AMERICAN HISTORY: HIGONNET BOOK
June 30, 2007 at 5:02 pm | In Books, Globalization, History, USA | Leave a Comment
Attendant Cruelties:
Nation and Nationalism in American History
Patrice Higonnet (Author)
An exploration of the nature of American nationalism and its manipulation by unscrupulous presidents.
For nearly four centuries, religion and capitalism have been the central values of the American way. Most Americans have made of this national legacy a force of inclusion in a land shaped by successive waves of change and immigration. But others have chosen to define their nation’s values by exclusion, within a Republic to be sure, but within a democratic polity that was also constrained by race, class, and gender. In consequence, America has often been deeply divided—as during its terrible Civil War—but it is also the only country in the world where Left and Right have had and still have so broad a common origin. Anticlericalism and anticapitalism, which are the cornerstones of European leftist thinking, have never secured a broad audience in the United States.
Throughout the nation’s history, unforeseen circumstances have often decided which of these two themes—inclusion or exclusion—will prevail. Hence the power of America’s presidents to push their country toward either humane libertarianism—as did Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt during America’s darkest hours—or toward racism, imperialism, and war—as did Jackson with the expulsion of the Cherokees, McKinley with the Philippines in 1898, and George W. Bush with the whole world today.
Product Details:
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BLACK GOLD: GLOBALIZATION AS ECONOMIC VIOLENCE
June 30, 2007 at 12:34 pm | In Africa, Economics, Financial, Globalization | Leave a Comment
Black Gold (2006)
Coffee
Multinational coffee companies now rule our shopping malls and supermarkets and dominate the industry worth over $80 billion, making coffee the most valuable trading commodity in the world after oil.
But while we continue to pay for our lattes and cappuccinos, the price paid to coffee farmers remains so low that many have been forced to abandon their coffee fields. Nowhere is this paradox more evident than in Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee. Tadesse Meskela is one man on a mission to save his 74,000 struggling coffee farmers from bankruptcy. As his farmers strive to harvest some of the highest quality coffee beans on the international market, Tadesse travels the world in an attempt to find buyers willing to pay a fair price. Against the backdrop of Tadesse’s journey to London and Seattle, the enormous power of the multinational players that dominate the world’s coffee trade becomes apparent. New York commodity traders, the international coffee exchanges, and the double dealings of trade ministers at the World Trade Organisation reveal the many challenges Tadesse faces in his quest for a long term solution for his farmers.
LIFE AND DEBT: GLOBALIZATION AS ECONOMIC VIOLENCE
June 30, 2007 at 4:21 am | In Economics, Financial, Globalization | Leave a Comment
Life and Debt (2001)
GLOBALIZATION AS ECONOMIC VIOLENCE
Documentary look at the effects of globalization on Jamaican industry and agriculture.
This documentary perfectly captures the largely-ignored downside to globalization and the subsequent domination of the world economy by the U.S. and Western Europe. Namely, that undeveloped and developing countries continue to get poorer at the expense of the rich. This documentary presents the human side for discussions about the impact of multinational corporations on human rights abuses, price fixing in order to drive local competition into failure, environmental destruction as the result of World Bank-mandated “structural adjustments,” etc. This is a must-see for anyone who thinks that globalization is the only way for developing countries to compete with the rest of the world, and for anyone wanting to know the reasons behind all of those protests.
Director:
Writers:
Jamaica Kincaid (narration)
Jamaica Kincaid (novel)
Release Date:
28 February 2003 (UK)
Genre:
Plot Outline:
Documentary look at the effects of globalization on Jamaican industry and agriculture.
DARWIN’S NIGHTMARE: GLOBALIZATION AS ECONOMIC VIOLENCE
June 30, 2007 at 2:47 am | In Africa, Economics, Financial, Globalization | Leave a Comment
Darwin’s Nightmare (2004)
Globalization as Economic Violence
Darwin’s Nightmare is a shocking look at how globalization has caused a country to condemn the majority of its starving population to slavery, prostitution and drug addiction while every day overfed Europeans dine off of its vast stocks of Nile Perch.The setting is Lake Victoria, Tanzania, the world’s biggest tropical lake, and the Nile Perch (artificially introduced by man) has voraciously destroyed every other species of fish unfortunate to cross its path. Most of those lucky enough to have jobs, fish on the lake and sell their catch to be exported far away to Western Europe. None of the locals can afford to eat the meat of the Perch themselves. They’re reduced to scraping together some kind of nightmarish sustenance from the left over rotten fish heads (crawling with maggots) that wouldn’t even make it into pet food tins for the West.
Of course, prostitution, drug addiction and HIV are all rife. Everyone knows someone who has died from the ‘virus’. Large groups of orphaned homeless children sleep rough on the streets at night. And just to ensure that this convenient state of affairs remains in place (and, of course, to make a nice tidy profit), the vast ‘empty’ cargo planes arriving from Europe actually seem to be (illegally) laden with weaponry to be sold onto the genocidal wars in Africa. The planes are then packed full of huge amounts of Tanzania’s abundant supplies of fish (at times to the point that they’re too heavy to take off), and flown back out of the country while the majority of its population face the bleak prospect of famine.This film is a real eye opener and is genuinely shocking. It should be compulsory viewing for anyone enjoying the privileges of the Western lifestyle.
Director:
Writer:
Hubert Sauper (written by)
Release Date:
21 January 2005 (Austria)
Genre:
Plot Outline:
A documentary on the effect of fishing the Nile perch in Tanzania’s Lake Victoria. The predatory fish, which has wiped out the native species, is sold in European supermarkets, while starving Tanzanian families have to make do with the leftovers.
Globalization as Economic Violence
KAZAKHSTAN OIL: KASHAGAN FIELD
June 29, 2007 at 2:35 pm | In Asia, Economics, Financial, Globalization, Oil & Gas | Leave a Comment
Kashagan Field
Kashagan Field is an oil field located in Kazakhstan.
The field is situated in the northern part of the Caspian sea close to the Kazakhstan city of Atyrau.
The field was discovered in 2000. The field is operated by Eni under the North Caspian Sea Production Sharing Agreement. The Agreement is made up of 7 companies consisting of Eni (18.52%), Shell (18.52%) , Total (18.52%), ExxonMobil (18.52%), ConocoPhillips (9.26%), KazMunayGas (8.33%), Inpex
(8.33%). The original group included BG Group instead of KazMunayGas; however BG sold its stake to the partners in 2004.
Eni operates this project under the JV company name of AgipKCO. (Agip Kazakhstan North Caspian Operating Company N.V.)
One of the larger discoveries of this decade, it is estimated that the Kashagan Field contains up to 18 billion barrels of recoverable reserves of oil. The field faces a number of challenges: it is offshore in a particularly harsh environment, and it is located in a potentially volatile geopolitical climate.
Production is expected to begin either in 2008 or 2009, later than the initial plan date of 2005.
Currently (2006) the original concept is being redesigned and first oil may be even later.
It has been designated as the main source of supply for the Kazakhstan-China oil pipeline.
KAZAKHSTAN OIL
June 29, 2007 at 1:39 pm | In Asia, Economics, Financial, Globalization, Oil & Gas | Leave a Comment
Kazakhstan Oil
Kazakhstan currently produces more than a million barrels of oil a day, mostly from the Caspian Sea basin in the western part of the country. Analysts predict those exports will double, perhaps even triple, within the next five years, when oil wells are completed on the offshore Kashagan field, described as the world’s single largest oil discovery in 30 years.
Until recently, all of the pipelines used to transport oil and natural gas from Kazakhstan and neighboring Turkmenistan went through Russia, which is itself an oil-and gas-producing state.
The U.S. and Europe have tried to break this Russian monopoly by lobbying for the construction of a new pipeline toward Europe that would bypass Russian territory. The proposed Trans-Caspian Pipeline would run under the Caspian Sea from Central Asia to Azerbaijan, where it would link up with a recently constructed U.S.-backed pipeline to Turkey.
Kazakhstan Petroleum Association
480100 Republic of Kazakhstan, Almaty
43 Dostyk Ave., Suite 517
Tel: +7 (3272) 501816
Fax: +7 (3272) 501817
e-mail: kpa@arna.kz
Kazakhstan Petroleum Association, or KPA as it is known, unites 62 companies from 20 countries that are involved in the exploration and/or production of hydrocarbons as well as in the service sector of the oil & gas industry of Kazakhstan. KPA was officially registered in the Amsterdam Chamber of Commerce and Industry on 9 December 1997. KPA opened its representative office on 6 February 1998 in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
BIS REVIEWS NO. 73-71 BANK FOR INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENTS: GLOBAL ISLAMIC FINANCE
June 28, 2007 at 9:24 pm | In Economics, Financial, Globalization, India | Leave a Comment
BIS Review
Bank for International Settlements
Please find BIS Review No 73 attached as an Adobe Acrobat (PDF) file. Alternatively, you can access this BIS Review on the Bank for International Settlements’ website by clicking on http://www.bis.org/review/index.htm
What’s included?
BIS Review No 73 (28 June 2007)
T T Mboweni: The commodity price boom and the South African economy
Zeti Akhtar Aziz: Enhancing financial integration in the new Nusantara
Rasheed Mohammed Al Maraj: Developing the global Islamic financial markets
John Gieve: London, money & the UK economy
Grant Spencer: Recent intervention by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand in the foreign exchange market
Tharman Shanmugaratnam: Corporate governance developments in Singapore and the region
Mary C Nkosi: Profile of the Reserve Bank of Malawi
________________________________
please e-mail press.service@bis.org.
Please find BIS Review No 72 attached as an Adobe Acrobat (PDF) file. Alternatively, you can access this BIS Review on the Bank for International Settlements’ website by clicking on http://www.bis.org/review/index.htm
What’s included?
BIS Review No 72 (27 June 2007)
Nout Wellink: Basel II and financial institution resiliency
Nout Wellink: No globalisation without innovation
Nout Wellink: Microfinance – small loans, big differences
Martín Redrado: Financial intermediation through institutions or markets?
Anselmo L S Teng: Financial innovation and the win-win outcome for the regional economy
Timothy Ridley: What makes the Cayman Islands a successful international financial services centre?
Lim Hng Kiang: Trade links and business opportunities for Singapore
________________________________
please e-mail press.service@bis.org.
Please find BIS Review No 71 attached as an Adobe Acrobat (PDF) file. Alternatively, you can access this BIS Review on the Bank for International Settlements’ website by clicking on http://www.bis.org/review/index.htm
What’s included?
BIS Review No 71 (26 June 2007)
Jean-Pierre Roth: “A franc remains a franc” – 100 years of National Bank policy in support of monetary stability
Jean-Pierre Roth: SNB commemorative publication “The Swiss National Bank 1907-2007″
Jean-Claude Trichet: Swiss monetary policy as viewed by the European Central Bank
Njuguna Ndung’u: Workshop on the compilation of banking statistics in Kenya
Tiff Macklem: Global integration, monetary policy, and the international monetary system
Usha Thorat: Financial inclusion – the Indian experience
________________________________
please e-mail press.service@bis.org.
BIS Review No 71 available
“Publications, Service” Publications@bis.org
Press, Service Press.Service@bis.org
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
GLOBAL PERIPHERY: ATUL KOHLI BOOK
June 28, 2007 at 4:05 am | In Asia, Books, Economics, Financial, Globalization, History | Leave a Comment
State-Directed Development
Political Power and Industrialization in the Global Periphery
Princeton University
(ISBN-13: 9780521836708 | ISBN-10: 0521836700)
Why have some developing country states been more successful at facilitating industrialization than others? An answer to this question is developed by focusing both on patterns of state construction and intervention aimed at promoting industrialization. Four countries are analyzed in detail – South Korea, Brazil, India, and Nigeria – over the twentieth century. The states in these countries varied from cohesive-capitalist (mainly in Korea), through fragmented-multiclass (mainly in India), to neo-patrimonial (mainly in Nigeria). It is argued that cohesive-capitalist states have been most effective at promoting industrialization and neo-patrimonial states the least. The performance of fragmented-multiclass states falls somewhere in the middle. After explaining in detail as to why this should be so, the study traces the origins of these different state types historically, emphasizing the role of different types of colonialisms in the process of state construction in the developing world.
• The book is cross-regional, comparing countries across Asia, Africa and Latin America • The book is inter-disciplinary (especially politics and economics) with a detailed historical discussion of four specific countries over the twentieth century.
• The book is written in as non-technical language as possible, making it accessible to a broad, educated readership.
Contents:
Introduction: states and industrialization in the global periphery; Part I. Galloping Ahead: Korea: 1. The colonial origins of a modern political economy: the Japanese lineage of Korea’s cohesive-capitalist state; 2. The Rhee interregnum: saving South Korea for cohesive capitalism; 3. A cohesive-capitalist state reimposed: Park Chung Hee and rapid industrialization; Part II. Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Brazil; 4. Invited dependency: fragmented state and foreign resources in Brazil’s early industrialization; 5. Grow now, pay later: state indebted industrialization in modern Brazil; Part III. Slow but Steady: India: 6. Origins of a fragmented-multiclass state and a sluggish economy: colonial India; 7. India’s fragmented-multiclass state and protected industrialization; Part IV. Dashed Expectations: Nigeria: 8. Colonial Nigeria: origins of a neopatrimonial state and a commodity-exporting economy; 9. Sovereign Nigeria: neopatrimonialism and failure of industrialization; Conclusion: understanding states and state intervention in the global periphery.
Reviews:
‘This manuscript is a tour de force of comparative, cross-regional, historically-based political economy analysis of one of the major issues that faced us in the last century and continues to do so now – why some states have done better than others at development. This type of work is very difficult to do, requiring broad contextual and technical knowledge, a keen sense of politics, and a deep knowledge of individual cases – all linked with excellent analytic capabilities. Professor Kohli has all of these and more.’
Thomas Callaghy, University of Pennsylvania
‘Atul Kohli’s eagerly awaited State-Directed Development is a prime example of how comparative historical sociology can illuminate the biggest, most important issues we face in our time. We are at a moment when one of the grandest projects of the twentieth century – the rise of multiple new states in Africa and Asia on the ashes of European colonial empires – seems at risk of falling to multiple plagues, including AIDS, bloodletting civil wars, megalomaniacal tyrants, and mismanaged economies. Kohli tempers our despair by pointing to a range of variation in developing countries. From the histories of those that have succeeded and failed, as well as those in-between, he draws the recipes that have worked (and not worked) for states to give their citizens a reasonable chance to lead a decent life by inducing industrialization. This is a must-read book.’
Joel S. Migdal, University of Washington, Seattle
‘Kohli’s provocative book rehabilitates the state in face of claims that state sovereignty has declined as a result of globalization. Reviewing the comparative capacity of four states in this admirably grounded project he demonstrates that markets, liberty and security require a strong state. Bringing history back in, he argues that the differences in state capacity of Brazil, India, Nigeria and Korea have been shaped by their distinct colonial experiences.’
Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, University of Chicago
‘This book amounts to a head-on challenge to what John Stuart Mill once called “the deep slumber of a decided opinion.”
The opinion that the developing country state should focus on alleviating poverty and providing a market-friendly framework for the private sector. Kohli argues that fast economic growth is unlikely without a more forceful kind of state intervention in support of investor profits, and he illuminates the institutional characteristics of the state that are likely to make such intervention effective-or not. Subsequent research on the political economy of growth will have to take this as a touchstone.’
Robert Hunter Wade, London School of Economics
‘Atul Kohli’s book is a magnificent achievement.
It should be read by all students of the development process …’
Journal of Latin American Studies
Product Details:
- Paperback: 478 pages
- Publisher: Cambridge University Press
- (August 30, 2004)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0521545250
- ISBN-13: 978-0521545259
IN SEARCH OF PROSPERITY: DANI RODRIK BOOK
June 27, 2007 at 11:04 pm | In Books, Economics, Financial, Globalization, History | Leave a Comment
In Search of Prosperity
Dani Rodrik (Editor)
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003. ix + 481 pp. $59.50 (cloth), ISBN: 0-691-09268-0; $32.50 (paper), ISBN: 0-691-09269-9.
Dani Rodrik, Professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, has brought together an all-star cast to produce a series of country studies, or as the book’s subtitle calls them, analytic narratives on economic growth. There are two chapters on India (by Gregory Clark and Susan Wolcott and by Brad de Long), individual country chapters on Botswana (Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson), Indonesia (Jonathan Temple), Mauritius (Arvind Subramanian and Devesh Roy), Venezuela (Ricardo Hausmann), China (Yingyi Qian), Bolivia (Daniel Kaufmann, Massimo Mastruzzi and Diego Zavaleta), Mexico (Maite Careaga and Barry Weingast) and Pakistan (William Easterly), and two-case chapters on Australia and California (Ian McLean and Alan Taylor), Vietnam and the Philippines (Lant Pritchett) and Poland and Romania (Georges de Menil). The papers were originally presented at a conference at Harvard in April 2001 and the reasonably rapid turnaround time ensures that they remain fresh. One pity is that the commentators’ comments from the conference are not included; given the quality of the participants, the discussion must have been lively.
The book is conceived as moving beyond the restrictions of cross-country growth empirics to analyze country-specific factors in greater depth, and in particular to identify the nature of positive and negative institutions. An important advantage of the narratives over cross-country econometrics is that they allow identification of growth reversals or unexpected onset of growth. Several chapters identify good initial conditions associated with poor growth performance (e.g. India 1873-1980) or poor initial conditions associated with good growth performance (e.g. Indonesia 1966-96), or surprising reversals (e.g. Venezuela after 1980). A second important advantage is the understanding of time-lags, e.g. Indonesia’s success between 1966 and 1996 contained the seeds of its post-1997 problems which would not be found in a search for contemporaneous causes in the post-1997 period.
The case study approach has drawbacks. In renouncing a common comparative yardstick or testing a universal model something is lost. The Indian studies, for example, are unsure whether India has been a success or failure — compared to the US or UK, India was a growth failure in the century up to the 1980s, but compared to Africa it has been a success story. Pritchett calls for using a “toy collection,” i.e. a set of at least six simple models that are needed to capture the varieties of growth experience, but his narratives of Vietnamese and Filipino growth then come close to being atheoretical or, at least, country-specific explanations. The contrast between Indonesia’s positive reaction to the oil windfall of the 1970s and Venezuela’s negative reaction is striking to the reader of the two chapters, but little attempt is made to explicitly compare the two
countries’ experience or that of other oil exporters — an exercise that would shed light on the contrasting outcomes.
Nevertheless, the book is tremendously valuable for the quality of the individual contributions, even if the introduction overstates the book’s originality in assembling country studies informed by growth theory. Many contributions to development economics or to economic history have this characteristic, as most of the authors acknowledge. The discovery of idiosyncratic processes (the good luck of Indonesia with respect to the Green Revolution and the oil shock or of Mauritius with respect to special treatment of its sugar and apparel exports) or of the importance of wise politicians (as in post-independence Botswana or Mauritius) may surprise theorists but is normal fare for economic historians or development specialists.
The country-study approach inevitably brings specific features to the fore, but what generalizations can be made on the basis of these narratives? Perhaps unsurprisingly given the volume’s editor, institutions rule and the Sachs view that geography dominates is routed. Also, trade liberalization gets little credit for success, even though the success stories (Australia, Botswana, India post-1980, Indonesia 1966-96, Mauritius, Mexico and Poland) are all open economies and China’s rapid growth followed opening. The Australia study, for example, dismisses trade restrictions as a cause of relatively poor performance in the period from the 1890s to the 1950s because protectionism only increased after the start of the growth slowdown, but it may still be the case that protectionism exacerbated a slowdown initiated by demography, drought and financial crisis, and that the post-1983 trade liberalization led with a time-lag, to the better performance of the 1990s.
What emerges surprisingly clearly is the importance of macroeconomic stability. Despite all of the regime’s flaws, the secret of the economic success of Suharto’s New Order was the rapid fall in inflation after 1966 and subsequent maintenance of low inflation. Price stability also features in the Polish and Chinese narratives and behind the scenes in other growth successes. When inflation starts to rise in other countries, it is an indicator that the government has lost the plot in terms of achieving economic growth. Of course, that still begs the question of why some regimes are willing and able to control inflation while others are not, and the Bolivian chapter illustrates that misgovernance can trump low inflation to ensure poor growth.
The book is well-produced, even though the gloomy cover design shrieks poverty rather than prosperity. There are a few errors (e.g., reference to India’s joining the WTO in 1995 as a major turning point when it was simply a name-change from GATT membership or the statement that Australia’s currency floated for “much of the twentieth century”), but these are minor. All told the book is a useful bridge between book length studies of the individual countries and the broad-brush comparative literature, and the felicitous style of most of the authors makes the chapters a pleasurable as well as an enlightening read.
Dani Rodrik, editor
In Search of Prosperity:
Analytic Narratives on Economic Growth.
Product Details:
-
Paperback: 520 pages
- Publisher: Princeton University Press; New Ed edition (April 14, 2003)
- Language: English ISBN-10: 0691092699
- ISBN-13: 978-0691092690
AFRICA: NATHAN NUNN ANALYSIS
June 27, 2007 at 1:49 pm | In Africa, Economics, Financial, Globalization, History | Leave a Comment
Africa: History & Political Economy
- Nathan Nunn
- Assistant Professor of Economics
- University of British Columbia
- #997 – 1873 East Mall Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1 Canada
- Phone: 604-822-4724 Email: nnunn@interchange.ubc.ca
Research Interests:
International Trade, Development Economics, Political Economy, African History
Publications:
- ”Relationship-Specificity, Incomplete Contracts and the Pattern of Trade.”
- Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 122, No. 2, May 2007, pp. 569-600.
- [Abstract] [Paper] [Data]
- “Historical Legacies: A Model Linking Africa’s Past to its Current Underdevelopment.”
Journal of Development Economics, Vol. 83, No. 1, May 2007, pp. 157-175.
- [Abstract] [Paper] [Working paper with all proofs]
Research Papers:
“The Long Term Effects of Africa’s Slave Trades” (previously titled Slavery, Institutional Development and Long-Run Growth in Africa), under revision for resubmission to the Quarterly Journal of Economics. [Abstract] [Paper] [Appendix]
“Putting the Lid on Lobbying: Tariff Structure and Long-Term Growth when Protection is for Sale” (with Daniel Trefler), NBER Working Paper 12164 [Abstract] [Paper]
“Ruggedness: The Blessing of Bad Geography in Africa” (with Diego Puga) [Abstract] [Paper]
“The Boundaries of the Multinational Firm: An Empirical Analysis” (with Daniel Trefler) [Abstract] [Paper]
“Slavery, Inequality, and Economic Development in the Americas: An Examination of the Engerman-Sokoloff Hypothesis” [Abstract] [Paper]
“A Model Explaining Simultaneous Payments of a Dowry and Bride-Price” [Abstract] [Paper]
“Domestic Knowledge Spillovers and Strategic Trade Policy” [Abstract] [Paper]
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