Search

Begin New Search Topic Economics Political Geography America Content Type Working Paper Publication Year within 25 Years

21. A Note on the Middle Class in Latin America

Author:
Nancy Birdsall
Publication Date:
08-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
The Carbon Monitoring for Action (CARMA) database provides information about the carbon dioxide emissions, electricity production, corporate ownership, and location of more than 60,000 power plants in over 200 countries. Originally launched in 2007, CARMA is provided freely to the public at www.carma.org and remains the only comprehensive data source of its kind. This paper documents the methodology underpinning CARMA v3.0, released in July, 2012. Comparison of CARMA model output with reported data highlights the general difficulty of precisely predicting annual electricity generation for a given plant and year. Estimating the rate at which a plant emits CO2 (per unit of electricity generated) generally faces fewer obstacles. Ultimately, greater disclosure of plant-specific data is needed to overcome these limitations, particularly in major emitting countries like China, Russia, and Japan. For any given plant in CARMA v3.0, it is estimated that the reported value is within 20 percent of the actual value in 85 percent of cases for CO2 intensity, 75 percent for annual CO2 emissions, and 45 percent for annual electricity generation. CARMA's prediction models are shown to offer significantly better estimates than more naïve approaches to estimating plant-specific performance.
Topic:
Democratization, Economics, Poverty, and Social Stratification
Political Geography:
Russia, Japan, China, America, and Latin America

22. Social Security's Financial Outlook and Reforms: An Independent Evaluation

Author:
Jagadeesh Gokhale
Publication Date:
10-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
Social Security is often described as a "foundational" element of the nation's social safety net. Almost all Americans are directly affected by the program and many millions primarily depend on its benefits for supporting themselves during retirement. But the program's financial condition has worsened considerably since the last recession, which began in 2007. In that year, the Social Security trustees estimated that the program's trust fund would be exhausted by 2042. The trustees' annual report for 2011 brings the trust fund exhaustion date forward to 2038. Indeed, the programs revenues fell short of its benefit expenditures in 2010 and it appears unlikely that significant surpluses will emerge again under the program's current rules. If the program's finances continue to worsen at this rate, it won't be long before the debate on reforming the program assumes an urgency and intensity similar to that during 1982-83, when imminent insolvency forced lawmakers to implement payroll tax increases and scale back its benefits.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and Human Welfare
Political Geography:
America and Ethiopia

23. The Future of Convergence

Author:
Dani Rodrik
Publication Date:
10-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Novelists have a better track record than economists at foretelling the future. Consider then Gary Shteyngart's timely comic novel “Super Sad True Love Story” (Random House, 2010), which provides a rather graphic vision of what lies in store for the world economy. The novel takes place in the near future and is set against the backdrop of a United States that lies in economic and political ruin. The country's bankrupt economy is ruled with a firm hand by the IMF from its new Parthenon-shaped headquarters in Singapore. China and sovereign wealth funds have parceled America's most desirable real estate among themselves. Poor people are designated as LNWI (“low net worth individual s”) and are being pushed into ghettoes. Even skilled Americans are desperate to acquire residency status in foreign lands. (A degree in econometrics helps a lot, as it turns out). Ivy League colleges have adopted the names of their Asian partners and yuan-backed dollars are the only safe currency.
Topic:
Debt, Economics, Emerging Markets, Sovereign Wealth Funds, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
United States, China, America, and Singapore

24. Delivering on US Climate Finance Commitments

Author:
Trevor Houser and Jason Selfe
Publication Date:
11-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
At the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen in 2009 and Cancun in 2010, the United States joined other developed countries in pledging to mobilize $100 billion in public and private sector funding to help developing countries reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to a warmer world. With a challenging US fiscal outlook and the failure of cap-and-trade legislation in the US Congress, America's ability to meet this pledge is increasingly in doubt. This paper identifies, quantifies, and assesses the politics of a range of potential US sources of climate finance. It finds that raising new public funds for climate finance will be extremely challenging in the current fiscal environment and that many of the politically attractive alternatives are not realistically available absent a domestic cap-and-trade program or other regime for pricing carbon. Washington's best hope is to use limited public funds to leverage private sector investment through bilateral credit agencies and multilateral development banks.
Topic:
Climate Change, Development, Economics, Energy Policy, Politics, and Foreign Direct Investment
Political Geography:
United States, America, Washington, and United Nations

25. Too Big to Fail: The Transatlantic Debate

Author:
Morris Goldstein and Nicolas Véron
Publication Date:
01-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
Although the United States and the European Union were both seriously impacted by the financial crisis of 2007, resulting policy debates and regulatory responses have differed considerably on the two sides of the Atlantic. In this paper the authors examine the debates on the problem posed by "too big to fail" financial institutions. They identify variations in historical experiences, financial system structures, and political institutions that help one understand the differences of approaches between the United States, EU member states, and the EU institutions in addressing this problem. The authors then turn to possible remedies and how they may be differentially implemented in America and Europe. They conclude on which policy developments are likely in the near future.
Topic:
Economics and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
United States, America, and Europe

26. The Evolving Structure of the American Economy and the Employment Challenge

Author:
Michael Spence and Sandile Hlatshwayo
Publication Date:
03-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
This paper examines the evolving structure of the American economy, specifically, the trends in employment, value added, and value added per employee from 1990 to 2008. These trends are closely connected with complementary trends in the size and structure of the global economy, particularly in the major emerging economies. Employing historical time series data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. industries are separated into internationally tradable and nontradable components, allowing for employment and value-added trends at both the industry and the aggregate level to be examined. Value added grew across the economy, but almost all of the incremental employment increase of 27.3 million jobs was on the nontradable side. On the nontradable side, government and health care are the largest employers and provided the largest increments (an additional 10.4 million jobs) over the past two decades. There are obvious questions about whether those trends can continue; without fast job creation in the nontradable sector, the United States would already have faced a major employment challenge.
Topic:
Economics, Markets, Labor Issues, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
United States and America

27. Lawless Policy: TARP as Congressional Failure

Author:
John Samples
Publication Date:
02-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
The U.S. Constitution vests all the “legislative powers” it grants in Congress. The Supreme Court allows Congress to delegate some authority to executive officials provided an “intelligible principle” guides such transfers. Congress quickly wrote and enacted the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 in response to a financial crisis. The law authorized the secretary of the Treasury to spend up to $700 billion purchasing troubled mortgage assets or any financial instrument in order to attain 13 different goals. Most of these goals lacked any concrete meaning, and Congress did not establish any priorities among them. As a result, Congress lost control of the implementation of the law and unconstitutionally delegated its powers to the Treasury secretary. Congress also failed in the case of EESA to meet its constitutional obligations to deliberate, to check the other branches of government, or to be accountable to the American people. The implementation of EESA showed Congress to be largely irrelevant to policymaking by the Treasury secretary. These failures of Congress indicate that the current Supreme Court doctrine validating delegation of legislative powers should be revised to protect the rule of law and separation of powers.
Topic:
Economics, Monetary Policy, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
United States and America

28. How Did the 2008 Economic Crisis Affect: Social and Political Solidarity in Europe?

Author:
Jennifer L. Hochschild
Publication Date:
01-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
One possible outcome of the economic crash of 2008 was that the majority or mainstream members of a society would direct their anger and fear against the minority or marginal members of their society. Commentators on television or the radio would claim, "it's all the fault of the immigrants!" or "if we didn't hand over so much of our tax dollars to the poor, the economy would not have deteriorated so much," or "social benefits to African Americans [or German Turks] have distorted the housing market." Citizens would come to believe these assertions, politicians would echo them – and the upshot would be not only a deteriorating national and international economy but also increased hostility and fear among racial, ethnic, or nationality groups in a country. Social solidarity would decline, perhaps irrevocably.
Topic:
International Relations, Economics, Politics, Social Stratification, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
Africa, America, Europe, and Germany

29. Earth Observation for Climate Change

Author:
James A. Lewis, Sarah O. Ladislaw, and Denise E. Zheng
Publication Date:
06-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
Until this year, America's civil space policies—and the budgets that derive from it—were shaped to a considerable degree by the political imperatives of the past and by the romantic fiction of spaceflight. We believe there is a new imperative—climate change—that should take precedence in our national plans for space and that the goal for space spending in the next decade should be to create a robust and adequate Earth observation architecture.
Topic:
Climate Change, Economics, and Natural Disasters
Political Geography:
America

30. EU-India strategic partnership: Taking the stock

Author:
Alok Rashmi Mukhopadhyay
Publication Date:
08-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of Foreign Policy Studies, University of Calcutta
Abstract:
The prevalent perception of the European Union (EU) in India is predominantly constructed by the British and American media. At the time of a global economic downturn, its ripple effects on the continent especially on the 'PIIGS' (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) and an imminent crack in the Eurozone have been the debate of the day. In a recent article in The National Interest, James Joyner, has however examined this genre of 'Europe's obituary'. Making a comparison with EU's transatlantic sibling, he identifies three errors in this type of analyses, 'treating the EU as if it were a nation-state, regarding anything less than utopia as a failure, and projecting short-term trends long into the future'. However Joyner is also right when he describes the EU as 'a confusing array of overlapping treaty commitments'.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Bilateral Relations
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, America, Europe, India, Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Ireland