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1. Trade and Competitiveness: Putting the Firm at the Centre of the Analysis

Author:
Lucian Cernat and Oscar Guinea
Publication Date:
06-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE)
Abstract:
The European Commission published its communication for the long-term competitiveness of the EU. Trade and Open Strategic Autonomy were among the selected policy areas that will drive EU competitiveness in the future and trade with the rest of the world as a share of EU Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was the selected indicator to measure progress. This Policy Brief proposes a new set of indicators that complement this and similar indicators that focus on the value of trade. Using the Trade by Enterprise Characteristics (TEC) database, this paper produces indicators that measure the number of exporters, non-EU suppliers, non-EU customers, and foreign companies. By putting the firm at the centre of the analysis, these indicators offer insights that complement policy-makers’ views on trade and competitiveness.
Topic:
European Union, GDP, Trade, Strategic Autonomy, European Commission, Economic Competition, and Competition
Political Geography:
Europe

2. Fossil Fuel Industry Phase-Out and Just Transition: Designing Policies to Protect Workers’ Living Standards

Author:
Robert Pollin
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts Amherst
Abstract:
This paper focuses on just transition policies targeted at supporting workers now employed in the fossil fuel industries and ancillary sectors within high-income economies. As a general normative principle, I argue that the overarching aim of such policies should be to protect workers against major losses in their living standards resulting through the fossil fuel industry phase-out. The impacted workers should be provided with three critical guarantees to accomplish this, in the area of jobs, compensation and pensions. Just transition policies should also support workers in the areas of job search, retraining and relocation, but these forms of support should be understood as supplementary. Within the framework of these broad principles, the paper first reviews experiences with transitional policies in Germany, the UK, the EU and, more briefly, Japan and Canada. A critical point that emerges is that these just transition policies do not provide the needed guarantees for assuring workers that they will not experience major living standard declines. The paper then describe an illustrative just transition program for workers that includes reemployment, income and pension guarantees, focusing on a case study for the U.S. state of West Virginia. The results show that the costs of the just transition program for West Virginia’s fossil fuel industry dependent workers will amount to an annual average of about $42,000 per worker, equal to about 0.2 percent of West Virginia’s GDP. I briefly summarize results from the seven other studies of U.S. states and for the overall U.S. economy. For the U.S. economy overall, the just transition program’s costs would total to about 0.015 percent of GDP. These findings demonstrate that providing a generous just transition program does not entail unaffordable levels of public spending. Robust just transition policies should therefore be understood as an entirely realistic prospect for all high-income economies.
Topic:
Political Economy, Labor Issues, European Union, GDP, Economy, and Fossil Fuels
Political Geography:
Japan, United Kingdom, Europe, Canada, and Germany

3. Tourism in the South Caucasus region during the post-pandemic period

Author:
Murad Agayev
Publication Date:
01-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Economic and Social Development (CESD)
Abstract:
This article explores the tourism sector of the South Caucasus region in the post-pandemic period. In general, due to the pandemic, the share of the tourism sector in the global GDP has decreased by more than 2 times. In the post-pandemic period, although the share of the sector in the global GDP has increased again, it lags behind the statistics of the pre-pandemic period. Surrounded by the Black Sea from the west and the Caspian Sea from the east, the South Caucasus region has a unique nature, rich historical and cultural heritage, unique gastronomy, traditions and riches that transcend national borders.
Topic:
Tourism, GDP, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Azerbaijan and South Caucasus

4. Towards a Sustainable Recovery for Lebanon’s Economy

Author:
Ricardo Hausmann, Ugo Panizza, Carmen Reinhart, Douglas Barrios, and Clement Brenot
Publication Date:
11-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:
Lebanon’s current economic crisis ranks among the worst in recent history. GDP has collapsed by 38% in real terms. The Lebanese lira, which was fixed to the dollar in 1997, has lost more than 98% of its value on the parallel market. The government has defaulted on its debt, and depositors are unable to access their funds held at commercial banks. Consolidated public sector debt, including both government debt and commercial banks’ claims on the Banque du Liban (BdL), represents more than seven times the current GDP. Public services delivery has crumbled. In short, the country is undergoing a debt crisis, a banking crisis, a currency crisis, and a growth collapse. Four years into the crisis, a resolution remains elusive, and each passing day increases the economic and social burdens faced by the population. Given the increasing cost of delaying a resolution, we propose a strategy for Lebanon’s economic recovery that addresses all the dimensions of the crisis while recognizing the need to rapidly kick-start the economic recovery.
Topic:
Debt, GDP, Economy, and Crisis Management
Political Geography:
Middle East and Lebanon

5. Structural Changes and Dominance of Finance in Contemporary Capitalism

Author:
Sunanda Sen
Publication Date:
09-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts Amherst
Abstract:
Structural changes in economies as have taken place in in majority of economies in terms of the sector-wise contribution to their aggregate output as well as employment include a rising share of the services sector, often exceeding one-half of the GDP. Services include, in addition to other activities, the high value financial activities, having weights disproportionately large. Thus the rising share of services to the GDP implies simultaneous rise in share of financial activities to the GDP as well. Analyses in literature explain structural changes by relative profitability as prime mover of changes, similar to financialisation of economies. In this a circuitous link between socio- political and economic-forces and the changing weight (power relations) can be observed. With capitalism taking a multi-layered structure, the path of finance to dominance may be along a variety of trajectories including vertical shifts from real to financial activities. The quantitative strength of finance is reinforced by socio political forces as alliances. The path may face a crisis led by fundamental uncertainty where agents are ignorant of the future, and the path keeps changing by actions of agents themselves. With knowledge unattainable, ‘conventions’ help agents, as Keynes held, the calming of nerves, forming collectively a “conventional process of expectation formation”. This forms a major theoretical innovation of Keynes which brings in expectation formation and decision making by agents based on custom, habit, tradition, instinct as relevant in a model of human agency faced with fundamental uncertainty.
Topic:
Political Economy, GDP, Employment, Capitalism, Finance, and Keynes
Political Geography:
Global Focus

6. From economic growth to a wellbeing economy: notes for a feminist foreign policy

Author:
Sarah Cook and Naila Kabeer
Publication Date:
06-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Women's Development Agency (IWDA)
Abstract:
This Issues Paper differs from others produced to date in its conceptual scope and length. Rather than argue priority policy considerations, it provides a resource for feminist foreign policy thinking about the kind of economic, social and environmental outcomes that are consistent with feminist visions and required if people and planet are to survive and thrive. It argues that changing the foundational and flawed measure of Gross Domestic Product can shift understanding of the purpose of economic activity and what is valued in practice to something more feminist, inclusive and sustainable. In considering the history of GDP, critiques, and alternative measures, the authors draw out key features of a feminist approach to a wellbeing economy that offer opportunities to build links to other movements and create political and policy space for change.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, GDP, Economic Growth, and Feminism
Political Geography:
Global Focus

7. If the EU was a State in the United States: Comparing Economic Growth between EU and US States

Author:
Fredrik Erixon, Oscar Guinea, and Oscar du Roy
Publication Date:
07-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE)
Abstract:
This Policy Brief is a warning call about Europe’s poor economic growth and its consequences for prosperity. The long-term trend of Gross Domestic Product per capita is crucially important but not always easy to grasp. While it’s common to compare levels of growth between countries in a single year, the reality is that it is the long-term trend that matters. An economy that grows at 3 percent per year will double in 24 years but an economy that grows at 1 percent per year will double only in 48 years. For a long time now, the average growth rate in mature and developed European economies has been closer to 1 than 3 percent. The EU has had positive economic growth but it has been slow in comparison with other developed economies. If European countries were states in the United States, many of them would belong to the group of poorest countries. In this Policy Brief, we rank GDP per capita in EU countries and US states, and the result is dispiriting. The ranking of GDP per capita in 14 EU member states, which together represented 89 percent of EU GDP, was lower in 2021 than in 2000. For instance, France and Germany were as rich as the 36th and the 31st US states in 2000, but twenty-one years later, French GDP per capita was lower than the 48th poorest US state, Arkansas, while German GDP per capita had fallen to become as prosperous as the 38th US state, Oklahoma. GDP per capita in Central and Eastern European countries have grown considerably but their relatively small size and lower starting point stop them from reverting the trend of relative European economic decline. The result of this economic divergence between EU member states and US states is a growing wedge of GDP per capita between the EU and the US, which in 2021 was as large as 82 percent. If the trend continues, the prosperity gap between the average European and American in 2035 will be as big as between the average European and Indian today. This Policy Brief tells a story about the EU’s unfulfilled economic potential but also offers a ray of hope. If the US states have managed to sustain robust rates of economic growth, the EU member states can do it too. However, to do so the EU must bring back economic growth and competitiveness to the centre of its economic policy. If Europe is to face the challenges presented by climate change and the digital transition, the growing burden of an aging society and defence budgets, higher economic growth is not an option but a necessity.
Topic:
European Union, GDP, and Economic Growth
Political Geography:
Europe, North America, and United States of America

8. The Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index 2022

Author:
Jo Walker, Matthew Martin, Emma Seery, Nabil Abdo, Anthony Kamande, and Max Lawson
Publication Date:
10-2022
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
The 2022 Commitment to Reducing Inequality (CRI) Index is the first detailed analysis published looking at governments’ policies and actions to fight inequality during the first two years of the pandemic. This fourth edition of the CRI Index reviews the spending, tax and labour policies and actions of 161 governments during 2020–2022. COVID-19 has increased inequality worldwide, as the poorest people were hit hardest by both the disease and its profound economic impacts. Yet the CRI 2022 Index shows clearly that most of the world’s governments failed to mitigate this dangerous rise in inequality. Despite the biggest global health emergency in a century, half of low-and lower-middle-income countries saw the share of health spending fall during the pandemic, half of the countries tracked by the CRI Index cut the share of social protection spending, 70% cut the share of education spending, while two-thirds of countries failed to increase their minimum wage in line with gross domestic product (GDP). Ninety-five percent of countries failed to increase taxation of the richest people and corporations. At the same time, a small group of governments from across the world bucked this trend, taking clear actions to combat inequality, putting the rest of the world to shame.
Topic:
GDP, Inequality, Tax Systems, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Global Focus

9. CAN DEBT RELIEF CONSTRAIN REPRESSIVE GOVERNMENTS?

Author:
Brett L. Carter
Publication Date:
10-2022
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Political Violence @ A Glance
Abstract:
The African continent is confronting the prospect of a new debt crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on government finances. The Russian government’s war against Ukraine has increased the cost of food and energy, and compelled investors to sell off government bonds in emerging markets. Rising interest rates in the United States will increase the cost of borrowing. The Chinese economy is struggling under the weight of Xi Jinping’s “Zero COVID” policy and accumulated real estate debt. In 2015, the International Monetary Fund announced that eight countries were in debt distress. By March 2022, 23 were. In June, public debt ratios reached a 20-year high. Africa’s debt-distressed governments “are unlikely to default” in 2022,” The Economist observed, “but face trouble by 2024.” There is some evidence that the debt crisis is especially acute for Africa’s non-democracies. The impending debt crisis coincides with a general sense that Africa is experiencing a democratic recession. Voters are increasingly subject to intimidation and violence. Incumbent presidents are removing term limits. The longstanding norm against military coups is fading.
Topic:
Cold War, Debt, World Bank, GDP, Repression, and IMF
Political Geography:
Africa, Russia, China, Ukraine, Asia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and United States of America

10. What Do We Really Know about Productivity Differentials across Countries?

Author:
Jayati Ghosh
Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts Amherst
Abstract:
This paper examines and critiques the most widely used measure of productivity (output per worker employed) and argues that this is a flawed, inadequate and even misleading measure of economic progress. In terms of cross-country comparisons and assessing trends over time, both the numerator (GDP or value added) and the denominator (number of workers or hours worked) have significant conceptual and measurement problems. These issues are considered in general, and also with regard to how they affect analyses of productivity differentials in the U.S. and India in the recent period.
Topic:
Political Economy, GDP, Employment, Economy, and Productivity
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, North America, and United States of America