Putting the history back into economics: good new book from the FT’s Alan Beattie

June 3, 2009
‘False Economy: A Surprising Economic History of the World’, by Alan Beattie, the world trade editor at the Financial Times is published tomorrow in the UK and is already doing well in the US. It explores the historical backstory to current economic debates on trade, corruption, the ‘curse of wealth’ in oil and mineral producing nations, the rise of Russia, China
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What’s different about the current spate of land grabs in poor countries?

May 27, 2009
This week’s Economist has an excellent overview of the issues surrounding what it calls ‘outsourcing’s third wave’ (the first two were manufacturing and services) – deals in which foreign investors are buying up huge tracts of land in poor countries to produce food to ship back home (see map). Some highlights: Saudi investors are spending $100m to lease land from the
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What are African leaders saying about the impact of the crisis? Latest overview

May 26, 2009
The African Development Bank is doing some excellent analysis and has just updated the paper submitted to the April G20 Summit by African Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors (new paper here, original paper for G20 here). Main points: ‘For the first time since 1994, per capita income will contract in 2009 for the continent as a whole. Indeed a
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The impact of the global crisis on women workers – new report

March 30, 2009
A powerful new Oxfam report is released today, ahead of this week’s crisis summit in London. Written by my colleague Bethan Emmett, it pulls together preliminary research in 10 countries across Asia and Latin America to show that women working in export manufacturing industries, e.g. garments and electronics, are often first to be laid off, frequently without pay or compensation. In
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Viet Nam: how the crisis is hitting migrant workers in globalization’s poster child economy

March 26, 2009
As we approach the London Summit on 2 April, I’ll be putting up some findings from research Oxfam has been doing on the impact of the crisis in a range of developing countries. First up, some early results from our hyperactive Viet Nam team on the impact of the global crisis on what has been one of the world’s most successful
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Why we should buy more from developing countries and other tips on pro-poor shopping

March 2, 2009
My long-suffering research team colleague Richard King has a paper out today that will hopefully ruffle a few feathers. It argues that how we shop, what we eat, and what we throw away are becoming frontline issues in the effort to tackle climate change. In the UK, we need to change how and what we consume, while helping people living
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Is The Economist going socialist?

February 4, 2009
The back half of The Economist (business, finance and economics) is having an excellent crisis. If you’re willing to filter out the gratuitous (and increasingly defensive) neoclassical riffs, there is some really excellent analysis in there and even some (perhaps inadvertent) progressive thinking. This week’s edition includes a three page briefing on the Asian economies and a handy summary of the
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Protectionism – good or bad? It depends……

February 3, 2009
I wrote this for the ‘Development and the Crisis‘ website I plugged recently, but thought I’d recycle it here: It’s official. Protectionism is the Great Satan. Gordon Brown decries it in Davos; William Easterly crows over what he sees as Dani Rodrik’s conversion to the cause. All countries must eschew protectionism or risk a disastrous return to the trade wars that triggered
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A Promising new debate on the financial crisis

January 29, 2009
Take a look at Development and the Crisis, a new online debate moderated by Dani Rodrik, which has kicked off with contributions from Nancy Birdsall, Jose Antonio Ocampo, Arvind Subramanian, and Yung Chul Park. Here are some excerpted highlights from Dani’s opening pitch ‘Let developing nations rule’:
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What would a global food security policy look like?

January 27, 2009
Sticking to yesterday’s theme of food, check out ‘The Feeding of the Nine Billion‘, an excellent new paper by Alex Evans. Alex combines the skills of academic and consultant with his insider experience as a former special adviser to Hilary Benn, then UK Secretary of State for International Development. He specialises in what George Lakoff calls ‘reframing‘ – here he
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Ah, so that’s how you sell books…..

January 15, 2009
Identifying and promoting the writings of brilliant dissidents like Ha-Joon Chang, the Cambridge economist, has always struck me as a particularly useful role for NGOs. In 2001 Ha-Joon published ‘Kicking Away the Ladder‘, which had a significant impact in the Doha trade negotiations, helping to demonstrate the double standards being employed by rich countries who used protectionism and other industrial policies
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What did Poznan mean for progress on climate change?

December 19, 2008
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