Paul Collier describes the four important topics that he thinks would help the "bottom billion" in the long-run: aid, trade, security and governments. In this short video, Collier explains why he considers government support important.

In the second video of the series Investigating International Finance, an alternative view on capital controls is given contrasting with the paradigm of classical trade theory suggesting that the removal of trade and capital barriers is associated with higher market efficiency. After explaining the conceptual mechanisms underlying capital controls, examples are introduced where countries actually apply capital controls and how these controls have been associated with a lesser exposure to international financial crises spillovers.

Stiglitz answers the question why globalization and world trade has not delivered on its promise of increased well being as much as classical economists thought, by pointing to the power asymmetries: firstly, between industrialized nations and developing nations and secondly, between special corporate interest and social interests. In his analysis, developed countries and MNCs were able to extract the benefits, while shifting the costs (i.e. pollution) to states and communities with lesser power. Amongst many other historical examples the pharmaceutical and the mining industry are discussed to some length.

Ha Joon Chang exposes the main ideas of his book Bad Samaritans, namely that historically states have developed and industrialized by making policy interventions related to industry protection, tariffs and subsidies and not by opening their markets to free trade. Chang elaborates on the examples of Japan, the US, Singapore and Germany amongst others to show that an interventionist path to development has been the regularity and not an anomaly. In the end of the lecture, he argues that they idea of a level playing field should be replaced by a trade order that accounts for differences in power and economic capacities of different countries. The last 20 minutes are questions and answers.

This multimedia dossier explores the production chain of smartphones. In particular due to the violation of workers' rights and low payments, the author Benjamin Selwyn calls those production structures global poverty chains. In this context, he points to the importance of workers' struggles.

In 18th century Europe figures such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Friedrich List and Jean Baptiste Colbert developed theories regarding international trade, which either embraced free trade seeing it as a positive sum game or recommended more cautious and strategic approaches to trade seeing it as a potential danger and a rivalry and often as a zero-sum game. What about today?

A multimedia dossier outlining the relevance and the history of the shipping container for global trade and supply chains.

This infographic gives a summary of the 2018 Trade Wars. This simple, compiled overview is suitable for those without a strong political or economic background. The infographic explains briefly basic concepts related to trade and provides a short timeline of events. It furthermore checks Trump administration's arguments to launch the the trade war against facts and estimates of how the 2018 trade war can affect the global and North-American economy.

Donald Trump won in 2016 largely because enough voters in three states, all in the Rustbelt, which had voted for Barack Obama in both 2008 and 2012, switched their electoral votes from Democratic to Republican.

Dans cet épisode, nous nous posons la question du rôle de la monnaie dans une économie capitaliste. Pour cela, nous comparons le fonctionnement de deux économies en apparence identique, à ceci près que la première fonctionne sans monnaie, comme une économie de troc, et la seconde est monétaire. Nous nous apercevons alors que le caractère monétaire ou non d’une économie modifie radicalement ses propriétés. La détermination des profits sera ainsi très différente dans ces deux économies, les relations de causalité entre dépôts et crédits, épargne et investissement s’inversent, une crise de surproduction est possible dans un cas mais pas dans l’autre, et le chômage peut également avoir des origines très différentes, et même opposées, selon que l’on considère une économie monétaire ou non. Les propriétés de l’économie de troc recouvrent celles de la théorie économique standard (théorie néoclassique) qui s’est historiquement construite sans prendre en considération la monnaie, celle-ci étant considérée comme neutre sur l’économie. Les propriétés de l’économie monétaire rappellent quant à elles celles des modèles postkeynésiens, bien moins connus, et qui trouvent leurs origines dans les travaux et écrits de Keynes, qui affirmait dans son ouvrage le plus célèbre (la théorie générale de l’emploi de l’intérêt et de la monnaie) que « lorsqu’on s’attaque à la recherche des facteurs qui déterminent les volumes globaux de la production et de l’emploi, la Théorie complète d’une Economie Monétaire devient indispensable » (1936, p. 297). Pour approfondir le fonctionnement d’une économie monétaire, vous pouvez lire le livre de Laurent Cordonnier, maître de conférences à l’Université de Lille, « L’économie des Toambapiks » qui présente à partir d’une « fable » la loi des profits de Kalecki dont nous parlons dans la vidéo. Le livre se lit très facilement.

Quelles sont les opportunités et quels sont les risques des accords commerciaux de nouvelle génération négociés actuellement par l'UE (CETA avec le Canada, JEFTA avec le Japon,...) ? Cécilia Bellora, économiste et ingénieure agronome, CEPII Karine Jacquemart, directrice générale, Foodwatch (sous réserve) Charles de Marcilly, responsable du bureau de Bruxelles, Fondation Robert Schuman Katheline Schubert, professeure d’économie, Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne - PSE Modération : Dominique Rousset, journaliste à France culture

In this blog article, Dirk Brockmann illustrates how strong heterogeneities, cluster-like structures and high variability in node connectivities can naturally emerge in growing networks.

A central question in development economics literature is, “Why do countries stay poor?” The key disagreements are whether the lack of economic growth stems from institutions or from geography (Nunn 2009). From an institutional perspective, hostile tariff regimes and commodity price dependencies form a barrier to a sectoral shift that would otherwise lead to economic development in developing countries (Blink and Dorton 2011) (Stiglitz 2006).[i]

Understanding international trade is central to economics and is currently a hot political issue. It’s an area where popular perceptions of mainstream economics are low, since they have historically missed some important downsides of trade agreements, especially the hollowing out of former manufacturing hubs in the Western world. et economists have for long time had a theory of trade with an impressive amount of scientific clout behind it: the gravity trade model.

How countries achieve long-term GDP growth is up there with the most important topics in economics. As Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas put it “the consequences for human welfare involved in questions like these are simply staggering: once one starts to think about them, it is hard to think about anything else.” Ricardo Hausmann et al take a refreshing approach to this question in their Atlas of Economic Complexity. They argue a country’s growth depends on the complexity of its economy: it must have a diverse economy which produces a wide variety of products, including ones that cannot be produced much elsewhere. The Atlas goes into detail on exactly what complexity means, how it fits the data, and what this implies for development. Below I will offer a summary of their arguments, including some cool data visualisations.

In this podcast, Laura Basu speaks with a range of expert academics and public speakers – such as Jayati Ghosh, Yanis Varoufakis, Walden Bello, and Ashish Kothari about how the rules of the global economy are fostering the inequality and underdevelopment we see today.

These notes aim to clarify some basic features and implications of gross capital flows In the context of the 2007 08 Global Financial Crisis and the 2010 12 Eurozone Crisis trade imbalances and capital flows received a lot of attention from academics policymakers and the media However there is still …

The COVID-19 pandemic has had far-reaching implications across the African continent. This discussion brings to light the role of African think tanks, such as the African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET) in rethinking the continent’s development models, especially, in light of the unprecedented crisis.

A detailed introduction into dependency theory that rethinks its relevance to modern development challenges.

Balance of payments stability is of paramount importance for developing countries, both to secure the value of their domestic currencies as well as reliable foreign currency inflows. But how is that stability ensured and how important is the growth of exports for stability?

In this webinar for the Princeton Bendheim Center for Finance, Nobel Prize winner William Nordhaus explains the main problems regarding the economics of a low-carbon energy transition.

Exploring Economics, an open-access e-learning platform, giving you the opportunity to discover & study a variety of economic theories, topics, and methods.

Public lectures on some Traditional Economic Solutions to poverty in Nigeria, specifically the Igbo Apprentice System, Yoruba Ajo Thrift Savings, and Hausa Integral Communalism.

Mainstream economic narratives notably the concept of comparative advantage trade theory which assumes the equal balance of power between parties are deployed to support the merits of Global Value Chains that the global integration via trade creates mutual gains for both developed and developing countries This narrative is advanced in …

Jihen Chandoul, a member of the Post-Colonialisms Today Working Group, discusses the impact of import-dependency on African food supply chains since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Post-Colonialisms Today researchers Kareem Megahed and Omar Ghannam discuss the importance of industrial policy during the pandemic to improve domestic capacity for manufacturing essential goods.

Tetteh Hormeku-Ajei, member of the Post-Colonialisms Today Working Group, provides insight on the history of primary commodity export dependence in Africa, and relates it to the difficulties African governments are facing finding necessary resources to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic.

Yao Graham, coordinator of Third World Network- Africa, reflects on lessons learned from past Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), specifically as they relate to the Post-Cotonou Agreement.

In this article, Tetteh Hormeku-Ajei and Camden Goetz discuss the ongoing impacts of colonialism on Africa’s natural resources.

In this article, Jihen Chandoul discusses the importance of food sovereignty in Africa, reflecting on the continent’s early post independence movements for self sufficiency.

The article by the European Council of Foreign Relations argues that Europe s economic actions in response to the Russian invasion into Urkaine have been decisive different from the EU s external image but that this response should yet be better institutionalized The author Hackenbroich proposes an Anti Coercion Instrument …

Is the Cold War division back with the US EU on the one and China Russia on the other side The article argues that things are more complicated as each of the country compounds has economic and political ties outside of its power bloc It reads the Chinese reactions to …