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681. Setting the NAFTA Agenda on Climate Change

Author:
Jeffrey J. Schott and Meera Fickling
Publication Date:
08-2009
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE)
Abstract:
When the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) entered into force 15 years ago, environmental issues were an afterthought appended to a side accord, the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC). Today, environmental problems loom large on the global agenda, and climate change, in particular, ranks among the top issues on the North American agenda as the leaders of the United States, Canada, and Mexico convene in Guadalajara in August 2009. This policy brief examines the implications for NAFTA of national policies in the three countries to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and suggests steps that the partner countries can take together to further both their economic and environmental goals.
Topic:
Climate Change, Economics, Globalization, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Canada, North America, and Mexico

682. Recovery: The Global Financial Crisis and Middle-Income Countries

Author:
Alejandro Foxley
Publication Date:
07-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
No country has proved immune to the devastating effects of the current global financial crisis. But the middle-income countries of Eastern Europe, Latin America, and East Asia, which previously had achieved significant progress—economically and socially— have shown themselves to be particularly vulnerable. The crisis has high- lighted important lessons for these countries, which inhabit a twilight zone between the developed and developing worlds –and those that aspire to join their ranks – as they rebuild
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, Markets, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
Europe, East Asia, and Latin America

683. Making Markets for Merit Goods: The Political Economy of Antiretrovirals

Author:
Ethan B. Kapstein and Josh Busby
Publication Date:
08-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development (CGD)
Abstract:
This paper examines the role of policy entrepreneurs and global activists in shaping the international market for antiretroviral drugs to combat HIV/AIDS. When ARVs first came on the market in the 1990s they were exceedingly expensive; the cost of treatment was upwards of $10,000 per year. These drugs were thus accessible only to those patients who had high incomes. But in 2006, the “international community,” meeting at a United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS), made an astonishing pledge to those who were infected with HIV. It proclaimed that there should be universal access to ARV treatment. This UNGASS, following up on an earlier historic UN special session devoted entirely to AIDS in 2001, marked the first time in history that the international community pledged itself to chronic care for the ill, which in this case includes the approximately 30 million people around the world estimated to be HIV positive. How do we explain the transformation of ARVs from private goods, which only a few could afford, into merit goods that were (at least declaratively) to be made available to everyone? In other words, how does a norm of “universal access to treatment”—that no person should be denied these life-extending drugs—become the ethical basis for global public policy with respect to pharmaceutical allocation? What are the lessons of the ARV story for other global issues? These are the primary questions we explore in this paper. Briefly, we argue that the policy entrepreneurs and activists who promoted the creation of a universal access to treatment regime—of the transformation of ARVs into global merit goods—relied on a combination of moral arguments and ideas with favorable material circumstances. From the ethical perspective, the task of these entrepreneurs was to convince the “international community” that access to ARVs was a “human right,” or conversely to convince decision-makers that it was morally wrong to allocate these life-enhancing drugs solely on the basis of ability to pay. But from a material standpoint, these arguments were greatly facilitated by the lowering prices of ARVs caused by a combination of differential pricing (that is, lower prices for drugs in the developing world than in the advanced welfare states) and competition from generics producers, coupled with increases in foreign aid spending devoted to HIV/AIDS and other diseases.
Topic:
Globalization, Health, and Markets
Political Geography:
United Nations

684. Financing Environmental Improvements: A Literature Review of the Constraints on Financing Environmental Innovation

Author:
Daniel K. N. Johnson and Kristina M. Lybecker
Publication Date:
08-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Department of Economics and Business, Colorado College
Abstract:
In an effort to explore the potential for financing environmental innovation, this paper examines different forms of financing and attempts to evaluate their effectiveness. The study considers both public and private forms of funding as well as providing policy suggestions for the support of appropriate financing for eco-innovation.
Topic:
Climate Change, Development, Economics, Energy Policy, Environment, and Globalization

685. Emerging U.S. Climate Policy: Where We are and How We Got Here

Author:
Geoffrey Clemm and Mark Griffin Smith
Publication Date:
04-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Department of Economics and Business, Colorado College
Abstract:
After eight years of non-engagement, the new administration and the U.S. Congress, led by a majority in the President's party, are rapidly developing climate policy legislation. This paper summarizes past efforts to establish a national climate policy in the United States as well as the major forces influencing the current debate. While this debate is largely shaped by domestic considerations, it takes place as the international community moves to agree on a post-Kyoto policy regime in Copenhagen next December. Whether the United States is willing to take strong action will significantly influence the actions of other nations.
Topic:
Climate Change, Energy Policy, Environment, Globalization, and Treaties and Agreements
Political Geography:
United States

686. How globalization shapes individual risk perceptions and policy preferences

Author:
Stefanie Walter and Linda Maduz
Publication Date:
08-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
How does globalization affect individuals and their perceptions and policy preferences? This paper uses new developments in international trade theory to propose a new way of conceptualizing and measuring the extent to which an individual can be characterized as globalization winner or loser. We argue that the distributional effect of exposure to international competition is conditional on individuals' ability. Low-ability workers exposed to the international economy face lower wages and higher risk of unemployment, and can therefore be characterized as globalization losers. In contrast, high-ability workers receive higher wages when they are exposed to international competition are therefore identified as globalization winners. To illustrate the usefulness of this approach for political scientists, the paper revisits the debate about the determinants of social policy preferences. Using crossnational survey data from 16 countries we show that globalization has significant and heterogenous individual-level effects. Exposure to globalization increases risk perceptions and demands for more income redistribution among individuals with low levels of education (as a proxy for ability), but decreases these perceptions and demands among highly educated respondents.
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, Markets, and Political Theory

687. Commodity Price Volatility and World Market Integration since 1700

Author:
David S. Jacks, Kevin H. O'Rourke, and Jeffrey G. Williamson
Publication Date:
02-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Poor countries are more volatile than rich countries, and we know this volatility impedes their growth. We also know that commodity price volatility is a key source of those shocks. This paper explores commodity and manufactures price over the past three centuries to answer three questions: Has commodity price volatility increased over time? The answer is no: there is little evidence of trend since 1700. Have commodities always shown greater price volatility than manufactures? The answer is yes. Higher commodity price volatility is not the modern product of asymmetric industrial organizations - oligopolistic manufacturing versus competitive commodity markets - that only appeared with the industrial revolution. It was a fact of life deep into the 18th century. Does world market integration breed more or less commodity price volatility? The answer is less. Three centuries of history shows unambiguously that economic isolation caused by war or autarkic policy has been associated with much greater commodity price volatility, while world market integration associated with peace and pro-global policy has been associated with less commodity price volatility. Given specialization and comparative advantage, globalization has been good for growth in poor countries at least by diminishing price volatility. But comparative advantage has never been constant. Globalization increased poor country specialization in commodities when the world went open after the early 19th century; but it did not do so after the 1970s as the Third World shifted to labor-intensive manufactures. Whether price volatility or specialization dominates terms of trade and thus aggregate volatility in poor countries is thus conditional on the century.
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, and Monetary Policy
Political Geography:
Africa, South Asia, and Latin America

688. Ottoman De-Industrialization 1800-1913: Assessing the Shock, Its Impact and the Response

Author:
Jeffrey G. Williamson and Şevket Pamuk
Publication Date:
02-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
India and Britain were much bigger players in the 18th century world market for textiles than was Egypt, the Levant and the core of the Ottoman Empire, but these eastern Mediterranean regions did export carpets, silks and other textiles to Europe and the East. By the middle of the 19th century, they had lost most of their export market and much of their domestic market to globalization forces and rapid productivity growth in European manufacturing. Other local industries also suffered decline, and these regions underwent de-industrialization as a consequence. How different was Ottoman experience from the rest of the poor periphery? Was de-industrialization more or less pronounced? Was the terms of trade shock bigger or smaller? How much of Ottoman de-industrialization was due to falling world trade barriers—ocean transport revolutions and European liberal trade policy, how much due to factory-based productivity advance in Europe, how much to declining Ottoman competitiveness in manufacturing, how much to Ottoman railroads penetrating the interior, and how much to Ottoman policy? The paper uses a price-dual approach to seek the answers. It documents trends in export and import prices, relative to each other and to non-tradables, as well as to the unskilled wage. The impact of globalization, European productivity advance, Ottoman wage costs and policy are assessed by using a simple neo-Ricardian three sector model, and by comparison with what was taking place in the rest of the poor periphery.
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, International Trade and Finance, and Markets
Political Geography:
Britain, Europe, Turkey, India, and Egypt

689. Media as Global Diplomat

Author:
Sheldon Himelfarb, Tamara Gould, Eric Martin, and Tara Sonenshine
Publication Date:
06-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
Over the last decade, America's image abroad has declined, and public diplomacy is often cited as the reason for that decline. According to the BBC World Service Poll in 2008 and the University of Maryland's Program for International Policy Attitudes, publics in twenty-three countries view America's influence in the world more negatively than the influence of North Korea. Citizens in a NATO ally, Turkey, view the United States (64 percent) as the greatest threat to their country in the future.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Globalization, Science and Technology, Mass Media, and Public Opinion
Political Geography:
United States, America, and Turkey

690. A Global Fund for Education: Achieving Education for All

Author:
David Gartner
Publication Date:
08-2009
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Brookings Institution
Abstract:
In order to realize the world's commitment to ensuring education for all by 2015, important innovations and reforms will be needed in the governance and financing of global education. In 2008, Presidential Candidate Barack Obama committed to making sure that every child has the chance to learn by creating a Global Fund for Education. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has recently called for a new architecture of global cooperation that requires institutions to "combine the efficiency and capacity for action with inclusiveness." A new Global Fund for Education should be an independent and inclusive multi-stakeholder institution that builds upon existing institutions and supports country-driven solutions. It must be capable of mobilizing the approximately $7 billion annually still needed to achieve education for all, while holding all stakeholders accountable for achieving results with these resources.
Topic:
Education, Globalization, International Cooperation, and Governance