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51. EU Pressure Insufficient to Gain U.S. Visa Waiver for Poles

Author:
Marek Wasinski
Publication Date:
04-2016
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Polish Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
In a communication of 12 April, the European Commission assessed the potential political and economic consequences of suspending visa exemption for U.S. citizens. Lacking pressure from individual EU Member States, the Commission discouraged such a move and gave the EU Council and European Parliament three months to take an official position. It seems almost certain that the measure of applying pressure on a non-EU country will not be used to help Poland and four other Member States obtain visa-free travel to the United States or other countries with a similar restriction. However, if current trends continue, Poland should join the U.S. Visa Waiver Programme in five years.
Topic:
Economics, Politics, European Union, and Citizenship
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

52. S-Japan Relations and Southeast Asia: Meeting Regional Demands

Author:
Saul P. Limaye and Tsutomu Kikuchi
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
Until recently, Southeast Asia had not been a region of sustained focus for the US-Japan relationship. But the situation is changing. The international relations of the Asia-Pacific is becoming more "multipolarized." This requires the US and Japan to think about the future of the region beyond the issue of US-China relations, which has preoccupied past discussions. A number of nations and institutions in the Asia-Pacific region will substantially affect the region's future. Southeast Asian nations and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are among them. A new era of more coordinated, sustained, and combined commercial and security involvement by the US and Japan in Southeast Asia may be at hand. In light of these changes, the East-West Center in Washington (EWCW), in collaboration with the Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA), and through the support of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation (SPF), initiated a dialogue with Southeast Asians about their perspectives on how the US-Japan relationship and alliance could or should approach cooperation with the region.
Topic:
Security, Economics, Markets, and Peacekeeping
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, and Asia-Pacific

53. Global Safe Haven Bonding Foreign and Domestic Owners of the U.S. Public Debt

Author:
Sandy Brian Hager
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Global Political Economy, University of Sussex
Abstract:
This paper offers new theoretical and empirical insights to explain the resilience of the U.S. Treasuries market as a safe haven for global investment. Going beyond the standard systemic explanation, the paper highlights the importance of domestic politics in reinforcing the safe haven status of U.S. Treasury securities. In particular, the research shows how a formidable “bond” of interests unites domestic and foreign owners of the public debt and works to sustain U.S. power in global finance. Foreigners who now own roughly half of the U.S. public debt have something to gain from their domestic counterparts. The top one percent of U.S. households that dominate domestic ownership of the U.S. public debt have considerable political clout, thus alleviating foreign concerns about the creditworthiness of the U.S. federal government. Domestic owners of the U.S. public debt, in turn, have something to gain from the seemingly insatiable foreign appetite for U.S. Treasury securities. In supplying the U.S. federal government and U.S. households with cheap credit, foreign investors in U.S. Treasuries help to deflect challenges to the top one percent within the wealth and income hierarchy.
Topic:
Debt, Economics, International Political Economy, Inequality, and Finance
Political Geography:
United States and United Kingdom

54. Global Value Chains or Global Poverty Chains? A new research agenda

Author:
Benjamin Selwyn
Publication Date:
06-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Global Political Economy, University of Sussex
Abstract:
Global Value Chain (GVC) analysis is part and parcel of mainstream development discourse and policy. Supplier firms are encouraged, with state support, to ‘link-up’ with trans-national lead firms. Such arrangements, it is argued, will reduce poverty and contribute to meaningful socio-economic development. This portrayal of global political economic relations represents a ‘problem-solving’ interpretation of reality. This article proposes an alternative analytical approach rooted in ‘critical theory’ which reformulates the GVC approach to better investigate and explain the reproduction of global poverty, inequality and divergent forms of national development. It suggests re-labelling GVC as Global Poverty Chain (GPC) analysis. GPC’s are examined in the textiles, food, and high-tech sectors. The article details how workers in these chains are systematically paid less than their subsistence costs, how trans-national corporations use their global monopoly power to capture the lion’s share of value created within these chains, and how these relations generate processes of immiserating growth. The article concludes by considering how to extend GPC analysis.
Topic:
Development, Economics, International Political Economy, Labor Issues, Inequality, and Global Political Economy
Political Geography:
United States, Eastern Europe, and Asia

55. The problem with ‘embedded liberalism’: the World Bank and the myth of Bretton Woods

Author:
Samuel Appleton
Publication Date:
10-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Global Political Economy, University of Sussex
Abstract:
The Bretton Woods conference is conventionally understood as a radical break between the laissez faire order and its ‘embedded liberal’ successor, in which finance was suppressed in the interest of trade and productive growth. The new institutions, particularly the IBRD are often considered emblematic of this. In response to this, the paper argues that the Bretton Woods order required the enlistment, not repression, of private American finance. Firstly, laissez-faire era proposals for international financial institutions provided important precedents for the Bretton Woods institutions. Second, these were predicated on the uniquely deep liquidity of American financial markets following upon Progressive-era reforms, in the legacy of which the Roosevelt administration sought to locate the New Deal. Thirdly, they found new relevance in the 1940s as the IBRD turned by necessity to American financial markets for operating capital. Negotiating the imperative of commercial creditworthiness had two important consequences. First, it entailed the structural and procedural transformation of the IBRD, and allowed management to carve out a proprietary terrain in which its agency was decisive. Second, this suggests that US agendas were mediated by the Bank’s institutional imperatives – and that finance was no more ‘embedded’ during the Bretton Woods era than its predecessor.
Topic:
Development, Economics, World Bank, Global Markets, International Development, and Global Political Economy
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, and Latin America

56. Comparing Transnational IPR Policy: Closing the Gap in Canada's Patenting Regime

Author:
Samah Rahman and Shashanth Shetty
Publication Date:
07-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
Canada is lagging behind in research and development (R&D) commercialization, ranking fifteenth in the World Economic Forum’s 2015 Global Competitiveness Report. One of the most important contributing factors to the gap between R&D and competitiveness is that new entrepreneurs lack the monetary and informational resources to access intellectual property (IP) legal expertise. The authors of this brief argue that the Canadian government’s strategies have been ineffective, and its current policy initiatives have failed to consider the importance of disseminating IP legal knowledge directly to innovators. It is recommended that the government look to the models used by the United States and South Korea to mobilize IP legal knowledge within the entrepreneurial community. This can be achieved by establishing a national IP legal clinic at the university level — as well as increasing funding for existing programs and creating a virtual clinic — and including an IP rights application course in select university programs, targeting innovators who will require IP legal advice in the future.
Topic:
Economics and Intellectual Property/Copyright
Political Geography:
United States, Canada, and South Korea

57. Quantity Theory of Money Redux? Will Inflation Be the Legacy of Quantitative Easing?

Author:
William R. Cline
Publication Date:
05-2015
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Abstract:
Since the onset of the Federal Reserve's unconventional program of large scale asset purchases, known as quantitative easing (QE), some economists and financial practitioners have feared that the consequent buildup of the Fed's balance sheet could lead to a large expansion of the money supply, and that such an increase could cause a sharp rise in inflation. So far fears about induced inflation have not been validated. This Policy Brief examines the basis for the original concerns about inflation in terms of the classic quantity theory of money, which holds that inflation occurs when the money supply expands more rapidly than warranted by increases in real production. The Brief first reviews the US experience and shows that whereas rapid money growth might have been a plausible explanation of inflation in the 1960s through the early 1980s, subsequent data have not supported such an explanation. It then shows that the quantity theory of money has not really been put to the test after the Great Recession, because a sharp increase in banks' excess reserves and corresponding sharp decline in the "money multiplier" has meant that the rise in the Federal Reserve's balance sheet has not translated into increased money available to the public in the usual fashion. The most likely aftermath of quantitative easing remains one of benign price behavior. However, if nascent inflationary conditions materialize, the Federal Reserve will need to manage adroitly the large amounts of banks' excess reserves that have accumulated as a consequence of QE in order to limit inflationary pressures.
Topic:
Economics, International Political Economy, International Trade and Finance, and Federal Reserve
Political Geography:
United States

58. Reshoring by US Firms: What Do the Data Say?

Author:
Lindsay Oldenski
Publication Date:
09-2015
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
Reshoring—when firms shift manufacturing production back to the United States—has been getting a great deal of publicity lately. Oldenski examines the most recent data on the global operations of US firms and concludes that although some companies have reversed their previous offshoring decisions, there is no evidence of a widespread reshoring trend. But this should not be considered a defeat for US competitiveness. US multinationals continue to move operations offshore, but they also continue to grow stronger, producing more in their US operations and adding more to total US exports. The structure of US manufacturing has changed, but the ability to adapt to the changing nature of global business has been and will continue to be crucial to the continued growth of US manufacturing.
Topic:
Economics and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

59. Chinese Investment and CFIUS: Time for an Updated (and Revised) Perspective

Author:
Theodore Moran
Publication Date:
09-2015
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
For more than a decade, China has complained about what it maintains has been a pattern of erratic and politicized treatment of Chinese investors when they attempt to acquire US companies. The Chinese want the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to be more open and transparent in its rulings and to not discriminate against Chinese firms. The United States is not likely to accede to these demands in any formal or legal manner. Moran proposes practical steps to address the concerns of Chinese investors without diluting CFIUS procedures. He provides a national security threat assessment filter, which allows Chinese investors—like investors of all nationalities—to determine when their proposed acquisitions might pose a genuine threat and when any such threat is simply not plausible. He also suggests that first-time Chinese investors seek expert counsel to overcome the secrecy surrounding CFIUS objections to figure out how to proceed with problematic acquisitions.
Topic:
Economics, Markets, and Foreign Direct Investment
Political Geography:
United States

60. Innovative Clusters & New Work: A Case Study of TaskRabbit

Author:
Emily Isaac
Publication Date:
03-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
In the past five years, San Francisco has become home to dozens of new online and mobile “service networking” companies that claim to be “revolutionizing” the way work gets done. Making up what has come to be known as the “platform economy,” these technology companies provide the platforms for online and mobile marketplaces in which users can buy and sell their goods and services. Together, these “platform economy” companies make up a concentrated innovative cluster in the San Francisco Bay Area, and, more specifically, San Francisco proper. One of the sharing economy’s pioneers and largest success stories, TaskRabbit Inc. allows users to outsource small jobs and tasks to local contractors—or, in company lingo, neighborhood “Taskers.” Launched out of Boston in 2008, TaskRabbit is just one of many tech startups that have left Boston for the San Francisco Bay Area. Since relocating to San Francisco, the company has received $37.5 million in venture funding, is available in 20 cities, and reportedly has 1.25 million users and over 25,000 Taskers. Indeed, TaskRabbit exemplifies the immeasurable benefits of strategically locating a firm in an industry cluster.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, Science and Technology, Communications, and Labor Issues
Political Geography:
United States