Labor, Trade, & Finance Archives - Page 100 of 214

Still Waiting For Debt Relief

by Mark Engler | Apr 11, 2006

Last July, debt relief was all the rage. Bono crooned at the Live 8 benefit concert in London–one of almost a dozen taking place worldwide–and the leaders of the G8 nations met in Scotland to negotiate a response to the issue. In the end, the elected officials agreed to a breakthrough debt relief deal for some of the poorest countries in the world. They unanimously declared that providing relief, especially for sub-Saharan Africa, was a moral and economic imperative. President George W. Bush remarked that struggling nations “should not be burdened by mountains of debt” and announced that the G8 proposal would “eliminate 100 percent of that debt.” All that was left, the rhetoric suggested, was for the heads of state to congratulate themselves for their high-minded deeds.

Peru’s Lourdes Flores Challenging Neopopulist Trends

by John Gershman, Ronald Bruce St John | Mar 14, 2006

Lourdes Flores Nano, lawyer, centrist politician, and former legislator, looks set to become the next president of Peru. If her campaign stays on track, she will reverse the neopopulist trend in Latin America, most recently evidenced by the election of Evo Morales in Bolivia. She will also become the first woman elected president of Peru, just months after Michelle Bachelet made similar history in Chile. As with Bachelet in Chile, a Flores Nano victory will signal a major cultural change in Peru.

The Economics of Outsourcing: How Should Policy Respond?

by John Gershman, Thomas I. Palley | Mar 1, 2006

Outsourcing is a central element of economic globalization, representing a new form of competition. Responding to outsourcing calls for policies that enhance national competitiveness and establish rules ensuring acceptable forms of competition. Viewing outsourcing through the lens of competition connects with early 20 th century American institutional economics. The policy challenge is to construct institutions that ensure stable, robust flows of demand and income, thereby addressing the Keynesian problem while preserving incentives for economic action. This was the approach embedded in the New Deal, which successfully addressed the problems of the Depression era. Global outsourcing poses the challenge anew and calls for creative institutional arrangements to shape the nature of competition.

Free trade fails Latin America

by Nadia Martinez | Feb 27, 2006

Costa Rica is famous for sandy beaches and lush rainforests that make it a popular destination for U.S. tourists. But this month the small Central American country is making headlines for something else: a dead-heat election.

Immigration’s Role Often Overlooked in Global Economy

by Leif Brottom, Emily Schwartz Greco | Feb 2, 2006

The free flow of capital and information is the visible and oft-celebrated face of globalization. Hidden behind the flash of supply chains and e-commerce are countless people that migrate annually from the Global South to North America and Europe in search of work. These economic migrants form an immensely important but largely hidden side of globalization.

The WTO’s Development Crumbs

by Emily Schwartz Greco, Timothy A. Wise | Jan 20, 2006

Conflicts over agriculture once again stalled World Trade Organization negotiations, which took a few halting steps in Hong Kong in December. Rich-country promises to reduce poverty and underdevelopment at the event, which representatives from 149 countries attended, gave way to minor face-saving reforms and a promise to keep talking. Developing countries came to the table, and they walked away with crumbs.

Thinking Outside the Box about Trade, Development, and Poverty Reduction

by John Gershman, Thomas I. Palley | Jan 17, 2006

Mainstream policy economics has been gradually lowering its claims about the positive impact of trade on development and poverty reduction. The new approach is a compassionate agenda that says if trade liberalization is to reduce poverty, it must be flanked by public investment in infrastructure and human capital. However, this new agenda raises numerous questions about how to finance public investments, whether these investments should be sequenced in advance of liberalization, and whether trade liberalization is desirable if the investments are not made. Most importantly, the new agenda still does not address the systemic critique that trade liberalization hinders development by eliminating important policy tools.

Let Developing Countries Grow the Same Way that We Did

by Kevin Gallagher | Jan 9, 2006

Yesterday, the world’s trade ministers began meeting in Hong Kong to make a final attempt to salvage world trade talks. For many poorer nations, no deal will be better than the bad deal on the table.

Where We Stand: Honesty about Dangerous Climate Change, and about Preventing it

by Tom Athanasiou, Paul Baer, John Gershman | Dec 6, 2005

We stand, first, with the emerging scientific consensus, which tells us we have very little time to act if we honestly expect to avoid a global (as opposed to a “merely local”) climate catastrophe. Further, we insist, contrary to the pretended realism of those who seek to be “reasonable,” on a rather direct approach. We do not, for example, imagine that carbon concentrations that would quite probably yield 3ºC or 4ºC of warming can reasonably be considered “safe.” 1 Instead, we prefer to stay in the reality-based world of those (the E.U., the Climate Action Network) who draw the line at 2ºC maximum (which is itself not by any means safe) and who admit that avoiding a global climate catastrophe is going to be difficult indeed.

Multilateral Debt Burden

by Soren Ambrose | Oct 12, 2005