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321. Paying the Price for the Economic Crisis

Author:
Bethan Emmett
Publication Date:
03-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
New research by Oxfam International uncovers a hidden aspect of the global economic crisis – its impact on women workers in developing countries. Preliminary findings from Oxfam's research with women in global supply chains shows that the crisis is having a devastating impact on their livelihoods, their rights, and their families. Women are often first to be laid off, with employers leaving pay outstanding and evading legal obligations to give notice and pay compensation, and governments turning a blind eye, with devastating knock-on effects. Last year, women's wages were putting food on the table and children through school in millions of families. Now, the lives of women who were already suffering from poor labour conditions have become even more precarious.
Topic:
Economics, Gender Issues, Globalization, Political Economy, and Labor Issues

322. Financial Globalization and Economic Policies

Author:
Shang-Jin Wei, Eswar Prasad, M. Ayhan Kose, and Kenneth Rogoff
Publication Date:
04-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Brookings Institution
Abstract:
We review the large literature on various economic policies that could help developing economies effectively manage the process of financial globalization. Our central findings indicate that policies promoting financial sector development, institutional quality and trade openness appear to help developing countries derive the benefits of globalization. Similarly, sound macroeconomic policies are an important prerequisite for ensuring that financial integration is beneficial. However, our analysis also suggests that the relationship between financial integration and economic policies is a complex one and that there are unavoidable tensions inherent in evaluating the risks and benefits associated with financial globalization. In light of these tensions, structural and macroeconomic policies often need to be tailored to take into account country specific circumstances to improve the risk-benefit tradeoffs of financial integration. Ultimately, it is essential to see financial integration not just as an isolated policy goal but as part of a broader package of reforms and supportive macro- economic policies.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Globalization, and Political Economy

323. Managing Arab Sovereign Wealth in Turbulent Times—and Beyond

Author:
Sven Behrendt and Bassma Kodmani
Publication Date:
04-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
The debate about the role that sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) from Arab and other emerging economies play in international financial markets has been a highly cyclical one. Only twelve months ago, the Western public questioned the deeper rationales for sovereign investments in what were perceived to be strategic assets of Western economies. Commentators argued that these investments could harm the long-term competitiveness and national security of Western economies.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, Political Economy, and Foreign Direct Investment
Political Geography:
Arabia

324. Blunt Instruments: On Establishing the Causes of Economic Growth

Author:
Michael Clemens and Samuel Bazzi
Publication Date:
05-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Despite intense concern that many instrumental variables used in growth regressions may be weak, invalid, or both, top journals continue to publish studies of economic growth based on problematic instruments. Doing so risks pushing the entire literature closer to irrelevance. We illustrate hidden problems with identification in recent prominently published and widely cited growth studies using their original data. We urge researchers to take three steps to overcome the shortcomings: grounding research in somewhat more generalized theoretical models, deploying the latest methods to test sensitivity to violations of the exclusion restriction, and opening the “black box” of the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) with supportive evidence of instrument strength.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Political Economy

325. The Microeconomic Determinants of Emigration and Return Migration and Return Migration of the Best and Brightest: Evidence from the Pacific

Author:
John Gibson and David McKenzie
Publication Date:
05-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
A unique survey which tracks worldwide the best and brightest academic performers from three Pacific countries is used to assess the extent of emigration and return migration among the very highly skilled, and to analyze, at the microeconomic level, the determinants of these migration choices. Although we estimate that the income gains from migration are very large, not everyone migrates and many return. Within this group of highly skilled individuals the emigration decision is found to be most strongly associated with preference variables such as risk aversion, patience, and choice of subjects in secondary school, and not strongly linked to either liquidity constraints or to the gain in income to be had from migrating. Likewise, the decision to return is strongly linked to family and lifestyle reasons, rather than to the income opportunities in different countries. Overall the data show a relatively limited role for income maximization in distinguishing migration propensities among the very highly skilled, and a need to pay more attention to other components of the utility maximization decision.
Topic:
Economics, Migration, Political Economy, and Immigration
Political Geography:
Australia/Pacific

326. Reforming and Reinforcing the Revolution: The Post-TRIPS Politics of Patents in Latin America

Author:
Kenneth Shadlen
Publication Date:
04-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
Abstract:
National policies toward intellectual property (IP) were revolutionized in the 1990s, as countries adopted new systems to conform to the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs). TRIPS-style IP regimes make patents available for more types of knowledge, grant long periods of patent protection, and endow patent owners with strong rights of exclusion. This paper analyzes two contrasting patterns of political mobilization and pressures for change that newly-introduced, TRIPS-style regimes became subject to by the early 21st Century. Most governments faced pressures to address aspects of their IP systems regarding pharmaceutical patents; governments came under pressure to reform their new patent systems, calling into question the appropriateness and utility of broad and strong private rights of exclusion as tools for disseminating knowledge. Most governments also faced pressures to modify aspects of their patent systems more broadly related to science, technology, and indigenous innovation (STI); governments came under pressure to reinforce their new patent systems, buttressing the role of private rights of exclusion as mechanisms to incentivize the creation and distribution of knowledge and technology. I provide a political explanation for the contrasting trajectories of reform and reinforcement by examining how different policy arrangements generate and mobilize interests for continuity and discontinuity. The focus is on asymmetric patterns of interest mobilization: those actors who benefit from policy interventions tend to mobilize more than those who suffer; those actors who suffer retain the capacities for mobilization and resistance more in the area of health-drugs than STI.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, Political Economy, and Intellectual Property/Copyright
Political Geography:
Latin America

327. Wal-Mart: The Panopticon of Time

Author:
Max Haiven and Scott Stoneman
Publication Date:
04-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
At a moment when the future of global capitalism seems altogether uncertain, we want to take another look at Wal-Mart, the world's largest corporation. Despite its importance to the American and global economy, surprisingly little critical scholarship has emerged on the “Beast from Bentonville.” In this working-paper we suggest that we can understand Wal-Mart as both a unique instance as well as a telling example of tendencies within the process of planetary social transformation that has come to be known as globalization. In particular, Wal-Mart strives to become what we will call a “panopticon of time”: a particularly acute and emblematic crystallization of social, economic and technological forces which express a new constellation of power under globalizing capitalism. Wal- Mart represents among the most advanced consolidations of corporate, financial, technological and managerial technologies which employees afford it unprecedented control over consumers, employees, sub-contractors, communities and even nations, as well as unprecedented profit. We argue its power stems in part from its ability to hinge various modes of power: the local and the global, spectacle and surveillance, the private and the public, the everyday and the exceptional. And it is driven as much by the need to intervene in the production of subjects and the shaping of networks as the need to generate profit; indeed, these two imperatives have become inseparable. Wal-Mart is a symptom and an agent of the depotentiation of time under corporate globalization, the confinement or incarceration of temporality within the neoliberal webs of technology, commerce and management.
Topic:
Globalization, Political Economy, Political Theory, and Power Politics

328. Labor Migration in the Baltic States

Author:
Jill Leandro and Janis Mikits
Publication Date:
01-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Department of Social Sciences at West Point, United States Military Academy
Abstract:
The purpose of this analysis is to evaluate labor migration in the Baltic States, determine its extent and its causes, and suggest possible policy recommendations designed to confront unsustainable emigration and brain drain.
Topic:
Education, Ethnic Conflict, Globalization, Migration, and Political Economy

329. General patterns of women's representation at the European Parliament: did something change after 2004?

Author:
Willy Beauvallet and Sébastien Michon
Publication Date:
01-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Political Sociology
Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to analyze social and political features of women among members of European Parliament during its Sixth legislature. Beyond statistics aggregation, we will try to adopt a comparative perspective which includes three dimensions. The first one is historical. How can we understand evolutions in the composition of this sample? The second is cross-cutting and focuses on differences between women and men and evolutions of those diverging patterns. The third dimension attempts to analyze structural oppositions between national delegations on the path to feminization. Together, these interrogations will allow us to discuss general patterns of women's presence at the European Parliament after the 2004 and 2007 Eastern enlargements. The paper is based upon quantitative and qualitative data collected within the framework of a long-term sociological study of MEPs conducted at the University of Strasbourg.
Topic:
Civil Society, Gender Issues, Political Economy, and Politics
Political Geography:
Europe

330. Historical and political sociology of the EU: What's new in France?

Author:
Didier Georgakakis
Publication Date:
01-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Political Sociology
Abstract:
This article provides an overview of the hundred or so papers in historical and political sociology of the EU published in France over the last two years (particularly around the sociology of knowledge and sociology of trajectories and positions of the social agents and groups who make up the European political space), and analyses some of their contributions to the international debate, focusing notably on the central political and institutional space of the EU.
Topic:
Nuclear Weapons, Political Economy, and Political Theory
Political Geography:
Europe and France