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1. The Economy in its Labyrinth: A Structuralist View of the Mexican Economy in the 21st Century

Author:
Liz Monroy Gomez Franco
Publication Date:
01-2024
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts Amherst
Abstract:
In this paper, I analyze the performance of the Mexican economy during the two decades of the 21st century. I focus on the aggregate and sectoral dynamics of the economy to understand the underlying dynamics behind the aggregate performance of the economy. With these results in mind, I analyze the changes and continuities in the conduction of macroeconomic and labor market policy with the arrival of a new administration in 2018. The goal of analyzing both elements is to provide an integrated view of the situation in which the Mexican economy will face three structural challenges: the medium and long-run effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the integration of artificial intelligence into the production process, and climate change.
Topic:
Climate Change, Political Economy, History, Macroeconomics, Artificial Intelligence, COVID-19, and Labor Market
Political Geography:
North America and Mexico

2. State Capitalism, Imperialism, and China: Bringing History Back In

Author:
Isabella Weber
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts Amherst
Abstract:
State capitalism is experiencing a great revival as a term to capture the current capitalist constellations, increasingly replacing neoliberalism. Unlike neoliberalism, however, the term state capitalism has a long history reaching back to the age of imperialism in the late 19th century. While state capitalism has been used as a pejorative term by Marxists, liberals and neoliberals alike, it has served as a programmatic label for developmentalist and neomercantilist projects in reaction to imperialism in the periphery. This paper argues that we need to bring the intellectual history of state capitalism into the ‘new state capitalism’ debate. China has played a major role in the revival of state capitalism in the social sciences, but the long history of China’s engagement with state capitalism as a concept and program dating back to the late Qing reformers has been overlooked for the most part. State capitalism is by no means new to China, from Liang Qichao, Sun Yatsen and Mao Zedong to Deng Xiaoping, the idea that China had to create a modern nation state and industrial capitalism in the name of economic progress and to get ahead in the global competition is a recurring theme. What is new is that for the first time the ambition to use state capitalism as a means to catch up with the West is bearing fruits in ways that could undermine the predominance of Western economies.
Topic:
Imperialism, Political Economy, History, Capitalism, and State Capitalism
Political Geography:
China and Asia

3. The violent legacy of fascism: Neofascist political violence in Italy, 1969–88

Author:
Stefano Costalli, Daniele Guariso, Patricia Justino, and Andrea Ruggeri
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
We still have limited knowledge about the long-term effects of fascism on European democracies. European countries experienced cycles of violence between the 1960s and 1980s. Can such violence be explained by legacies of mobilization during fascism? We study whether and how the Italian fascist experience of the 1920s affected political violence during the 1970s and 1980s. We created an original dataset of conflictual events at a subnational level in Italy. Using zero-inflated negative binomial regressions, we find that local membership of the fascist party in 1922—before the institutionalization of the fascist regime—predicts neofascist political violence at the provincial level more than 40 years later. New windows of opportunity facilitate the resurfacing of local fascist legacies: in the months when a new Minister of Interior is appointed, we observe higher levels of neofascist violence in provinces where the early presence of the fascist party was stronger.
Topic:
Terrorism, History, Fascism, Conflict, and Violence
Political Geography:
Europe and Italy

4. Exposure to War and Its Labor Market Consequences over the Life Cycle

Author:
Sebastian T. Braun and Jan Stuhler
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW)
Abstract:
With 70 million dead, World War II remains the most devastating conflict in history. Of the survivors, millions were displaced, returned maimed from the battlefield, or spent years in captivity. We examine the impact of such wartime experiences on labor market careers and show that they often become apparent only at certain life stages. While war injuries reduced employment in old age, former prisoners of war postponed their retirement. Many displaced workers, particularly women, never returned to employment. These responses are in line with standard life‐cycle theory and thus likely extend to other conflicts.
Topic:
History, Displacement, World War II, Welfare, Prisoners of War, and Labor Market
Political Geography:
Europe and Germany

5. The International Monetary Fund and Neonatal Mortality Rates, 1985-2018

Author:
Shih-Yen Pan, Michael Ash, Bridget Diana, Lawrence King, Joseph Lavallee, Ta Minh Quan, and Elias Nosrati
Publication Date:
12-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts Amherst
Abstract:
In 2015, 193 nations committed to UN Sustainable Development Goal 3·2, which aims to reduce child mortality rates by 2030. Despite progress, challenges remain, especially in low- and middle-income countries. International Monetary Fund (IMF) lending programs may influence these outcomes through structural adjustments which prioritise macroeconomic stability over public spending. In this study, we examine the impact of IMF interventions on neonatal mortality, addressing concerns about existing analyzes with a novel statistical approach.
Topic:
Political Economy, History, Sustainable Development Goals, Macroeconomics, IMF, and Infant Mortality
Political Geography:
Global Focus

6. The evolving contribution of R&D, advertising and capital expenditures for US-listed firms’ growth in sales, 1979-2018: A quantile regression analysis

Author:
Joel Rabinovich
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
City Political Economy Research Centre (CITYPERC), University of London
Abstract:
This article presents new insights on the evolving contribution of different types of investments to the growth in sales of US nonfinancial listed firms during the 1979-2018 period. By means of quantile regressions it is observed an increasing contribution over time of intangible investment vis-à-vis a decline in capital expenditure both for high-growth and slow-growth firms. However, the impact of different types of intangible investment differs depending on the kind of firm. Whereas research and development (R&D) has a positive contribution for high-growth firms, only advertising has a positive effect for their slow-growth peers.
Topic:
History, Investment, Research and Development, Firm Growth, Quantile Regression, and Intangibles
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

7. The political economy of women’s empowerment policies in India

Author:
Jyotsna Jha, Niveditha Menon, and Neha Ghatak
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper analyses the political economy of women’s-empowerment-related policymaking in India through a re-examination of the context of both the genesis and closure of a major programme, Mahila Samakhya. Mahila Samakhya, which embodied feminist philosophy and pedagogy, started in 1987 with the aim of creating the education-based empowerment of Dalit and Adivasi women in rural India, and was inexplicably shut down in 2014. We argue that a combination of political philosophy, electoral majority, and contemporary global trends influenced both the beginning and the demise of the programme. We argue that programmes such as Mahila Samakhya, which called for a long and messy process of collectivization of the most marginalized women using the methodology of reflection and reconstruction, became much less desirable with global shifts in development discourse. These shifts towards more ‘evidence’-based policy focused much more on immediate ‘outcomes’ than on ‘processes’, much to the detriment of programmes such as Mahila Samakhya.
Topic:
Political Economy, History, Women, Feminism, Empowerment, and Collectivism
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

8. What drove the profitability of colonial firms? Labour coercion and trade preferences on the Sena Sugar Estates (1920–74)

Author:
Sam Jones and Peter Gibbon
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
The magnitude of returns to colonial-era investments in Africa has been addressed in an extensive literature, as have the nature and legacies of extractive colonial institutions. However, the link between these institutions and the profitability of firms remains unclear. We reconstruct the annual financial records of Sena Sugar Estates in Portuguese East Africa (today’s Mozambique) over the period 1920–74 to probe the contributions of forced labour and preferential trade arrangements to the performance of the firm. We show that Sena Sugar Estates achieved stable and solid returns to capital, comparable in size to a range of domestic UK firms. Counterfactual simulations suggest that the firm’s profitability was highly dependent on sustained access to cheap labour, but generally was not so dependent on trade preferences. At the same time, a production function analysis suggests that higher reliance on rents from forced labour was associated with lower total factor productivity at the Estates. This helps explain why extractive institutions did not translate into ‘super-profits’.
Topic:
History, Colonialism, Trade, Sugar, and Forced Labor
Political Geography:
Africa and Mozambique

9. Taxless fiscal states: Lessons from 19th-century America and 21st-century China

Author:
Yuen Yuen Ang
Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
How do modern fiscal states arise? Perhaps the most dominant explanation, based on the European experience, is that democratic institutions that limited the extractive power of states—exemplified by the 1688 Glorious Revolution in England—paved the way for the rise of fiscal capacity and subsequent prosperity. Revisionist accounts, however, reveal that this dominant narrative is flawed. In fact, numerous factors converged to enable the rise of European fiscal states, and in England, debt and land were particularly salient factors. Building off this literature, I bring attention to the role of ‘taxless public financing’ (i.e. financing public infrastructure through means other than taxation) in the making of fiscal states in two seldom compared cases: 19th-century America and 21st-century China. Both countries relied heavily on taxless financing to launch an infrastructure boom that spurred rapid growth along with massive corruption and financial risks.
Topic:
History, Finance, Tax Systems, and Land
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

10. Monetary policy in South Africa, 2007–21

Author:
Patrick Honohan and Athanasios Orphanides
Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper reviews South Africa’s monetary policy since 2007 and makes recommendations towards improving the inflation-targeting framework currently in place. Following a surge in inflation into double digits in 2007/08, the South African Reserve Bank managed to guide inflation in line with the 3–6 per cent target band. Estimates of South Africa’s potential output underwent successive downward revisions. The resulting output gap misperceptions contributed to the tendency of inflation to be closer to the upper edge of the band in the 2010s. Our assessment is that the current definition of the target is not ambitious enough and reduces the benefits that inflation targeting could otherwise provide. An eventual point target of 3 per cent would better promote growth and protect the value of the currency, as mandated by the Republic’s Constitution.
Topic:
Monetary Policy, Economy, History, and Inflation
Political Geography:
Africa and South Africa