen from Israel’s conduct in the war itself—it stands formally accused of genocide…
August 16, 2024
InterviewsCoalition Rule
An interview with Rahul Verma on Modi’s third term
India’s Lok Sabha elections in June ended a decade of single-party majority-rule for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). With the BJP winning 240 seats, down from the 303 they won in 2019 and short of the 273…
August 15, 2024
ReviewsWho Benefits From Sanctions?
On “How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare” by Narges Bajoghli, Vali Nasr, Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, and Ali Vaez
Sanctions against Iran amount to some of the harshest and longest-running restrictions in the world. Dating back to the 1979 revolution that overthrew one of America’s closest allies in the region, early sanctions imposed primarily by the US froze Iranian…
August 15, 2024
InterviewsSelling American Bombs
An interview with Sarah Harrison on the mechanics of US foreign military sales
Martin Luther King once called the United States government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” That formulation may be controversial, but no one denies that the US is by far the world’s biggest arms dealer, with a 42…
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…
August 1, 2024
InterviewsHaiti’s Long Struggle
Military occupation, gang violence, and popular uprising
In October 2023, the United Nations Security Council voted to “authorize the deployment of a multinational security support, headed by Kenya.” While Russia and China abstained, they too condemned “the increasing violence, criminal activities, and human rights abuses and violations…
August 1, 2024
InterviewsClass and Commodities
An interview with Salomón Kalmanovitz
Few economists in the course of Colombian economic history have matched the influence of Salomón Kalmanovitz, who has played a key role in the professionalization of the discipline since the 1970s, when he returned from the United States to teach…
July 24, 2024
InterviewsThe Buffer Zone
An interview with Nicholas Noe
Since Hamas launched its attack on southern Israel on October 7, the question of deterrence has loomed over the region: who holds it, what does it consist of, and how will the balance of forces tilt or not tilt towards…
July 20, 2024
SourcesPromising economic prosperity, president-elect Masoud Pezeshkian won the Iranian election on a reformist platform oriented toward improving economic relations with the West, a departure from a period of conservative dominance led by the late president Ebrahim Raisi. As part of his campaign, Pezeshkian recruited Mohammad Javad…
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 13, 2024
SourcesBecause of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor's (CPEC) passage through the long-disputed Kashmir region, India has boycotted three consecutive Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) summits. The Indian-occupied territory of Jammu and Kasmir (J&K) remains one of the most militarized zones in the world.
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 29, 2024
SourcesIn an attempted coup, an irregular deployment of troops led by General Juan José Zuñiga stormed the presidential palace in Bolivia on Wednesday night, only to retreat three hours later. The following day, supporters gathered around President Luis Arce, whose popularity has plunged amid an economic crisis and deepening tensions…
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 27, 2024
InterviewsSupermarket Economics
An interview with John Marshall of the United Food and Commercial Workers, Locals 324 & 3000
Behind the retail grocery industry’s image of public routine churns an incredible and evolving feat of collective enterprise. The companies that own and operate grocery stores serve as the primary source of food for the country’s 130 million households. Employing…
June 22, 2024
SourcesIn the wake of several countries unilaterally recognizing Palestine, Israel's extremist Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich has promised to strengthen Jewish settlements in the West Bank and is considering further sanctions against the Palestinian Authority for attempting to bring about the formal recognition of Palestinian statehood. The…
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 15, 2024
SourcesThe far right's gains in the European Parliamentary elections reflect a weakening of partisan attachments and a strengthening of populist sentiments in Europe. Most notably, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National became one of the chamber’s largest delegations, leading President Emmanuel Macron to dissolve parliament and call for…
June 13, 2024
InterviewsMarket Ideologies
The Soviet Union and the fall of Bretton Woods
The Soviet Union’s construction of pipelines across Western Europe granted the superpower access to European markets—and capital. In his new book, The Soviet Union and the Construction of the Global Market, Oscar Sanchez-Sibony demonstrates how this move challenged American dominance…
June 8, 2024
SourcesClaudia Sheinbaum's ascension to the Presidency, Morena's rising majority in congress, and the party's expansion in local governance occasions the possibility of major constitutional reforms and has left international investors concerned about a less business-friendly environment in Mexico. Outgoing president AMLO's social programs, cash transfers, pro-worker reforms, and…
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…
June 1, 2024
SourcesLast Friday, a massive landslide occurred in the Enga province of Papua New Guinea, killing over 2,000 people and blocking access to the Porgera Gold Mine, which has been able to continue operating without restrictions due to an on-site fuel stockpile. A tectonically volatile…
The Structure of the US Treasury Market
An interview with Mohsen Fahmi
In the following interview, seasoned fixed-income portfolio manager Mohsen Fahmi questions this assumption. Fahmi is a veteran multi-asset fund manager with extensive experience managing fixed-income funds, including PIMCO Dynamic Bond, PIMCO GIS Dynamic Bond, and PIMCO Multi-Strategy Alternative Fund. After…
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 25, 2024
SourcesIn February, Chinese regulators took disciplinary action against Shanghai Weiwan Fund Management for using high-frequency trading (HFT) in stock futures to circumvent transaction limits. And this week, British regulators fined Citi Bank for improperly implementing algorithmic trading in 2022. Analysts have linked HFT practices to flash…
May 23, 2024
InterviewsPositioning Aden
Gregory Brew and Kaleb Demerew on oil and the Red Sea
Prior to October 2023, about a seventh of global maritime trade passed through the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea to and from the Suez Canal. As a result of attacks by Houthi fighters on commercial ocean freight traveling…
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
SourcesOn May 13, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved Order No. 1920, the most comprehensive overhaul to electric transmission policy in over a decade. The new rule adopts requirements for transmission operators to conduct long-term transmission planning over a 20-year time horizon and includes a provision…
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 16, 2024
InterviewsThe Techno-Patrimonial Welfare State
An interview with Yamini Aiyar on the BJP’s “new welfarism” in India
The success of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the last decade of Indian politics, and its frontrunner status in this year’s parliamentary elections, has often been attributed to its welfare policies. The rise of Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT)—whereby beneficiaries…
May 11, 2024
SourcesLast Thursday, Exxon completed its $60 billion acquisition of Pioneer Natural Resources, thereby becoming the largest shale oil producer in the Permian basin. The FTC has approved the merger on the condition that Pioneer CEO Scott Sheffield be banned from joining Exxon’s board due to alleged collusive…
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 4, 2024
SourcesIn the past month, students have occupied 142 universities across the world to demand an academic boycott and divestment from companies and institutions that profit from the Israeli occupation of Palestine. More than 2,000 protesters have been arrested across US campuses.
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 27, 2024
SourcesOn Wednesday, Prabowo Subtiano was officially declared the winner of Indonesia’s 2024 election. The former defense minister has promised to continue the legacy of President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo, with an agenda that includes industrial downstreaming, infrastructure development, and "good neighbor" policies with both the US and China.
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
InterviewsA Progressive Tax Reform?
An interview with José Antonio Ocampo, Colombia’s former Minister of Finance
In 2022, Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first left-wing president of the twenty-first century, emerged victorious alongside a coalition of liberal ministers experienced in the public sector and academia. One key figure in this coalition was José Antonio Ocampo, an academic with…
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 20, 2024
SourcesOn April 11, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida attended the first trilateral summit between Japan, the United States, and the Philippines. Kishida promised to double Japan's defense outlay to 2% of GDP by 2027, making its military budget the world's third largest, behind only the United States and China.
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 13, 2024
SourcesLast week, the EPA announced eight awardees who will receive funding under the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), a $27 billion financing program established in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. The GGRF aims to bring private investment toward low- to zero-emission projects in communities…
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 10, 2024
EventsProfit and Power
An event with Brett Christophers, Kyle Chan, Melanie Brusseler, and Robinson Meyer.
On April 23, 2024, join us for a discussion on profits, prices, and the green energy transition, on the occasion of Brett Christophers’s new book The Price Is Wrong, featuring: Register here.
April 6, 2024
SourcesUpon entering office in December, Argentina's President Javier Milei has attempted a "shock" adjustment—devaluing the peso by more than 50 percent against the dollar in order to reduce the country's trade deficit. The move has increased consumer prices and dramatically reduced real incomes, unleashing social…
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 5, 2024
EventsTwo Discussions in São Paulo
Inaugurating PW’s expansion in Latin America with Minister of Finance Fernando Haddad and historian Adam Tooze
To inaugurate the editorial and geographic expansion of PW’s work in Latin America, we hosted two panel discussions looking at Brazil’s position within the global system and the near-term prospects and obstacles for transformative economic policy in the country. Panel…
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 30, 2024
SourcesAs the Lula administration tries to balance spending with fiscal rules compliance, some investors have cast doubt on the government's target of erasing Brazil's primary fiscal deficit by next year.
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 23, 2024
SourcesIn January, Haiti paid Venezuela $500 million to settle $2.3 billion in arrears from PetroCaribe loans. Between 2005 and 2014, PetroCaribe became the largest single source of concessional finance to Caribbean countries, more than doubling US foreign assistance to the region.
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…
March 16, 2024
SourcesOn March 6, Egypt agreed to float its currency in exchange for a $5 billion increase in its current loan program with the IMF. It remains to be seen how long the Egyptian pound may remain flexible, as the inflationary effects of a devalued currency…
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 9, 2024
SourcesLast year, the Brazilian senate enshrined the controversial Milestone Thesis (marco temporal) into law, whereby indigenous groups can only make land claims on territories they occupied before October 1988. The new legislation opens the door to road-building, dam construction, and mining activities in indigenous…
March 7, 2024
InterviewsPetrobras in Transition
An interview with Cibele Vieira of the Oil Workers’ Federation of Brazil
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…
March 2, 2024
SourcesThe CHIPS and Science Act aspires to draw the manufacturing of US leading technologies back into domestic supply chains. Speaking on the policy's implementation, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo stated earlier this week that the US is on track to manufacture 20 percent of leading-edge logic chips…
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
SourcesIn light of Israel’s assault on Gaza post-October 7 and growing instability in the region, S&P Global and Moody’s have both downgraded Israel's credit rating to "negative." Israeli finance minister and extremist settler Bezalel Smotrich called the revisions "alarmist" and politically motivated.
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 17, 2024
SourcesOn Thursday, a few months ahead of nationwide elections, India's Supreme Court banned electoral bonds—anonymous political donations sold by the State Bank of India. Since the Modi government introduced electoral bonds in 2017, more than $1.9 billion in secret donations have been distributed to political parties.
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…
February 10, 2024
SourcesThe inflation slowdown in the United States stabilized in the last half of 2023 at approximately 3.1 percent. A January report by Liz Pancotti and Lindsay Owens of Groundwork Collaborative attributes most of the rise in prices during the last quarter to corporate profits.
February 10, 2024
InterviewsMilei and the World
An interview with Maia Colodenco on Argentina’s foreign policy
It didn’t take long for the new President of Argentina, Javier Milei, to don gloves in the international arena and showcase his libertarian approach to foreign policy. Some political gestures have already stirred conflicts with Brazil and China—the country’s two…
February 3, 2024
SourcesNew data released by China's General Administration of Customs in January provides insight into China's economic relationship with Latin America and the Caribbean. Since the pandemic, China has substantially recalibrated its direct investment, moving away from large-scale infrastructural projects associated with the Belt…
January 27, 2024
SourcesOn Monday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Ram temple in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, marking a triumph for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and far-right Hindu groups including the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The temple was built on the…
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…
Brand New India
An interview with Ravinder Kaur on the BJP’s “India Shining” campaign, Hindu nationalist designs, and globalist visions
With India headed to elections this April, the ruling BJP is rolling out enormous publicity campaigns to promote its record on economic growth and Hindu nationalism. Central to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s third bid for reelection is the narrative that…
January 20, 2024
SourcesBecause of their ability to own property, enter into contracts, and stand in court independently of their owners, charted corporations facilitated the long term capital commitment that often underpinned industrialization. Standard accounts hold that states primarily contributed to the rise of the corporate form…
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 13, 2024
SourcesThis week, arguments were presented in South Africa's proceedings against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The landmark case, whose initial results will not be clear for weeks, has placed international law and its voluntary institutions at the…
January 13, 2024
ReviewsMoralizing Money
On Jakob Feinig’s “Moral Economies of Money”
Since 2021, inflation has featured as among the most salient issues in American public discourse, with voters actively awaiting pronouncements from the Federal Reserve. Inflation mattered in the 2022 midterm elections, and it looms large over the 2024 presidential election.…
January 6, 2024
SourcesHouthi-led attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea have caused major disruptions in maritime trade. With land-locked Ethiopia also recently signing an agreement with Somaliland to gain Red Sea access, the trade route is now the site of multiple geopolitical conflicts.
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…
January 4, 2024
ReviewsThe Logic of Austerity
On Clara Mattei’s “The Capital Order”
In the aftermath of 2008, the pace at which capitalist states moved from bailouts and stimulus policies to fiscal belt tightening was jarring. No less striking was the shift in the intellectual framework deployed to make sense of it. While …
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 20, 2023
InterviewsPetro at COP28
An interview with Manuel Rodríguez Becerra
Upon entering office in July 2022, Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro voiced a strong stance against fossil fuels, marking a contrast with other left-wing leaders in Latin America who rose to power through resources gained from extractive economies. Petro’s emphatic critique…
December 17, 2023
SourcesIn 2023, Phenomenal World sparked discussion across urgent issues of political economy, investigating the IMF, debt, and the dollar; the future of industrial policy in the global South; legacies of the left in Latin America; crucial elections around the world, and more.
Governing the Climate
An interview with Navroz Dubash on COP28, the history of international climate diplomacy, and the developmentalist turn in climate politics
An interview with Navroz Dubash on COP28, the history of international climate diplomacy, and the developmentalist turn in climate politics
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 13, 2023
InterviewsMilei’s Argentina
An interview with Mercedes D’Alessandro
On December 10, the fortieth anniversary of Argentina’s redemocratization, Javier Milei was sworn in as the country’s new president. Milei—a far-right economist who calls himself an “anarcho-capitalist,” denies the existence of the military dictatorship, and claims to be a fan…
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 9, 2023
SourcesThe global energy transition and the specter of AI have led to predictions of massive changes to the global social and economic system—fundamental transformations of production, employment, and governance.
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…
December 2, 2023
SourcesIn September, Azerbaijan launched a military attack on Nagorno-Karabakh. The majority ethnic Armenian enclave inside Azerbaijani borders has been the site of territorial disputes since its creation within the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic in 1923. But the latest conflagration resulted in a ceasefire whose…
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 25, 2023
Sourceselection, defeating Sergio Massa of the incumbent Unión por la Patria (UP) coalition. UP has its roots in Peronism, a traditionally left-wing political movement founded by Juan Perón in the 1940s.
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 18, 2023
InterviewsRules of Restraint
Fiscal politics in Brazil, Germany, and the European Union
The majority of countries in the world have some sort of fiscal rule: an institutional constraint on fiscal policies to discourage government overspending and reduce political influence on state expenditure. But these rules have their own politics. As Clara Zanon…
November 18, 2023
SourcesIsrael, Egypt, and Jordan are among the world's largest recipients of US foreign aid. Last month, President Joe Biden requested an additional $14.3 billion in assistance to Israel in the context of the war in Gaza. In 2023, Jordan received a total of $1.65 billion in…
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…
November 11, 2023
SourcesOn Nov 7, Portugal's Prime Minister António Costa, of the Socialist Party, resigned as state prosecutors launched an investigation into alleged corruption and "influence peddling" in the context of hydrogen and lithium projects.
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…
Swap Structure
An interview with Ralph Axel
Have interest rate swaps become the modern repos? In the latest essay in the ongoing series on Market Microstructures, I argue that shifts in the liquidity market have fundamentally altered the function of interest rate swaps (IRS) in the global…
November 4, 2023
SourcesAfter six weeks of sit-down strikes, the United Auto Workers (UAW) has reached tentative contract agreements with each of the Big Three automakers: Ford, Stellantis, and General Motors. Many of the wage tiers the Big Three installed over a decade ago to reduce labor…
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
SourcesDriven by urbanization, increased consumption, and rising populations, the global waste and recycling market grew to $57.69 billion last year. Plastic, electronic, and iron waste are among major commodities traded, often from developed to developing countries.
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…
Oil and Politics in the Mid-Transition
A discussion on the geopolitics of a transitioning global energy system
A world with terminally declining oil demand has never been experienced before, but the growth era for fossil fuels is ending, as many producers, investors and forecasters are acknowledging. This does not put climate goals in close reach, as CO2…
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
SourcesFollowing a violent attack by Hamas on October 7, the Israeli state has laid siege to the Gaza Strip: thousand of bombs have been dropped, electricity has been cut, and food, water, and fuel supplies are running dangerously low. Over 3,785 Palestinians and 1,400 Israelis have been…
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
SourcesEvolving property regimes, labor market structures, and waves of financialization have transformed agriculture in the global South. In recent Phenomenal World essays, authors reveal the different forms by which agriculture is shaped by state policies and increasingly subordinated to global capital markets.
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
SourcesRemittances, which surpass half a trillion dollars globally, can dramatically shape recipient economies. India alone received almost $100 billion in remittances in 2022, and the state of Kerala in particular has undergone major shifts as a result of these financial flows.
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 30, 2023
SourcesJoan Robinson (1903-1983), who worked in an era when few women economists were respected in the academy, was a pioneering theorist of capitalism. She rejected the neoclassical notion that just wages were naturally determined through competition among workers and capitalists, instead arguing that monopsonies—a single buyer enforcing…
September 30, 2023
InterviewsMarketing War
An interview with Magdi el Gizouli
Sudan’s ongoing war between two military formations—the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces—has killed thousands and displaced millions. The current crisis follows years of political upheaval across the country. In late 2018, mass protests calling for democratic rule…
September 23, 2023
SourcesThe tenth year of China's Belt and Road Initiative will be marked in Beijing at next month's Belt and Road Initiative Forum. Often referred to as a unitary policy project, the BRI consists of a sprawling series of investments spanning continents and infrastructure…
September 16, 2023
SourcesOn September 11, 1973, the Chilean military, led by General Augusto Pinochet, and with support from the CIA, overthrew the socialist government of President Salvador Allende. The fiftieth anniversary of the coup has occasioned several reflections on the impact of Pinochet's neoliberal reforms.
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 9, 2023
SourcesSince 2020, there have been military coups in six Francophone African countries—Mali, Chad, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Niger, and most recently Gabon. The region has also witnessed unprecedented civic protests against the French government. In a 2021 book, FANNY PIGEAUD and NDONGO SAMBA SYLLA examine…
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…
September 2, 2023
SourcesSeveral investment banks have recently downgraded their growth forecasts for China in response to mounting debt crises, the closure of major real estate firms, and rising youth unemployment. In a 2013 book, MICHAEL PETTIS examines the fundamental imbalance in China's post-reform economic model, which prioritizes exports over domestic…
Defining Bidenomics
Industrial policy, labor, and the New Cold War
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…
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.…
August 26, 2023
SourcesFeminist economists have problematized the "unitary" conceptualization of the household, probing the black box of domestic life to explore how allocations of labor and resources are contested within the family.
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…
August 19, 2023
SourcesFrom the mid 1960s, a group of international scholars—including Issa G. Shivji, Walter Rodney, John S. Saul, Giovani Arrighi—gathered at the University of Dar es Salaam to study the political and economic issues facing a newly postcolonial Africa. Looking past the…
Hockey Sticks and Crosses
Images that define the globalization debate
August 12, 2023
SourcesFounded in the 1970s in Paris, the Regulation School was a group of scholars who offered a novel conceptualization of economic history. Rejecting the notion of universal economic laws, they presented capitalism's development as a series of phases, each defined by certain social and institutional forms, with an…
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
SourcesSince April 15, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been fighting to take control over Sudan. Extensive war crimes have been committed by both sides.
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…
July 29, 2023
SourcesBetween the late 1950s and the 1970s, several European commercial banks formed clubs to share information and collaborate on services.
July 29, 2023
InterviewsFragile Democracies
An interview with Pranab Bardhan
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…
July 27, 2023
ReviewsConstructing “Social Europe”
Alternative visions for European cooperation
Accounts on the rise of neoliberalism commonly emphasize the exhaustion of post-war systems of embedded liberalism during the economic crises of the 1970s and the parallel internationalization of economic activity. In Europe, this latter process is especially, and controversially, associated…
July 22, 2023
SourcesMexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador came to power in 2018 vowing to end the country's war on drugs. Yet, as he nears the end of his six-year tenure, the immensely complex drug trade continues to yield high levels of violence.
Working Capital
Tim van Bijsterveldt on transformations in the global payments system
The Federal Reserve has provided payment and settlement services for more than a century. But FedNow, the instant payments service rolled out in late June 2023, is the first new Fed payments rail in 50 years. Though payment and settlement…
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…
July 15, 2023
SourcesThe Dutch coalition government collapsed last week, with Prime Minister Mark Rutte resigning after centrist coalition members refused to support highly restrictive policies for refugees.
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
SourcesMany post-colonial governments have attempted to pass land reforms to abolish feudal relations and promote equitable development. This process remains incomplete.
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
SourcesSovereign credit ratings—typically issued by Moody's, Fitch, and Standard and Poor's—strongly determine the volume of credit extended to a government and on what terms.
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
SourcesIndian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is currently on an official state visit to the United States. President Joe Biden is widely understood to be courting India as a strategic partner against China.
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…
June 17, 2023
SourcesWassily Leontief (1906–99) was a Russian-born American economist who pioneered Input-Output analysis, which models the interdependence of an economy’s various productive sectors.
Varieties of Derisking
Industrial policy, macrofinance, and the green transition
In recent years, the debate over climate policy has moved away from the earlier consensus in favor of carbon pricing and towards an investment-focused approach, illustrated by the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), along with other similar measures…
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 10, 2023
SourcesThe farm bill, an omnibus package of legislation passed every five years, is due for reauthorization in September. Funds for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps, are tied to the bill.
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…
June 3, 2023
SourcesLast month, the liberal Move Forward party won the most seats in Thailand's central elections. Its policy proposals include amending the lèse majesté law, which imposes long jail sentences on those convicted of insulting the royal family.
June 3, 2023
ReviewsSupply-Side Coalitions
On Brent Cebul’s “Illusions of Progress: Business, Poverty, and Liberalism in the American Century”
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…
Event: Varieties of Derisking
A panel discussion on industrial policy, state capacity, macrofinance, and the green transition
On Tuesday June 6, Phenomenal World and the Polycrisis hosted a discussion on industrial policy, state capacity, macrofinance, and the green transition. Watch the full recording of the event here. The discussion featured: Skanda Amarnath (Employ America), Melanie Brusseler (Common…
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
SourcesSince the invasion of Ukraine, a growing financial alliance between Russia and China has prompted discussions around threats to US dollar hegemony. But despite the rise of the Renminbi and other currencies, many argue that the dollar remains dominant.
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…
Making Markets
An interview with Douglas Cifu on the SEC
The Gamestop bubble of 2021—where the value of the company’s stocks increased more than a hundred times over in just a few months—exemplified the rising trend of the meme stock frenzy. The event shed light on the role of retail…
May 20, 2023
SourcesThe first international labor convention in 1919 declared the adoption of an 8-hour work day or a 48-hour work week. But for decades following, labor time standards varied greatly throughout European colonies, reflecting different forms colonial rule across and within empires.
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
SourcesAlice H. Amsden (1943-2012) was a pathbreaking developmental economist who examined East Asia's economic rise in the late twentieth century.
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…
May 6, 2023
SourcesLast month, the Chilean government announced plans to nationalize the country's lithium industry, which is dominated by two companies, Sociedad Química y Minera (SQM) and Albemarle.
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,…
April 29, 2023
SourcesThe G20's Common Framework is meant to help poor countries restructure their debts following the expiration of Covid-era measures like the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI). The Framework notably sought to coordinate debt relief between "Paris Club" creditors and states like China and India.
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…
April 22, 2023
SourcesItalian scholar Giovanni Arrighi (1937-2009) was one of the foremost proponents of the discipline of World Systems Theory. His research subjects included decolonization in Africa, industrial and agricultural change in Italy, and state capitalism in China—all developments he analyzed in the light of global economic relations.
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?
April 15, 2023
SourcesIn 1990, the United Nations Security Council, led by the US, imposed a broad swathe of sanctions on Iraq in response the country's attack on Kuwait. Most of the sanctions remained in place when the US launched a ground invasion of Iraq in 2003.
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…
April 8, 2023
SourcesAfter the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) announced that it would protect all depositors, including those with amounts over $250,000.
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
SourcesLast week, Shaw Fain won the presidency of the United Auto Workers (UAW), defeating incumbent Ray Curry of the Administration Caucus. The election comes in the wake of a federal investigation that discovered widespread corruption among UAW leadership.
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…
March 25, 2023
SourcesBritish scholar Susan Strange (1923-98) is a founding figure of the discipline of International Political Economy (IPE). Beginning in the 1970s, she combined insights from the fields of economics and international relations to show how the integration of national financial markets and cross-border capital mobility was transforming…
March 25, 2023
ReviewsNo Alternative?
On Fritz Bartel’s The Triumph of Broken Promises
The Triumph of Broken Promises by Fritz Bartel is a new history of the end of the Cold War. Challenging conventional narratives that focus on Reagan’s military-ideological assertiveness or Gorbachev's openness to reform, the book gives a material and structural…
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 18, 2023
SourcesThe South Korean government recently announced that it would compensate Koreans who served as forced laborers for Japanese corporations under colonial rule. The reparation funds will be raised domestically; Japanese corporations will not contribute.
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…
March 11, 2023
SourcesLast month, in order to enforce stronger content moderation and transparency rules, the European Union's 2022 Digital Services Act began requiring major social media platforms in Europe to self-report their user size. Days later, the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Section 230, which protects platforms from being liable for…
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 4, 2023
SourcesOn February 6, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck large parts of Turkey and Syria. Since then, the death toll has risen above 50,000 and over 160,000 buildings have collapsed.
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…
February 25, 2023
SourcesOn February 3, a freight train operated by Norfolk Southern derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. The major accident was later declared "100 percent preventable." Falling safety standards in the industry can be traced back to the Staggers Act of 1980, which spurred deregulation. Examining the aftermath of this shift, a…
February 25, 2023
ReviewsMoney as Empire?
On Perry Mehrling’s “Money and Empire: Charles P. Kindleberger and the Dollar System”
Money makes the world go round, or as Karl Marx put it, Geldgespräche, Quatsch-Spaziergänge. How does this work at the global or international level? Perry Mehrling’s elegantly written biography of the MIT economist Charles Poor Kindleberger illuminates the relationship between…
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,…
February 18, 2023
SourcesChile has long been known in the region for relatively steady growth paired with high levels of income inequality. The country's economic trajectory has been linked to its "labor flexibilization" policies implemented under Pinochet, which have not changed substantially since the transition to democracy in 1990.
February 18, 2023
ReviewsThe Sanctions Age
On Agathe Demarais’s “Backfire: How Sanctions Reshape the World Against US Interests”
Charles De Gaulle declared in 1961, “A great state which does not possess [nuclear weapons]… does not command its own destiny.” France became the world’s fourth nuclear power in 1960 following the Gerboise Bleue nuclear test. Yet the command of…
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”…
February 11, 2023
SourcesProtests against a measure to raise the retirement age in France and news of China's population decline have prompted discussion around aging populations and implications for social policy.
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 4, 2023
SourcesAt the World Economic Forum in Davos, Colombia’s new Minister of Mines and Energy, Irene Vélez Torres, announced that the country's government would not approve any new oil and gas exploration projects.
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
SourcesLast week, over a million people in France marched in protest of President Macron's planned pension reforms. The reforms would raise the retirement age and require workers to contribute a minimum of 43 years in social security payments in order to qualify for a full state pension.
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
SourcesOxfam India's latest report revealed that 84 percent of the country suffered a decline in wealth in 2022, even as the number of billionaires grew from 102 to 142. The report notes reduced state investment in public education and healthcare, along with an increased reliance on indirect…
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,…
January 18, 2023
ReviewsCold Controls
On Daniels and Krige’s “Knowledge Regulation and National Security in Postwar America”
In an effort to stymie “indigenous” chip development in China, the US Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) introduced new controls on semiconductor technology exported to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) last October. Targeting high-performance and advanced memory chips,…
January 14, 2023
SourcesThis week, Ghana's government reached an agreement to raise public sector salaries by 30 percent in response to rapidly rising inflation, now at 54 percent. In addition to demanding wage increases, the Ghana Trades Union Congress (GTUC)—the nation's largest labor organization—has rejected certain austerity measures proposed by the government,…
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…
Emergency Prices
An interview with Isabella Weber
In How China Escaped Shock Therapy (2021), Isabella Weber analyzes how China applied market reforms selectively, avoiding the broad agenda of liberalization advocated for in the West. Retaining oversight of prices for critical goods was key to this strategy. Recently,…
January 12, 2023
EventsPhenomenal World Books is a new publishing collaboration from Phenomenal World and The University of Chicago Press. The series seeks to elevate the political-economic investigations necessary to understanding the social world. Aimed at cohering a resurgent disciplinary alliance of economics…
January 7, 2023
SourcesIn response to escalating industrial unrest, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's newly proposed anti-strike legislation threatens to impose "minimum service levels" in key public sectors. The laws constitute the latest in a longrunning history of state intervention in workplace disputes.
January 7, 2023
InterviewsSectional Industrialization
An interview with Richard Bensel
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…
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
SourcesOver the past year, Phenomenal World has inspired discussion across spheres of political economy, publishing on topics including the politics of debt and climate, the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, inflation and its policy responses, and pivotal elections…
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…
December 10, 2022
SourcesThis week's Mercosur summit exposed rifts between the trade bloc's four members—Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay—with Uruguay stating the intention to form trade partnerships outside the bloc, and Argentina pushing for a renegotiation of the 2019 EU-Mercosur agreement.
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
SourcesAfter months of negotiations, US congressional lawmakers are desperately trying to avert a national strike on the country's railways. With nearly half of the workforce rejecting the Biden administration's earlier proposals, pressure on business and trade union representatives is rising.
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…
December 1, 2022
EventsMoney and the Climate Crisis
A discussion on COP27 and financing the green transition
In November, Phenomenal World hosted the second event of The Polycrisis, tackling the challenges of financing the green transition. The event begins with the major takeaways from COP27 and discusses plans for global coordination—in particular, the Bridgetown Initiative spearheaded by…
November 30, 2022
InterviewsBittersweet Tides
Chile, Brazil, and the future of the Latin American Left
The recent victories of left parties across Latin America—most recently the election of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil—have prompted comparisons with the Pink Tide of the early 2000s. But with narrow margins of victory against far-right opponents,…
November 21, 2022
EventsThe Meddlers
A discussion on the origins of global economic governance
In November 2022, Phenomenal World hosted a panel discussion on Jamie Martin's new book The Meddlers. The text examines the origins of global economic governance following the First World War, looking at institutions such as the League of Nations and…
November 19, 2022
SourcesIn September, Hurricane Ian devastated southwestern Florida, with floodwater and power outages causing significant damage to homes and businesses. Rebuilding efforts have since revealed gaps in flood insurance policies.
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 16, 2022
ReviewsTransatlantic Ties
On Jeremy Green’s The Political Economy of the Special Relationship
Bretton Woods is often associated with les Trente Glorieuses, the triumph of a certain kind of social democratic governance system, and American hegemony in Western Europe. The postwar system of monetary governance represented a form of “regulated” international capitalism subordinate…
November 12, 2022
SourcesFollowing years of government subsidies, the Chinese aluminum extrusion industry now threatens to wipe out domestic producers in the EU, UK, and US should tariff rates fall too low (the UK is most at risk, with 10.1% rates compared to the EU's 22.1%…
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…
November 5, 2022
SourcesEarlier this year, India increased its coal production in response to heat wave-induced electricity shortages. The power crisis prompted new concerns around India's efforts towards transitioning to renewable energy, and it exposed deep vulnerabilities in country's fragmented electricity sector.
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?
November 2, 2022
InterviewsCyborg Trucking
An interview with Karen Levy on surveillance and automation in the trucking industry
The supply and demand whiplashes of the Covid-19 pandemic snarled global supply chains, shaking up labor markets and well-established migration patterns. In the process, existing cracks in logistics and infrastructure systems widened, making these systems newly visible. In the US…
October 29, 2022
SourcesIn recent months, over 230,000 claimants have sued multinational conglomerate 3M for faulty products, launching the largest mass tort litigation in US history. In response, the company resorted to the infamous "Texas Two-Step," a bankruptcy scheme which allows companies to sidestep allegations by dividing…
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…
October 22, 2022
SourcesLast week, Egypt reached a staff-level agreement with the IMF to receive its fourth loan in six years. The nation struggles with a high debt-to-GDP ratio, and its net foreign reserves have plummeted in value since 2019.
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…
October 19, 2022
InterviewsVentures & Networks
An interview with Sebastian Mallaby on venture capital
The past year of rampant inflation and energy system chaos is a clear indication that we need paradigmatic change. Any new economic system is going to be anchored by major scientific innovations; historically, spurring these technological transformations has required a…
October 15, 2022
SourcesIn late September, India was projected to overtake the UK as the world's fifth largest economy. Though it has since been modified, the country's expected growth rate reflects a steady upswing since the late 1980s.
The Geopolitics of Stuff
A discussion on supply chains, commodities, and climate
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…
October 12, 2022
InterviewsWho Pays for Inflation?
A conversation on monetary policy, labor, and the definition of inflation
The inflation of the past year has reshaped the political economic landscape in the United States and around the globe. While the IMF and World Bank echo UN calls about the recession risk of globally-synchronized rate hikes, the debate over…
October 8, 2022
SourcesIn the first round of Brazil's presidential elections last Sunday, former President Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva received the highest percentage of votes, followed by President Jair Bolsonaro, who performed better than expected to force a runoff.
October 5, 2022
EventsThe Geopolitics of Stuff
The inaugural event of The Polycrisis
“Today, the double whammy of virus and war has brought the world economy of physical goods back with a vengeance. The postmodern myth of lightweight digital exchange has slammed into the reality of semiconductors, shipping liners, and energy shortages” - Lee…
October 1, 2022
SourcesOngoing interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve combined with the recently published "mini-budget" have sent the UK economy into turmoil, prompting the Bank of England to buy £65 billion in long term government securities.
September 28, 2022
InterviewsBottom-up Bargaining
An interview with Xiao Ma on the politics of China’s high-speed railways
China’s high-speed railway network is one of the largest infrastructure programs in human history. Though today international headlines emphasize the decline in China’s growth—lagging behind the rest of Asia for the first time since 1990—for more than two decades, the…
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 24, 2022
SourcesHurricane Fiona's landfall last week left all of Puerto Rico without electricity, exposing weaknesses in the island's electricity grid following a controversial privatization in June 2021.
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 17, 2022
SourcesLast week, the referendum to overhaul Chile's Pinochet-era constitution lost by more than 20%. The result was surprising: in 2020, nearly 80% of the population voted in favor of rewriting the constitution, and the country's most recent elections brought progressive…
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…
September 10, 2022
SourcesThe recent floods in Pakistan have brought attention to the viability of the country's hydropower projects and the debated role of dams in flood management.
September 3, 2022
SourcesMikhail Gorbachev's death has prompted renewed reflections on his domestic, regional, and international legacy.This legacy is of particular interest in light of recent trajectory of the Russian economy.
September 2, 2022
ReviewsPolitics and Expertise
On Elizabeth Popp Berman’s Thinking Like an Economist and Paul Sabin’s Public Citizens
Explanations for the rise of neoliberal policymaking in the United States commonly take one of two forms: a political history or an intellectual history. The first focuses on the overlapping crises of the 1970s and the rebalancing political coalitions competing…
August 27, 2022
SourcesLast month, Bangladesh requested a $4.5 billion loan from the IMF in order to deal with its foreign exchange reserves alongside a crisis of rising food and energy prices. The nation's concerns have drawn comparisons to emergencies in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, leading some to question its status as a "development…
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 20, 2022
SourcesIn recent months, the UK's rising living costs and stagnant wages have given rise to a series of strikes across railways, hospitals, and Amazon warehouses.A 1995 article by BEVERLY SILVER considers the relationship between labor unrest and economic cycles, drawing on a database of…
August 13, 2022
SourcesLast October, the US was instrumental in the signing of a landmark global tax agreement which mandated the imposition of a 15% corporate tax floor on multinational enterprises. The modified Inflation Reduction Act, however, introduces significant loopholes to this standard.
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…
August 6, 2022
SourcesThe past few months have seen record-breaking heat waves across the globe. In India, a deadly heat wave in May renewed questions around the nation's health, safety, and economy.
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
SourcesThis week, Russia’s state-run energy company Gazprom drastically cut gas supplies— delivered via the Russia-Germany Nord Stream 1 pipeline—to Europe. The move amplified longstanding concerns around European dependence on Russian energy.
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 28, 2022
ReviewsThe Last Days of Sound Finance
On Karen Petrou’s “Engine of Inequality”
When the Federal Reserve turned to unconventional monetary policy in 2008, many feared that we would soon see a return to the wage-price spiral of the 1970s. The combination of deficit spending and monetary ease raised the old specter of…
July 23, 2022
SourcesThis 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…
July 23, 2022
InterviewsResource Nationalism and Decarbonization
Revisiting “resource nationalism” in a new era of raw minerals demand
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…
July 20, 2022
InterviewsThe Economic Style
An interview with Beth Popp Berman
For some, neoliberalism is to blame for most, if not all, of our societal problems, as well as for the resistance to progressive changes that characterizes contemporary policymaking. This is for good reason. As has been extensively documented, the neoliberal…
July 16, 2022
SourcesIn the midst of a global semiconductor shortage, the US Senate is considering a bill that would fund $52 billion in chip subsidies for domestic production. Today, the vast majority of semiconductors are produced in East Asia, and 90 percent…
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…
July 7, 2022
InterviewsThe IMF & the Legacy of Bretton Woods
Global South debt crises and the evolution of the international monetary system
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.
July 7, 2022
SourcesAmid the ongoing global energy crisis, French Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron has announced the full renationalization of Electricite de France (EDF), the country's decades old multinational electric utility company.
July 2, 2022
SourcesAmong 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…
July 1, 2022
EventsResource Nationalism & Decarbonization
An event with Thea Riofrancos, Miguel Ángel Marmolejo Cervantes, & Martín Obaya
From Mexico to the Southern Cone, a renewed wave of left-wing electoral victories has yielded comparisons to the “pink tide” of the late-1990s and early-2000s. Where that turn took place in the context of a global commodity boom, these recent…
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 25, 2022
SourcesAmidst food shortages, an energy crisis, and a "complete collapse" of the economy, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa faces mass protests calling for his resignation. At the same time, the government is in negotiations with the IMF around a bailout deal.
June 22, 2022
EventsGrowth & Stagnation
A book launch event for Diminishing Returns
Diminishing Returns, edited by Mark Blyth, Jonas Puntusson, and Lucio Baccaro, is a new volume that examines the politics of growth regimes. In June 2022, Phenomenal World hosted the book's launch event, featuring the editors along with Oddny Helgadottir and…
June 18, 2022
SourcesIn March of this year, the London Metal Exchange suspended trading in nickel after a 250 percent price hike brought its value to $100,000 a ton. The cancellation has shaken the commodities exchange's reputation, and inspired a series of fierce…
June 16, 2022
ReviewsDevelopmental Realism
A review of Eric Helleiner’s The Neomercantilists
Since Donald Trump’s surprise victory in the 2016 US presidential election, defenders of the postwar liberal international order have panicked over the return of their bête noire: neomercantilism. For them, neomercantilism signals a revival of nationalistic protectionism, a surge in…
June 11, 2022
SourcesThis week, President Biden invoked the Defense Production Act (DPA) to boost clean energy production, including solar technology, heat pumps, insulation, green hydrogen, and transformers. In recent years, the DPA has strayed from its wartime connotations, from coordinating Covid-19 responses, and more…
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,…
June 4, 2022
SourcesIn 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.
June 2, 2022
ReviewsGeneral Theories
On Stephen Marglin’s Raising Keynes
In 2022, the audience for books about John Maynard Keynes is probably as large as it has ever been. With two global economic crises followed by widespread use of government interventions, debates recently relegated to history books and academic journals…
May 28, 2022
SourcesThis weekend's presidential elections in Colombia could result in the victory of the country's first leftist leader, a center-right former mayor, or a right-wing populist. A central issue is the fate of the 2016 peace deal, with crucial questions around…
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,…
May 21, 2022
SourcesThis week, labor markets across the US and Europe exhibited seemingly inconsistent trends: while unemployment is at historic lows, claims for unemployment benefits are on the rise, and despite rising overall incomes, many workers face increased financial stress.
May 20, 2022
EventsThe IMF & the Legacy of Bretton Woods
An event with Karina Patricio Ferreira Lima , Mona Ali, Richard Kozul-Wright, Chris Marsh, and Lara Merling
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.
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
SourcesNews 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…
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 7, 2022
InterviewsFault Lines
An interview with Helen Thompson on the geopolitics of shale and energy independence
Restarting our economies after the pandemic continues to expose the fragility of our supply chains. The Russia-Ukraine conflict serves as a stark reminder that oil and gas can still dictate our anxieties. Commodity prices and our collective sense of vulnerability…
May 7, 2022
SourcesSince 2018, the Turkish lira has suffered repeated devaluation shocks, increasing rates of loan default and unemployment. These have only been compounded by the pandemic and the Russian invasian of Ukraine—this week, inflation rates in Turkey have skyrocketed to nearly…
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
SourcesExxon recently announced three oil discoveries off the coast of Guyana, increasing the company's recoverable oil potential in the country to 11 billion barrels. These discoveries have added to the high likelihood of Guyana becoming a major global oil producer in the…
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 23, 2022
SourcesA 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…
April 16, 2022
SourcesThe latest version of the Omnibus spending bill ends the extension of child nutrition waivers, which expanded access to meals during the school year and summer. The move foreshadows challenges for school meal programs, a cornerstone of welfare policy since…
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…
April 9, 2022
SourcesLast week, the independent Amazon Labor Union won a NLRB election at a Staten Island warehouse, with around 55 percent of workers voting to join the union. Heralded as a watershed for new organizing opportunities for low-wage, service sector, and…
April 8, 2022
EventsEconomic War & the Commodity Shock
An event with Javier Blas and Nicholas Mulder on the Russia sanctions
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 2, 2022
SourcesThis week, approximately 50 million workers in India engaged in a national strike against what they see as the “anti-people policies” of Narendra Modi's government. The public banking sector experienced one of the largest disruptions, with employees protesting government proposals for privatization.
April 2, 2022
InterviewsPhilosophy and Reparations
An interview with Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò on climate crisis, reparations, and the use of history
Every new climate study seems to confirm what we have long known: the brunt of these impacts will fall on those least prepared to weather them, in considerable part because the basic structure of our global system had long ago…
March 26, 2022
SourcesBrazil'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.
March 24, 2022
InterviewsTax Regimes
An interview with Robin Einhorn
Tax cuts and austerity have been a central feature of American politics in recent decades—just recently, the Build Back Better bill was blocked under the guise of fiscal responsibility. The work of Robin Einhorn, Preston Hotchkis Professor in the History…
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 19, 2022
SourcesIn 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…
March 12, 2022
SourcesAmong the cities experiencing pronounced ripple effects from the Russian sanctions is London, whose financial institutions and luxury property market have long attracted Russian investment.
March 12, 2022
InterviewsStructures of History
An interview with historian William Sewell
Few scholars have had the theoretical, methodological, and empirical influence of William Sewell. His work has persistently scrutinized and challenged disciplinary barriers, placing historical and social scientific methods in dialogue and thereby illuminating their strengths and shortcomings. This effort is…
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…
March 5, 2022
SourcesRussia and Ukraine account for nearly a quarter of the world's wheat supply, leading to concern about the invasion's impact on global wheat markets and food security. Global dependence on wheat is a relatively new phenomenon, emerging in the postwar…
March 1, 2022
InterviewsPower, States, and Wars
An interview with Michael Mann on the study of history and the reemergence of great power politics
Over the course of several decades, Michael Mann's writing has consistently advanced thinking on great powers and the social orders they create. Combining a theoretical and empirical focus, his work is nearly unparalleled in its ambitious scope and meticulous attention…
February 26, 2022
SourcesGerman Chancellor Olaf Scholz's suspension of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project has provoked numerous commentaries on potential geopolitical, growth-related, and inflationary ramifications.
February 19, 2022
SourcesThe 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…
February 15, 2022
SourcesThe pandemic induced wave of government spending has prompted renewed debates on the magnitude and likelihood of significant fiscal multipliers—the effect of fiscal spending on output—in the coming years.
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 5, 2022
SourcesThe Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach processed respectively 10.7 and 9.3 million twenty-foot equivalent units of cargo volume in 2021, with the former setting a record high of shipping volume in the Western Hemisphere. Continuing…
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 29, 2022
SourcesConcerns over inflation have led to an uptick in research and policy debate over the specific sectoral drivers of price increases—and tools for their management. In a new article in Health Affairs, ROBERT BERENSON and ROBERT MURRAY review the literature…
January 22, 2022
SourcesEarlier this month, a wave of protests spread across Kazakhstan. Though prompted by rising gas prices, the demonstrations soon came to target the country's decades long trajectory of corruption and resource privatization. A 2001 article by ERIKA WEINTHAL and PAULINE JONES LUONG…
January 15, 2022
SourcesThis 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…
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…
January 8, 2022
SourcesWealth and political power often come from property ownership, but the dynamics of real estate transactions are often invisible to the general public. Absent a national property database, researchers in the United States are left sifting through tax parcel data…
December 23, 2021
InterviewsRekindling Labor?
An interview with Kim Voss on the American labor movement, from the Knights of Labor to “Striketober.”
The uptick in organized and unorganized labor militancy registered throughout the pandemic, and in particular in strike and unionization campaigns in recent months, comes at a relative nadir for the US labor movement. The work of Kim Voss, Professor of…
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
SourcesOver the last year, PW Sources has covered a wide range of issues—from caste and labor, to social policy in Brazil, to capital flight, and more. We will be off until 2022. As we look forward to the new year, here’s a roundup of…
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…
December 11, 2021
SourcesIn the 1970s, the study of Latin America was an intellectual crossroads for scholars of political economy, with discussion around theories of dependency, growth, and development being evaluated against the contemporaneous experience of Latin America states. But the lost decade…
December 4, 2021
SourcesDeforestation in Brazil's Amazon rainforest has reached its highest rate in 15 years, with satellite footage recording 5,110 square miles of deforested land. Despite coordinated threats of divestment, institutional investors have thus far failed to act.
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 20, 2021
SourcesIn October, over 10,000 John Deere workers went on strike, 1,400 Kellogg's workers followed suit, and observers anticipated thousands more IATSE members and Kaiser Permanente workers to walk out. (After voting down two contracts, workers at Deere reached an agreement last week ending…
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 13, 2021
SourcesIn recent decades, policy arenas which are resistant to national and international regulation have seen the flourishing of voluntary, self-regulatory, and private accountability mechanisms. Researchers have grouped these broadly as a system of Non-State-Market-Driven-Governance (NSMDG), characterized by the institutional role of markets and…
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
SourcesAfter two years of publishing, we are thrilled to launch a new website. Our new home—developed and designed by Partner & Partners—retains the style of our original blog layout, while creating new streams of longform and shortform content, gathering a series section, and collecting past PW Sources…
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 30, 2021
SourcesWhile a group of statisticians recently found the 2020 US Census to be free of major errors, many were concerned about the census' ability to accurately reflect the population given its coincidence with the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. The debate shed light on the…
October 23, 2021
SourcesSince the mid-19th century, municipal debt has been responsible for funding some of the most significant investments in US infrastructure, schools, and social services. But rising risks of climate-related flooding threaten the value of municipal bonds, often in cities which…
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…
October 16, 2021
SourcesBoth consumers and businesses have felt the effects of ongoing backlogs in global supply chains. The world's largest retailers have been integral in shaping these supply chains, especially in the global South, where changing patterns of consumption have been met…
October 9, 2021
SourcesAs 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.
October 2, 2021
SourcesA rise in deportations of Haitian immigrants at the US-Mexico border has brought another cycle of media attention to the US immigration system and border security apparatus.
September 25, 2021
SourcesThe possible collapse of Evergrande, China's second largest property developer, has reverberated through global financial markets. With over $300 billion in outstanding debt, 3.8 million jobs on the line, and investments across consumer industries, the scale of the impact could…
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…
September 18, 2021
SourcesThis week, millions in California voted in support of Governor Gavin Newsom in a recall election. California is one of 19 states that grants power to voters to recall a sitting governor, a law which was passed in 1911 as…
September 11, 2021
SourcesLong held to be essential for development, capital flows have come under increasing scrutiny for their impact on the financial stability and autonomy of low and middle income countries.
September 4, 2021
SourcesHaiti won independence from France in 1804, but in return for recognizing its formerly enslaved colony, France later forced Haiti to pay an indemnity of 150 million francs and give preferential treatment to French exports. The debt was equivalent to…
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 28, 2021
SourcesEarlier this year, global carbon markets were valued at a record breaking $277 billion. The number contrasts strikingly with this summer's wave of devastating fires, many of which proliferated precisely in protected forests designed to offset carbon emissions from other…
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 21, 2021
SourcesObservers in the past decades have commented on increased urbanization in India, which has led to new challenges for development, housing, and labor. But the majority of India's population, and thus electoral power, remains in rural regions.
August 14, 2021
Sources75 percent of US firms currently make use of non-disclosure agreements. Originally developed to protect trade secrets, today's agreements have expanded to include information on salaries, skills, client lists, and employment practices.
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.
August 7, 2021
SourcesThis week, the Mexican government sued eleven major US arms manufacturers, alleging that they facilitated the illegal flow of guns into the country. The proliferation of US-manufactured guns in Mexico during recent years has been well-documented, but their presence precedes…
July 31, 2021
SourcesMICRO-STRATEGY Accounts of major historical shifts tend to treat states as unified actors responding to external incentives. In a new article, INGA RADEMACHER complicates this assumption. Drawing on archival documents from the German Federal Cabinet and Bundesbank Council from 1960-1981,…
July 27, 2021
EventsThe Future of Social Democracy
A discussion with Stephanie Mudge, Adam Przeworski, Wolfgang Streeck, and Waltraud Schelkle
In July, Phenomenal World hosted a discussion on the past, present, and future of social democracy inspired by our first book project: Market Economy, Market Society: Interviews and Essays on the Decline of European Social Democracy. The conversation featured Stephanie…
July 24, 2021
SourcesStructures of unfree labor have always been at the edge of current and historical discourse on labor, mobility and caste in South Asia. This has been in focus during the COVID-led migrant crisis in India, where around 11.4 million migrant…
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 17, 2021
SourcesEarlier 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.
July 12, 2021
InterviewsLong Crises
An interview with Benjamin Holtzman
As New Yorkers grapple with an uncertain future, the fiscal crisis of the 1970s and its aftermath are often invoked by the press and politicians. Today, “New York in the 1970s” is shorthand for a city facing poverty and crime,…
July 10, 2021
SourcesHaiti's President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated on Wednesday, plunging the country into greater political unrest following months of protests around Moïse's controversial decision to rule by decree.
July 8, 2021
Phenomenal WorksPhenomenal Works: Davarian Baldwin
Black metropolis
In his new book, In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities, Davarian Baldwin identifies an “increasingly parasitic” relationship between universities and the cities they occupy.
July 3, 2021
SourcesThe impending retreat of US troops from Afghanistan has brought renewed discussion on Pakistan amidst both US and Chinese alliances. Much of the scholarship on Pakistan centers around its military and foreign policy, but less attention has been given to…
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 26, 2021
SourcesSince the 2000 World Water Forum in The Hague, governance over water resources has gained salience in international development discourse. The allocation of rights (to technology and decisionmaking) and resources (both financial and natural) has shaped local economies in the…
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…
June 19, 2021
SourcesEarlier this week, global leaders at the G7 summit signed a "green belt and road initiative," which offers funds to low income countries for sustainable investment.
June 18, 2021
InterviewsInvestment and Decarbonization
A conversation on investment strategies for the green transition
In late March, the Biden administration announced the $2 trillion American Jobs Plan, with approximately half of the sum dedicated to fighting the climate crisis. While the legislation would mark a sea change in federal action to avert climate catastrophe,…
June 12, 2021
Sourcesformer 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.
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…
June 5, 2021
SourcesThis week marked the 640th anniversary of the 1381 Great Rising, a rebellion which swept across medieval England demanding an end to serfdom and an overhaul of the legal system and the aristocracy.
May 29, 2021
SourcesThough the US economy remains about 10 million jobs short of its pre-pandemic levels, employers and commentators have begun to express fears over a reduction in the labor supply, prompting debates over the possible causes of this shortage.
May 22, 2021
SourcesRecent events in Gaza and Colombia have led to calls for the conditioning of foreign aid—a controversial but longstanding element of the US foreign policy toolkit for pursuing economic and political aims abroad.
May 21, 2021
EventsInvestment & Decarbonization
A roundtable on investing in the green transition
In March 2021, the Biden administration announced the $2 trillion American Jobs Plan, with approximately half of the sum dedicated to fighting the climate crisis. Many, however, argued that the legislation falls dramatically short of the amount required to usher in…
May 15, 2021
SourcesUse of the most recent government stimulus varied by income, with richer households saving the money and poorer ones using it to pay off debt.
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.
May 8, 2021
SourcesIn the late 2000s, the term "land grab" rose to prominence to describe large-scale acquisitions of farmland in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
May 6, 2021
InterviewsRestructuring Sovereign Debt
An interview with Ken Shadlen
Ken Shadlen's research examines how international institutions can create unique challenges for developing countries and, in doing so exacerbate core-periphery inequalities.
May 4, 2021
Phenomenal WorksPhenomenal Works: Laleh Khalili
On Winona LaDuke and Deborah Cowen's argument for decolonizing infrastructure.
“What if infrastructure is designed, financed and adopted into the habits of everyday lives of its users in such a way that it is not a harbinger of apocalypse?” In a recent essay, Laleh Khalili notes a key dilemma of…
May 1, 2021
SourcesMillions of workers in global supply chains have lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic.
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 24, 2021
SourcesThe US government spends upwards of $20 billion annually on domestic agricultural support programs, but with over 20 percent of farm products exported, these programs interact with trade policies that have fluctuated in the last century between protectionism and liberalization.
April 23, 2021
EventsThe Bonds of Inequality
A roundtable on the new book by Destin Jenkins.
In April 2021, Phenomenal World hosted Destin Jenkins for a virtual event on his new book, The Bonds of Inequality. Speakers also included Melinda Cooper, Sarah Quinn, Peter James Hudson, Yakov Feygin, and David Stein, and the discussion was moderated by…
April 17, 2021
SourcesIn 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…
April 10, 2021
SourcesAmid 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…
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,…
April 3, 2021
SourcesEarlier 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.
April 2, 2021
Phenomenal WorksPhenomenal Works: Ho-fung Hung
Rereading Imperialism for twenty-first century tensions
Ho-fung Hung investigates the role of economic development in state formation and global power, with a specific focus on China and East Asia.
March 27, 2021
SourcesFrequent mass shootings and recurring political struggle over gun control measures are uniquely American social phenomena.
March 20, 2021
SourcesDebates concerning the relative role of structure versus agency in explaining social phenomena has endured for decades. Drawing parallels between the teleology of nineteenth century approaches and more modern, variable-oriented research methods, historian WILLIAM SEWELL JR's 2005 book reflects on…
March 19, 2021
InterviewsParty Politics and Social Policy
A conversation between Lena Lavinas, André Singer, and Barbara Weinstein on three decades of party politics and social policy in Brazil.
In The Takeover of Social Policy by Financialization, Lena Lavinas names the “Brazilian Paradox”: the model of social inclusion implemented by the Workers’ Party under President Lula and President Rousseff promotes a logic of financial inclusion and market incorporation, and…
March 13, 2021
SourcesThe Covid-19 pandemic has brought attention to the underfunding of US public health infrastructure over the last several decades. Alongside a fragmented system, a gap has emerged between public health and clinical care, with consequences for the public.
March 6, 2021
SourcesDeindustrialization is a key orienting point for research in political economy. But around the world, factory production remains significant, with employment in industry constituting between one-fifth and one-third of total employment in large economies.
February 27, 2021
SourcesSince November 2020, thousands of Indian farmers from Punjab, Haryana, and other states have protested the implementation of national market-based agricultural reforms. A look to a series of liberalization measures in the 1990s, which did not specifically address agriculture, reveals…
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…
Feminism in the Union
An interview with feminist activist and trade unionist Begoña San José.
Begoña San José is a feminist activist and trade union leader.
New System, New Society
An interview with former Prime Minister of Spain Felipe González.
Revolution in the Long Run
An interview with Hector Maravall on the Communist Party of Spain, the decline of unions, and Felipe González's modernization program.
Hector Maravall is a long time member of the PCE, a labor lawyer, and a leader of the Comisiones Obreras, the largest trade union in Spain.
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…
February 20, 2021
SourcesEarlier this week, millions of households lost power in the face of a powerful snowstorm. While these numbers are unusual, they are not new—the US suffers among the most frequent power outages of any industrialized country, concentrated especially in rural…
Party Unity and Renewal
An interview with Roger Martelli on the decline of the French Communist Party.
Roger Martelli is a historian of the French Communist Party.
Confronting Globalization
An interview with François Morin.
François Morin was technical adviser to Jean le Garrec at the State Secretary for Public Sector Expansion from 1981–1982 and an adviser to Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy.
Objective Constraints
An interview with Anicet le Pors on the PCF, the Common Program, and the constraints on left governance.
Anicet le Pors is a French communist party politician who served as a member of the French Senate from 1977 to 1981, and Minister of Civil Service and Reforms from 1981 to 1984.
February 13, 2021
SourcesThe proposed Covid-19 stimulus package in the US has reignited debate around inflation. Much contemporary concern and discussion on the topic still bears the mark of the 1970s, the Volcker disinflation, and the past consensus around the relationship between unemployment…
February 6, 2021
SourcesWhile the neoliberal era appears to be in crisis, we took on a project to investigate its historical foundations. The tensions of the current political moment are commonly traced to the financial deregulation and economic liberalization of the 1980s and…
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…
Party of the Future?
An interview with Giuliano Amato
Giuliano Amato was a member of the Italian Socialist Party and Italian Prime Minister from 1992–93 and 2000–2001, Treasury Minister in 1999–2000, and Minister of the Interior, 2006–2008.
Changing Bases
An interview with Emanuele Macaluso, Italian trade unionist and politician with the Italian Communist Party (PCI)
Emanuele Macaluso was an Italian trade unionist and politician with the Italian Communist Party (PCI).
Creative Destruction
An interview with Claudio Petruccioli
Claudio Petruccioli is an Italian politician who was president of the Italian national broadcast network RAI from 2005–2009.
January 30, 2021
SourcesNext week marks the launching of our first book-length Phenomenal World publication: Market Economy, Market Society: Interviews and Essays on the Decline of European Social Democracy. The book examines the fracturing of the social democratic consensus through the eyes of…
January 23, 2021
SourcesOutside of Brazil, the Bolsa Familia is known as the hallmark social policy of the former President Lula and remains the world's largest conditional cash transfer program. Less well known is the history of Brazil's social policy in the early…
January 22, 2021
EventsParty Politics & Social Policy
An event on social policy and the Workers' Party in Brazil.
According to Brazilian economist Lena Lavinas, social policy under President Lula promoted a logic of financialization and market incorporation, ultimately contributing to mass indebtedness in the Brazilian population. André Singer sees this period of social policy expansion as an attempt…
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
SourcesThe 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,…
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
SourcesThe 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…
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…
December 19, 2020
SourcesIn the wake of recent financial convulsions, central banks have emerged yet again as the first responders to crisis. But to confront the crisis of anthropogenic climate change, there is growing acknowledgement that central banks should go further, beyond their…
December 12, 2020
SourcesBetween 1940 and 1990, housing growth in the United States outpaced population growth by 173 to 88 percent, and the proportion of homeowners nearly doubled. The same trend is observable internationally, and scholarly debate weighs whether demographic shifts or policy…
December 5, 2020
SourcesThis year's turbulent oil market, in combination with the Covid-19 pandemic, has threatened the financial outlook of several Latin American nations. With many governments dependent on oil revenues, the issues of public ownership of the oil sector and financial liberalization…
December 3, 2020
ReviewsTransition Theory
On Jairus Banaji’s A Brief History of Commercial Capitalism
Capitalism is either eternal or it isn’t. There are people who defend the first view, or something close to it—the multivolume 2014 Cambridge History of Capitalism opens in Babylonia, circa 1000 BCE—but it is much more plausible that capitalism, like…
November 25, 2020
InterviewsDevelopment, Growth, Power
An interview with Amit Bhaduri.
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…
November 21, 2020
SourcesRecent studies estimate approximately 60% of the world's population earns their wages in the informal economy. Focusing on the prevalence of informal work across Africa, Latin America, and South Asia, analysts frequently advocate for a transition to the formal economy…
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…
November 14, 2020
SourcesThe conclusion of the United States election has prompted a resurgence of commentaries on the state's role in markets. By focusing on the state's capacity to shape and alter market structure, these discussions build on a longstanding academic tradition which…
November 9, 2020
EventsGlobal Power in the North-Atlantic Financial System
A panel moderated by Adam Tooze.
In November 2020, JFI and Phenomenal World hosted a panel moderated by Adam Tooze and featuring: Yakov Feygin Daniela Gabor Dominik Leusder Carla Norrlof Elham Saeidinezhad Waltraud Schelkle Herman Mark Schwartz View a recording of the event here.
November 7, 2020
SourcesWith Covid-19 cases again rising around the globe, the World Health Organization (WHO) has faced increased scrutiny from governments on its handling of the early pandemic. Today, the organization plays a key role in defining global public health and coordinating…
October 31, 2020
SourcesThe confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court has sparked ongoing debates over the institution's merits and relationship to American democracy. Among liberal democracies, the United States stands apart in the strength and autonomy of its judiciary. A…
October 24, 2020
SourcesIndia's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has dominated Indian politics in the past decade, upending the country's long-standing Congress Party rule at the national level and competing with regional and ethnic parties in state elections.…
October 17, 2020
SourcesExplanations for the absence of a universal healthcare program in the United States tend to focus on the obstructive role of the American Medical Association, which, via an extensive lobbying campaign, prevented the passage of a national health insurance plan…
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 10, 2020
InterviewsChange the Furniture
An interview with Mark Blyth.
Mark Blyth is William R. Rhodes Professor of International Political Economy at Brown University and a Faculty Fellow at Brown’s Watson Institute for International Studies. His research examines how the interests of states and economic actors shape ideological consensus and…
October 10, 2020
SourcesWith millions facing housing insecurity, the economic downturn has sparked concerns of a new housing crisis. Where the subprime mortgage crisis thrust the centrality of unsustainable housing financing practices in the global economy into view, the Covid-19 recession has brought…
October 3, 2020
SourcesRecent weeks have seen proliferating analyses of the constitutional infrastructure of the US, and speculation over its ability to hinder the behaviors of a disruptive incumbent. New concerns reflect longstanding apprehension over the stability of presidential regimes.
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 28, 2020
SourcesIt is well known that the share of the global labor force working in services has risen precipitously over the past several decades, with nearly half of all workers around the globe now counted in the service sector. Scholarly work…
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…
September 19, 2020
SourcesSince 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…
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 12, 2020
SourcesLand acquisitions have been on the rise since 2008, when rising oil prices and an international food crisis dramatically increased demand. Changing ownership patterns have the potential to influence not only the terms of agricultural supply chains, but the structure…
September 5, 2020
SourcesIn addition to straining America's existing welfare infrastructure, the pandemic has fundamentally altered labor markets and generated a wide range of new social needs. Policy responses to these changing circumstances have the potential to shape the trajectory of US inequality…
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 31, 2020
SourcesThe compound risks of climate catastrophe and Covid-19 have defined the year thus far. As the world continues to reel from the effects of the pandemic, and storms and wildfires dot the map, calls for marshaling a green recovery have…
August 26, 2020
InterviewsBanks, Bubbles, Profits
An interview with Richard Westra.
Richard Westra is University Professor at the Institute of Political Science, University of Opole, Poland and international Adjunct Professor of the Center for Macau Studies, University of Macau. His research focuses on the philosophical underpinnings of economic phenomena, with an…
August 25, 2020
SourcesCovid is accelerating the transition away from cash and encouraging the development of state-backed digital currencies. In the past two weeks, the People's Bank of China launched a trial run for digital renminbis in three major cities, and the Boston…
August 18, 2020
SourcesStandard postwar theories of class composition in the global north emphasized occupational differences between employers, blue collar, and white collar workers. But deindustrialization, and the army of underpaid service workers it generated, has increasingly muddied these categories.
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…
August 13, 2020
EventsGeoeconomics & the Balance of Payments
A panel on the balance of payments during Covid-19.
In August 2020, JFI and Phenomenal World hosted a panel initiated and moderated by Adam Tooze that featured Mona Ali, Daniela Gabor, Izabella Kaminska, Matt Klein, JW Mason, Michael Pettis, Brad Setser, Jon Sindreu, Colby Smith, and Nathan Tankus.
August 13, 2020
ReviewsGeoeconomics and the Balance of Payments: A Reading List
Suggested readings on the savings glut, critical macrofinance, and the balance of payments.
Below is a rough reading list assembled by the panelists in the August 13, 2020 discussion on “Geoeconomics and the Balance of Payments.”
August 10, 2020
SourcesIt's been over a week since Congress allowed the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation scheme to lapse, and negotiations over an extension have reached a gridlock. But even prior to its end, access to the enhanced benefit was far from equal…
August 8, 2020
InterviewsEconomics, Bosses, and Interest
An interview with Stephen Marglin.
Stephen Marglin is Walter S. Barker Professor Economics at Harvard University, where he has taught since he received tenure in 1968.
August 3, 2020
SourcesMuch research has documented the vast sums of "missing wealth" stored in tax havens, and detailed its implications for inequality, fiscal policy, and economic growth. Less present in the discussion is the institutional and political history of these offshore financial…
July 27, 2020
SourcesCatastrophic deficiencies in the federal response to the Covid-19 pandemic have led to renewed discussion over federalism and its discontents. The divergence among state responses to the crisis in the absence of federal guidance has produced analyses of Trump’s unique,…
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 20, 2020
SourcesCommon wisdom around central bank independence (CBI) is increasingly a matter of debate. Before the Covid-19 crisis, a growing number of scholars and commentators have proposed means by which central banks can address looming climate catastrophe—either by integrating new risks…
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 13, 2020
SourcesMichael Mann's four volume magnum opus, The Sources of Social Power, analyzes the history of human societies from antiquity to the present. Theoretically, the work's major contribution is the so-called IEMP model, which examines historical shifts through the relations between…
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 6, 2020
SourcesHistorically, the expansion of the American frontier symbolized a unity between political liberty and economic growth, at the same time as it justified the violent expropriation that continues to define the country's racial and distributional politics.
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.
July 1, 2020
ReviewsBalanced Sheets
A review of Matthew Klein and Michael Pettis's Trade Wars are Class Wars
On the conceptual and methodological stakes of Trade Wars Are Class Wars by Matthew C. Klein and Michael Pettis Good writing on international macroeconomics reads like a detective novel. There’s a suspicious event—hundreds of millions of dollars in phantom FX…
June 30, 2020
SourcesBrazil'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…
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,…
June 24, 2020
SourcesLABOR In her 2007 book, Against the Law: Labor Protests in China's Rustbelt and Sunbelt, sociologist CHING KWAN LEE paints an intricate portrait of the two segments of the Chinese working class that have most acutely experienced the country's changing…
June 18, 2020
Phenomenal WorksPhenomenal Works: Mehrsa Baradaran
Banking between states and markets
Mehrsa Baradaran is a Professor of Law at UC Irvine. Her research situates the American banking system within a dense network of legal, historical, and political relationships.
June 15, 2020
SourcesAs debate and discussion continues over reforms to US policing, attention has been drawn to the share of municipal and state budgets dedicated to police departments. While a useful proxy of governmental priorities, these budgets only tell part of the…
June 13, 2020
InterviewsTrade Wars Are Class Wars
A discussion between Adam Tooze, Michael Pettis, and Matthew Klein
Michael Pettis and Matthew Klein's new book "Trade Wars Are Class Wars" begins with an epigraph from John A. Hobson: "The struggle for markets, the greater eagerness of producers to sell than of consumers to buy, is the crowning proof…
June 8, 2020
SourcesAs commentators and policymakers have scrambled to find explanations for and responses to the unprecedented uprisings against police brutality across the United States, interest in the role of police unions in local politics has soared. Recent research into the question…
June 2, 2020
SourcesThis week has seen policymakers, scholars, and the public debate the meaning of collective violence. While political and media discourse often fails to examine the long-term effects of social unrest, a vast literature grapples with the mechanisms that link protests…
May 28, 2020
EventsTrade Wars are Class Wars
A conversation with Adam Tooze, Michael Pettis, and Matthew Klein
In May 2020, Phenomenal World hosted an event featuring Michael Pettis and Matthew Klein in conversation with Adam Tooze. Their discussion centered around the key findings of Pettis and Klein’s recently-released book, Trade Wars are Class Wars. The interview has been…
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 26, 2020
SourcesAnalyses of variation in state-level responses to the coronavirus tend to focus on party determination: On the whole, states led by Democrats have been found to undertake more rapid and extensive responses to the crisis. The focus on immediate political…
May 22, 2020
InterviewsMunicipal Bonds, Race, and the American City
An interview with Destin Jenkins
The rapid and expansive action taken by the Fed over the past two months in response to the coronavirus crisis has muddied the distinction between monetary and fiscal policy. In particular, its Municipal Liquidity Facility provides a path for financing…
May 19, 2020
SourcesAmong 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…
May 14, 2020
InterviewsThe Postindustrial Welfare State
An interview with Gøsta Esping-Andersen
"The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism" is among the most influential works in the study of welfare states. Rather than conceiving of welfare and industrial policy on a single state-market axis, Three Worlds develops a typology to situate welfare states…
May 12, 2020
SourcesCovid is changing popular attitudes towards the public sector, prompting many commentators to anticipate a new period of welfare expansion. Others are more skeptical, noting that public opinion undergoes rapid fluctuations, which rarely resolve into a new equilibrium.
May 4, 2020
SourcesFollowing the comparative success of South Korea and Singapore to flatten the Covid-19 curve, governments around the world have been discussing the merits and feasibility of tech-aided contact tracing systems. (Whether these comparative public health successes are actually attributable to…
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 28, 2020
SourcesIt's been a turbulent week for the US Postal Service. With revenues plummeting as mail volume drops, the Postal Worker's Union leader recently estimated that the service is likely to literally "run out of money" by October. The crisis has…
April 24, 2020
InterviewsThe Weight of Movements
An interview with Frances Fox Piven
Few theorists of social movements have shaped the events that they analyze. Frances Fox Piven, Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the City University of New York and one of these few, has studied and agitated within American social…
April 21, 2020
SourcesAmong 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…
April 17, 2020
AnalysisInside Out
Shaping the base of a renewable economy
The transition to a post-carbon energy economy will require extraction.
April 13, 2020
SourcesScholars of the global food system unravel a vast web linking trade policy, public health, economic development, labor issues, supply chain logistics, and so on. The pandemic has already prompted states to break with the implicit rules underpinning global food…
April 7, 2020
SourcesComparisons of responses to the Covid-19 crisis across national lines yield as many questions as answers. Divergent histories of public health programs, differences in cultural norms, population density, age distributions, and internal migration patterns create a muddy picture for causal…
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 31, 2020
SourcesThe need to formulate a unified COVID response has placed pressure on European integration in recent days, with Germany and the Netherlands resisting Southern European calls for the issuing of "coronabonds." A 2018 paper by John Ryan and John Loughlin…
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.
March 25, 2020
SourcesThis week, reports swirled regarding President Trump's invocation of the Defense Production Act—a 1950 law passed to manage production in the context of the Korean War—to meet the coming demand of crucial medical supplies to treat people with COVID-19. Much…
March 16, 2020
SourcesAt present it's difficult to think of much else beyond the fragility of our global economic infrastructure. A 2012 discussion paper by RICHARD BALDWIN looks at global supply chains: their history, future, and policy implications.
March 9, 2020
SourcesThe correlation between health, income, and wealth is widely recognized in contemporary research and policy circles. This broadly social understanding of public health outcomes has its origins in a theoretical tradition dating back to the 1970s and 80s, in which…
March 6, 2020
Phenomenal WorksPhenomenal Works: Nathan Lane
History, empirics, and industrial policy
Nathan Lane is an economist working on political economy, development, and economic history.
March 2, 2020
SourcesOver the past two decades, "evidence-based policy" has come to define the common sense of research and policymakers around the world. But while attempts have been made to create formalization schemes for the ranking of evidence for policy, a gulf…
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 24, 2020
SourcesOf the various issues mired in severe and ongoing party polarization, climate crisis is among the most puzzling. Despite longstanding discussions of bipartisan market-based policy proposals like carbon taxes and cap and trade, large-scale government and industry action remains elusive.
February 20, 2020
Phenomenal WorksPhenomenal Works: Mark Blyth
On growth models, supply chains, and dollar hegemony
Mark Blyth is William R. Rhodes Professor of International Political Economy at Brown University and a Faculty Fellow at Brown’s Watson Institute for International Studies. His research examines how the interests of state level economic actors shape ideological consensus and…
February 18, 2020
SourcesIn an employer-sponsored healthcare system like that of the United States, deteriorating labor market protections have immediate consequences for access to healthcare. Democratic primary candidates have presented a number of proposals to address declining rates of insurance, ranging in degrees…
February 13, 2020
InterviewsAusterity and Ideology
An interview with Kim Phillips-Fein
Kim Phillips-Fein is an associate professor of history at New York University and the author of the books "Invisible Hands: the Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal" and "Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics",…
February 10, 2020
SourcesStandard theories of development have been predicated on the goal of an industrialized economy with the potential for full and regularized employment. Such a view necessitates a host of statistical categories to define and measure labor markets. In a 2000…
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…
February 3, 2020
SourcesSample size does more than determine the sort of methodology appropriate for a given study; theorists of social science have long pointed out that the number of case studies considered determines the sorts of questions researchers can analyze and the…
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 29, 2020
InterviewsHistoricizing the Self-Evident
An interview with Lorraine Daston
Lorraine Daston has published widely in the history of science, including on probability and statistics, scientific objectivity and observation, game theory, monsters, and much else. Director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science since 1995 (emeritus as…
January 27, 2020
SourcesDeindustrialization 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…
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 21, 2020
SourcesDespite contributing towards a series of crises (from the third world debt crisis of the 80s to the Euro-crisis of 2010), sovereign debt is rising across low-, middle-, and high-income economies, leading to renewed discussions around the macroeconomic consequences of…
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…
January 13, 2020
SourcesResearchers of policy history have long deliberated over explanatory frameworks: institutionalist accounts tend to focus on inherited conditions and path dependency in political development, while others stress the importance of social movements in shaping policy. Among the more dynamic analytical…
January 9, 2020
Phenomenal WorksPhenomenal Works: Alice Evans
Four books and papers on the 'despondency trap'
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…
January 6, 2020
SourcesFoundational to the discipline of international relations, historian E. H. Carr's path-breaking book Twenty Years' Crisis was the first to systematically assess the (then-emerging) field as consisting of 'realist' and 'idealist' approaches. Published in 1939, the book carefully outlines the…
December 23, 2019
SourcesThank you for reading the JFI letter this year. As we prepare for another year of research and link sharing, here's some of what we sent in 2019. We'll see you in 2020. OVER ILLUMINATION Highlights from a year of…
December 20, 2019
ReviewsRenegotiating Education
Caitlin Zaloom's ethnography of the American higher ed crisis
Indebted is anthropologist and NYU Professor Caitlin Zaloom’s deep dive into the middle-class American family’s struggle to solve the college cost puzzle. Its animating question: How can middle-class families maintain their status and provide their children with as much opportunity…
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…
December 16, 2019
SourcesThe recent boom in identifying and measuring monopsony in labor markets has brought the question of employers' wage-setting power to the fore of various academic and policy debates. (For an overview, see our blog post by Owen Davis from earlier…
December 9, 2019
SourcesLike many systems of social provision—from housing to pensions—American education has become increasingly financialized. In a recent paper, Charlie Eaton, Jacob Habinek, Adam Goldstein, Cyrus Dioun, Daniela García Santibáñez Godoy, and Robert Osley-Thomas consider the scope and consequences of financialization…
November 28, 2019
Phenomenal WorksPhenomenal Works: Alexander Hertel-Fernandez
On unions, advocacy, and influence
Alexander Hertel-Fernandez is a political scientist who studies the mechanisms of influence. Focusing on the strategies of organized interests, including both business and labor, Hertel-Fernandez's helps illuminate crucial and poorly understood levers of American political economy.
November 25, 2019
SourcesIn recent decades, policy approaches to housing provision have focused on increasing the incomes of subsidy recipients and, due to declining federal investment, promoting tenant mobility both between subsidized housing units and out of the public housing system altogether. But…
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 18, 2019
SourcesMajor accounts of the role of the state in economic development have held that the state is essential for ensuring private property rights—that democratic checks and balances encourage investment and therefore economic growth. Other schools of development stress the importance…
November 14, 2019
Phenomenal WorksPhenomenal Works: Beth Popp Berman
On knowledge, institutions, and social policy
Beth Popp Berman is sociologist whose research focuses on the history of knowledge, organizations and public policy making.
November 12, 2019
SourcesIn addition to lagging behind many European economies in the breadth, amount, and quality of welfare provision, the United States also exhibits relatively low rates of take-up among the benefits it does make available. Non-take-up rates can be accounted for—at…
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 31, 2019
Phenomenal WorksPhenomenal Works: Leah Stokes
Networks of climate denial
Leah Stokes is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Santa Barbara. Her research spans representation and public opinion, voting behavior, and environmental and energy politics. ways forward in the climate crisis. Below, her…
October 28, 2019
SourcesTax reform is at the forefront of contemporary policy debate. US citizens pay taxes at lower rates than their European counterparts, and a growing number of researchers agree that progressive taxes on wealth and income have the potential to rectify…
October 24, 2019
InterviewsExploitation, Cooperation, and Distributive Justice
An interview with John Roemer
Throughout his career, John Roemer's work has been uniquely situated between the fields of microeconomics, game theory, philosophy, and political science. His research makes use of the tools of classical economics to analyze dynamics typically thought to be outside the…
October 21, 2019
SourcesOf the many justifications for introducing a universal basic income, automation is among the most popular. Over the past years, a slew of reports and endless media coverage has raised the specter of mass "technological unemployment"—a possible future that has…
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 15, 2019
SourcesAs student debt grows and the labor market stagnates, a growing body of research seeks to answer questions about the worthiness of college. What characterizes the schools and populations for whom college is worth it? What does worthiness mean—financial, intellectual,…
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…
October 7, 2019
SourcesBreathless media coverage of machine learning tools and their applications often obscures the processes that allow them to function. Time and again, services billed or understood by users as automatic are revealed to rely on undervalued, deskilled human labor.
September 30, 2019
SourcesIn his 1990 book, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (TWWC), sociologist Gosta Esping-Andersen identified three categories of European welfare regimes: liberal, conservative, and social democratic. In Esping-Andersen's account, these welfare regimes developed according to the sorts of coalitions formed…
September 26, 2019
InterviewsOptimizing the Crisis
An interview with Seda Gürses and Bekah Overdorf
Software that structures increasingly detailed aspects of contemporary life is built for optimization. These programs require a mapping of the world in a way that is computationally legible, and translating the messy world into one that makes sense to a…
September 23, 2019
SourcesRecent years have seen a surge in scholarship that critically evaluates the origins and impact of the law and economics movement. Out of the many theoretical bedrocks of the movement, the Coase Theorem is one of the most significant. Stemming…
September 16, 2019
SourcesTwo weeks ago today marked the passing of the great Immanual Wallerstein. His work has had resounding influence across fields: from literature, to legal theory, education, development studies, and international relations. Among his foremost contributions is the four volume Modern…
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.
September 9, 2019
SourcesWhile the thorny ethical questions dogging the development and implementation of algorithmic decision systems touch on all manner of social phenomena, arguably the most widely discussed is that of racial discrimination. The watershed moment for the algorithmic ethics conversation was…
September 3, 2019
SourcesLast 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…
August 26, 2019
SourcesWithout any “evidence of fraud, malfeasance or deliberate deception or manipulation,” or any promotion of inaccurate views, how can bias enter a scientific assessment? In their new book, Discerning Experts, Michael Oppenheimer, Naomi Oreskes, Dale Jamieson, et al explore the…
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 19, 2019
SourcesThe role of labor (with some notable exceptions) has been relatively marginal in debates over how to decarbonize the economy. But given the growing number of clean energy jobs (and some recent labor news), it is reasonable to predict that…
August 12, 2019
SourcesThe emergence of companies like Uber and Taskrabbit has prompted commentators across legal, economic, and policy research spheres to pronounce the beginning of a new era of work, marked by the prevalence of technologically mediated casual work arrangements.
August 8, 2019
InterviewsNetworks, Weak Ties, and Thresholds
An Interview with Mark Granovetter
Few living scholars have had the influence of Mark Granovetter. In a career spanning almost 50 years, his seminal contributions to his own field of sociology have spread to shape research in economics, computer science, and even epidemiology.
August 5, 2019
SourcesTechnology companies are coming under increased scrutiny for the ethical consequences of their work, and some have formed advisory boards or hired ethicists on staff. (Google's AI ethics board quickly disintegrated.) Another approach is to train computer scientists in ethics…
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 29, 2019
SourcesMany recent policy proposals are variations on European programs implemented throughout the twentieth century. Despite their marked diversity, European welfare states share a foundation of social protections largely responsible for their lower rates of inequality. Theories on the development of…
July 22, 2019
SourcesAt the Phenomenal World, we have been publishing pieces covering a wide-range of topics, many of which are common ground in this newsletter. Below, in no particular order, is a round-up of some recent work in case you missed it.
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 15, 2019
SourcesBeyond growing calls for welfare expansion and a more progressive tax system, recent policy debates have begun to consider alternative models of firm ownership. Last year, the UK Labour party published a report outlining a path towards a more diverse…
July 11, 2019
ReviewsKeynes versus the Keynesians
A new book by James Crotty reexamines the career of John Maynard Keynes
What drives economic growth and stagnation? What types of methodologies and tools do we need to accurately explain economic epochs in the past and present? What models and policy approaches can lead to prosperity for all?
July 8, 2019
SourcesHigher education is widely understood to be a major driver of intergenerational mobility in the United States. Despite the clear (and growing) inequalities between and within colleges, it remains the case that higher education reduces the impact that parental class…
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…
July 1, 2019
SourcesHow can evidence inform the decisions of policymakers? What value do policymakers ascribe to academic research? In January, we highlighted Yale's Evidence in Practice project, which emphasizes the divergence between policymakers' needs and researchers' goals. Other work describes the complexity…
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.
June 24, 2019
SourcesIn past newsletters, we have highlighted research and policy proposals relating to the Green New Deal and the literature surrounding "degrowth"—the idea that the growth imperative is at odds with human flourishing. In a recent exchange, economist Robert Pollin debates…
June 17, 2019
SourcesDebates over the relevance of indicators like GDP for assessing the health of domestic economies are persistent and growing. Critics of such measures point to the failures of such measures to holistically capture societal wellbeing, and argue in favor of…
June 13, 2019
InterviewsElections, Social Democracy, and the Neoliberal Shift
An interview with Adam Przeworski
Throughout the 20th century, radical social movements were plagued by their relationship to existing state institutions. Across Western Europe, labor movements found political expression in parties like the Swedish Social Democrats, the German SPD, and the French Socialist Party.
June 10, 2019
SourcesDebates over the political impacts of Central Bank Independence (CBI) reached their peak in the late 90s and early 2000s, due to rising inequality and the volatility of financial markets. Initiated with the 1977 Federal Reserve Act and Paul Volcker’s…
June 3, 2019
SourcesJay Inslee, the governor of Washington State and Democratic presidential candidate, has made climate policy the center of his longer-than-long-shot campaign. On May 3rd, he released 8 pages of goals, and on May 16th, he released the 35-page, 28-policy “Evergreen…
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…
May 28, 2019
SourcesThe Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is the country's largest anti-poverty program. In 2018, over 20 million filers received $63 billion in EITC refunds. Because of its bipartisan popularity and its secure position in the tax code, with no distinct…
May 20, 2019
SourcesTitle IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965 permits certain postsecondary institutions to be eligible for federal financial aid funds. A wide variety of programs are Title IV eligible: public, private, for-profit, vocational. Yet there are also a vast…
May 16, 2019
InterviewsFeminist Theory, Gender Inequity, and Basic Income
An interview with Almaz Zelleke
Feminist and women's movements in the mid-20th century developed demands for an unconditional basic income that emerged out of concrete experiences with the welfare state. What can the current discussion around UBI learn from examining this largely sidelined history?
May 13, 2019
SourcesAs economies across Europe and in the United States have become more knowledge-based, urban-centered, and tech-driven, people in manufacturing reliant regions have seen declining life expectancies, stagnating real incomes, and minimal job growth.
May 3, 2019
InterviewsHow Do States Pay for Wars?
An interview with Rosella Cappella Zielinski
Academic study of war in the social sciences is as old as historiography itself, and political economists have considered the economic logic of war and peace for centuries. Yet social scientists have left several questions on the financing of conflict…
April 29, 2019
SourcesIn nearly every major urban center, housing affordability is in crisis. Since the 1960s, median home value has risen by 112% across the country, while median owner incomes rose just 50%. For renters, especially since 2008, the problem is increasingly…
April 13, 2019
SourcesCurrent UBI discussions emerged out of concerns over the role of human beings in a machine-dominated labor market. In 2013, a paper by Oxford University professors Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne claimed that 47% of US jobs were at…
April 6, 2019
SourcesThe 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…
March 30, 2019
SourcesPublic research universities have long been understood as engines of meritocratic social mobility. Relative to other higher ed institutions, public universities remain those with the highest mobility rates. But research over the past decade has shown that these institutions are…
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 23, 2019
SourcesThere 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…
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 16, 2019
SourcesResearch surrounding student debt and the labor market value of postsecondary degrees focuses primarily on students obtaining a 4-year degree, secondarily on students receiving a 2-year degree, and only rarely considers students in certificate programs—non-degree awards that are cheaper and…
March 9, 2019
SourcesIn the digital ethics literature, there's a consistent back-and-forth between attempts at designing algorithmic tools that promote fair outcomes in decision-making processes, and critiques that enumerate the limits of such attempts. A December paper by ANDREW SELBST, dana boyd, SORELLE…
March 2, 2019
SourcesHousehold debt has proliferated in the past decade. In the final quarter of 2018, it reached $13.54 trillion—an $869 billion increase since the previous peak in 2008 and a 21.4% increase since the post-crisis trough. While it is now widely…
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,…
February 23, 2019
SourcesMore than a decade after the financial crisis of 2008, median household incomes have stagnated at their pre-2008 levels, and global economic growth is expected to decline further from what is already a historic low. While the unemployment rate has…
February 16, 2019
SourcesIn recent weeks, a familiar debate over how we understand the global poverty rate across time reappeared in mainstream op-ed pages. Sparked initially by Bill Gates tweeting out an infographic produced by Our World in Data—which visualizes massive decreases (94%…
February 9, 2019
SourcesThis week, we delve into the persisting inequalities of our higher education system. Since Winston, Hill, and Boyd found that only 10% of students at elite universities came from families who fell within the bottom 40% of the income distribution…
February 4, 2019
ReviewsCash and Income Studies: A Literature Review of Theory and Evidence
A broad review of cash transfer programs.
What happens when you give people cash? How do they use the money, and how does it change their lives? Every cash study on this list is different: the studies vary in intervention type, research design, location, size, disbursement amount,…
February 2, 2019
SourcesIn the ever expanding digital ethics literature, a number of researchers have been advocating a turn away from enticing technical questions—how to mathematically define fairness, for example—and towards a more expansive, foundational approach to the ethics of designing digital decision…
January 26, 2019
SourcesA new paper from the Center for Effective Global Action at Berkeley surveys a topic important to our researchers here at JFI: the question of long-run effects of interventions. In our literature review of cash transfer studies, we identified the…
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?