POEC 301 Syllabus
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The Financial and Economic Crisis of 2008-2009 and Developing Countries
THE FINANCIAL AND ECONOMIC CRISIS OF 2008-2009 AND DEVELOPING COUNTRIES Edited by Sebastian Dullien Detlef J. Kotte Alejandro Márquez Jan Priewe UNITED NATIONS New York and Geneva, December 2010 ii Note Symbols of United Nations documents are composed of capital letters combined with figures. Mention of such a symbol indicates a reference to a United Nations document. The views expressed in this book are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the UNCTAD secretariat. The designations employed and the presentation of the material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Secretariat of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area, or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. Material in this publication may be freely quoted; acknowl edgement, however, is requested (including reference to the document number). It would be appreciated if a copy of the publication containing the quotation were sent to the Publications Assistant, Division on Globalization and Development Strategies, UNCTAD, Palais des Nations, CH-1211 Geneva 10. UNCTAD/GDS/MDP/2010/1 UNITeD NatioNS PUblicatioN Sales No. e.11.II.D.11 ISbN 978-92-1-112818-5 Copyright © United Nations, 2010 All rights reserved THE FINANCIAL AND ECONOMIC CRISIS O F 2008-2009 AND DEVELOPING COUN T RIES iii CONTENTS Abbreviations and acronyms ................................................................................xi About the authors -
Global Political Ecology
Global Political Ecology The world is caught in the mesh of a series of environmental crises. So far attempts at resolving the deep basis of these have been superficial and disorganized. Global Political Ecology links the political economy of global capitalism with the political ecology of a series of environmental disasters and failed attempts at environmental policies. This critical volume draws together contributions from 25 leading intellectuals in the field. It begins with an introductory chapter that introduces the readers to political ecology and summarises the book’s main findings. The following seven sections cover topics on the political ecology of war and the disaster state; fuelling capitalism: energy scarcity and abundance; global governance of health, bodies, and genomics; the contradictions of global food; capital’s marginal product: effluents, waste, and garbage; water as a commodity, human right, and power; the functions and dysfunctions of the global green economy; political ecology of the global climate; and carbon emissions. This book contains accounts of the main currents of thought in each area that bring the topics completely up-to-date. The individual chapters contain a theoretical introduction linking in with the main themes of political ecology, as well as empirical information and case material. Global Political Ecology serves as a valuable reference for students interested in political ecology, environmental justice, and geography. Richard Peet holds degrees from the London School of Economics (BSc (Econ)), the University of British Columbia (MA), and the University of California, Berkeley (PhD). He is currently Professor of Geography at Clark University, Worcester, MA. His interests are development, global policy regimes, power, theory and philosophy, political ecology, and the causes of financial crises. -
UNA Mag July-Sep 2007.Qxp
NEWWORLD News and comment on the United Nations and UNA–UK On track or derailed? Progress towards the UN Millennium Development Goals PLUS: Justice not Vengeance It’s time to ditch the death penalty 2007 Review of UN Peace Operations Page 14 War and Democratic Accountability Page 20 UNITED NATIONS ASSOCIATION OF THE UK 3 Whitehall Court, London SW1A 2EL The UN Human Rights Council Page 22 www.una.org.uk Cartooning for Peace Page 35 £3.00 July–September 2007 Global Warming and the WI Page 38 UNA-UK CONTENTS Letter from the Executive Director 3 UNAUK Directory 4 UN: Miscellany 5 070707: the MDG Halfway Point 6 2007 Review of UN Peace Operations 14 UNAUK in Parliament 17 Annual Conference 2007 18 Waging War and Democratic Accountability 20 The UN Human Rights Council 22 It’s Time to Ditch the Death Penalty 26 The Oxford Handbook on the United Nations 29 Cartooning for Peace 35 UNA Westminster Pays Tribute to Peacekeepers 36 The Women’s Institute Tackles Waste 38 The Membership at Work 39 What’s On? 40 Books on the UN 41 Web Resources and Letters 42 Young Professionals Network 43 Newer World 46 MDGs Progress Chart 48 New World Subscription: is published by UNA-UK, 3 Whitehall Court, London SW1A 2EL Copies of New World are included in the membership fee for UNA-UK. www.una.org.uk Design: Advertisements: John Schwartz, [email protected] To advertise please call Veronica Lie on 020 7766 3451. The United Nations Association of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is ISSN: a company limited by guarantee (registered no. -
Is Capitalism a Belief System?
ATR/92:4 Is Capitalism a Belief System? Kathryn Tanner* Are capitalist markets shaped by beliefs about the fundamental character of human life and its moral values and ideals? If the answer is “yes,” one can make a normative evaluation of such markets. One can ask whether the principled beliefs—beliefs about right and wrong, good and bad—that purportedly inform capitalist markets are correct and, if they are, about the degree to which capitalist markets actually manage to conform to them. In particular, theological beliefs about human nature and about how humans should live become pertinent to the normative evaluation of capitalist markets. Religious people on theological grounds can assess the respects in which they are good or bad and suggest ways to make them better—more ethical, humane, and conducive to the common good. To answer “yes” is to assume that capitalist markets require moral justification, and that they are therefore, in principle at least, neither essentially amoral nor necessarily immoral. The current global domi- nance of capitalist markets—the simple fact that they blanket the globe—is, to begin with, no argument in their favor. Alternatives exist to capitalist markets. Not all societies have been or are presently orga- nized around the production of goods for sale in markets of a capitalist sort, where the supply of goods produced and the demand for them find their regulation by way of an impersonal pricing mechanism. For example, at other times and places and even now within cer- tain sectors of our society—notably in some impoverished urban areas1—economic well-being is determined in the main by whom one knows and can enlist to do unpaid favors. -
CBC IDEAS Sales Catalog (AZ Listing by Episode Title. Prices Include
CBC IDEAS Sales Catalog (A-Z listing by episode title. Prices include taxes and shipping within Canada) Catalog is updated at the end of each month. For current month’s listings, please visit: http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/schedule/ Transcript = readable, printed transcript CD = titles are available on CD, with some exceptions due to copyright = book 104 Pall Mall (2011) CD $18 foremost public intellectuals, Jean The Academic-Industrial Ever since it was founded in 1836, Bethke Elshtain is the Laura Complex London's exclusive Reform Club Spelman Rockefeller Professor of (1982) Transcript $14.00, 2 has been a place where Social and Political Ethics, Divinity hours progressive people meet to School, The University of Chicago. Industries fund academic research discuss radical politics. There's In addition to her many award- and professors develop sideline also a considerable Canadian winning books, Professor Elshtain businesses. This blurring of the connection. IDEAS host Paul writes and lectures widely on dividing line between universities Kennedy takes a guided tour. themes of democracy, ethical and the real world has important dilemmas, religion and politics and implications. Jill Eisen, producer. 1893 and the Idea of Frontier international relations. The 2013 (1993) $14.00, 2 hours Milton K. Wong Lecture is Acadian Women One hundred years ago, the presented by the Laurier (1988) Transcript $14.00, 2 historian Frederick Jackson Turner Institution, UBC Continuing hours declared that the closing of the Studies and the Iona Pacific Inter- Acadians are among the least- frontier meant the end of an era for religious Centre in partnership with known of Canadians. -
Greed and Grievance in Civil War
# Oxford University Press 2004 Oxford Economic Papers 56 (2004), 563–595 563 All rights reserved doi:10.1093/oep/gpf064 Greed and grievance in civil war By Paul Collier* and Anke Hoefflery *Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford yCentre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford, 21 Winchester Road, Oxford OX2 6NA; e-mail: anke.hoeffl[email protected] We investigate the causes of civil war, using a new data set of wars during 1960–99. Rebellion may be explained by atypically severe grievances, such as high inequality, a lack of political rights, or ethnic and religious divisions in society. Alternatively, it might be explained by atypical opportunities for building a rebel organization. While it is difficult to find proxies for grievances and opportunities, we find that political and social variables that are most obviously related to grievances have little explanatory power. By contrast, economic variables, which could proxy some griev- ances but are perhaps more obviously related to the viability of rebellion, provide considerably more explanatory power. 1. Introduction Civil war is now far more common than international conflict: all of the 15 major armed conflicts listed by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute for 2001 were internal (SIPRI, 2002). In this paper we develop an econometric model which predicts the outbreak of civil conflict. Analogous to the classic principles of murder detection, rebellion needs both motive and opportunity. The political science literature explains conflict in terms of motive: the circumstances in which people want to rebel are viewed as sufficiently rare to constitute the explanation. -
Assisting Africa to Achieve Decisive Change Paul Collier* Summary
SWEDISH ECONOMIC POLICY REVIEW 13 (2006) 169-197 Assisting Africa to achieve decisive change Paul Collier* Summary Africa has stagnated despite receiving considerable international aid. I suggest that the most reasonable counterfactual is that without aid Africa would have declined, so that aid has been helpful in averting disaster, although lacking the power to achieve decisive change. Based on a diagnosis of the reasons for past stagnation, I propose five un- exploited opportunities for aid better to complement internal African efforts at transformation. JEL classification: O11, O19, O55. Key words: Aid, Africa, Growth, Governance. * Paul Collier is Professor of Economics at the Centre for the Study of African Economies at Oxford University. 169 SWEDISH ECONOMIC POLICY REVIEW 13 (2006) 169-197 Assisting Africa to achieve decisive change Paul Collier* Africa is the only substantial low-income part of the world that has persistently failed to grow. Over the period 1960-2000 the popula- tion-weighted grow rate of per capita income averaged a mere 0.13 per cent. It thus appears likely that Africa is the development chal- lenge of the future. This paper asks what will it take to achieve a deci- sive break with this past record, and in particular, what is the role of external actors in assisting this change? The times may be propitious for such change. Since around 2000 African economic performance has improved. This may reflect im- portant fundamental changes that will make the future different from the past. Even if, on a less optimistic interpretation, the recent im- provement simply reflects the temporary boom in commodity prices, African societies may have learnt from past mistakes and use these windfalls as the launch pad to prosperity. -
Andrew Kliman
ANDREW KLIMAN The Failure of Capitalist Production Underlying Causes of the Great Recession THE FAILURE OF CAPITALIST PRODUCTION Underlying Causes of the Great Recession Andrew Kliman ^fpy) PlutoPress www.plutobooks.com In memory of Ted Kliman (1929-2009) and Chris Harman (1942-2009) For Jesse For Anne Contents List o f Tables viii List o f Figures ix List of Abbreviations xi Acknowledgments xii 1 Introduction 1 2 Profitability, the Credit System, and the “ Destruction of Capital” 13 3 Double, Double, Toil and Trouble: Dot-com Boom and Home-price Bubble 28 4 The 1970s—Not the 1980s—as Turning Point 48 5 Falling Rates of Profit and Accumulation 74 6 The Current-cost “ Rate of Profit” 102 7 W hy the Rate of Profit Fell 123 8 The Underconsumptionist Alternative 151 9 What is to be Undone? 181 Notes 208 Bibliography 227 Index 234 List of Tables 2.1 Non-Linear Effect of Falling Profitability on Business Failures 17 4.1 Growth Rates of Real GDP Per Capita 53 4.2 Sovereign Debt Defaults and Restructurings, 1946-2005 57 4.3 Debt and GDP, U.S. 61 5.1 Rates of Profit, U.S. Corporations, Selected Trough Years 82 6.1 Rates of Profit and Equity-market Rates of Return 117 7.1 Rapid Depreciation of Computer Equipment 142 8.1 Real Income G rowth, U.S., 1979-2007 160 8.2 The Final Part of Output and Economic Growth 163 8.3 Initial Situation 169 8.4 First Ten Periods 172 8.5 W orldwide G rowth of Real GDP since 1600 174 8.6 Investment and Growth, 1965-92 Averages 176 ‘>.1 Pay, Exports, and Economic G rowth in the U.S. -
Economic Growth, Capitalism and Unknown Economic Paradoxes
Sustainability 2012, 4, 2818-2837; doi:10.3390/su4112818 OPEN ACCESS sustainability ISSN 2071-1050 www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability Article Economic Growth, Capitalism and Unknown Economic Paradoxes Stasys Girdzijauskas *, Dalia Streimikiene and Andzela Mialik Vilnius University, Kaunas Faculty of Humanities, Muitines g. 8, LT-44280, Kaunas, Lithuania; E-Mails: [email protected] (D.S.); [email protected] (A.M.) * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: [email protected]; Tel.: +370-37-422-566; Fax: +370-37-423-222. Received: 28 August 2012; in revised form: 9 October 2012 / Accepted: 16 October 2012 / Published: 24 October 2012 Abstract: The paper deals with failures of capitalism or free market and presents the results of economic analysis by applying a logistic capital growth model. The application of a logistic growth model for analysis of economic bubbles reveals the fundamental causes of bubble formation—economic paradoxes related with phenomena of saturated markets: the paradox of growing returnability and the paradoxes of debt and leverage trap. These paradoxes occur exclusively in the saturated markets and cause the majority of economic problems of recent days including overproduction, economic bubbles and cyclic economic development. Unfortunately, these paradoxes have not been taken into account when dealing with the current failures of capitalism. The aim of the paper is to apply logistic capital growth models for the analysis of economic paradoxes having direct impact on the capitalism failures such as economic bubbles, economic crisis and unstable economic growth. The analysis of economic paradoxes and their implication son failures of capitalism provided in the paper presents the new approach in developing policies aimed at increasing economic growth stability and overcoming failures of capitalism. -
The Great Depression: an Overview by David C
Introduction The Great Depression: An Overview by David C. Wheelock Why should students learn about the Great Depression? Our grandparents and great-grandparents lived through these tough times, but you may think that you should focus on more recent episodes in Ameri- can life. In this essay, I hope to convince you that the Great Depression is worthy of your interest and deserves attention in economics, social studies and history courses. One reason to study the Great Depression is that it was by far the worst economic catastrophe of the 20th century and, perhaps, the worst in our nation’s history. Between 1929 and 1933, the quantity of goods and services produced in the United States fell by one-third, the unemployment rate soared to 25 percent of the labor force, the stock market lost 80 percent of its value and some 7,000 banks failed. At the store, the price of chicken fell from 38 cents a pound to 12 cents, the price of eggs dropped from 50 cents a dozen to just over 13 cents, and the price of gasoline fell from 10 cents a gallon to less than a nickel. Still, many families went hungry, and few could afford to own a car. Another reason to study the Great Depression is that the sheer magnitude of the economic collapse— and the fact that it involved every aspect of our economy and every region of our country—makes this event a great vehicle for teaching important economic concepts. You can learn about inflation and defla- tion, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and unemployment by comparing the Depression with more recent experiences. -
A Crisis of Confidence and Legal Theory: Why the Economic Downturn Should Help Signal the End of the Doctrine of Efficient Breach
1-1-2011 A Crisis of Confidence and Legal Theory: Why the Economic Downturn Should Help Signal the End of the Doctrine of Efficient Breach Dawinder S. Sidhu University of New Mexico - School of Law Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/law_facultyscholarship Part of the Law and Race Commons Recommended Citation Dawinder S. Sidhu, A Crisis of Confidence and Legal Theory: Why the Economic Downturn Should Help Signal the End of the Doctrine of Efficient eachBr , 24 Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics 257 (2011). Available at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/law_facultyscholarship/279 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the UNM School of Law at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]. A Crisis of Confidence and Legal Theory: Why the Economic Downturn Should Help Signal the End of the Doctrine of Efficient Breach DAWINDER S. SIDHU* INTRODUCTION The doctrine of efficient breach is a common feature of a first-year foundational course in contract law.' In what follows, I argue that this familiar doctrine should be condemned, if not discarded. An efficient breach compels, or at least encourages or invites, a party to intentionally break a contract if he can enter into a second more profitable one and remain better off after compensating the non-breaching party.2 An efficient breach is said to take -
The Underlying Causes
3 The Underlying Causes I have suggested that the immediate causes of the depression were the confluence of risky lend- ing with inadequate personal savings, so that when the risks materialized, causing bank insolvencies and a fall in demand for goods and services be- cause credit was difficult to obtain, people couldn’t reallocate savings to consumption, and this al- lowed the fall in demand to trigger a downward spiral in employment and output. Digging a little deeper, we find the housing bubble, the bursting of which produced the defaults that endangered the solvency of the banks; the very low interest rates that motivated the banks to increase their leverage; the complicated financial instruments that turned out to be riskier than people thought; and the with- ering of regulation of financial services, which re- moved checks on risky lending. (The bursting of the housing bubble also of course caused the resi- 75 A Failure of Capitalism dential-construction market to nose-dive, but it is the broader decline in demand for goods and ser- vices that poses the big threat to the economy.) These phenomena too need to be explained rather than just assumed, if there is to be hope of heading off future depressions, and of a prompt recovery from this one. Among the deep causes of a depression might be human errors—maybe errors of a kind to which people are predisposed by quirks of human cognitive psychology—or character flaws, such as “greed” (whatever that means). It is widely be- lieved, for example, that banks miscalculated the safety of the novel financial instruments, or were taken in by the credit-rating agencies’ giving triple- A ratings to what really were risky assets; and that the housing bubble was due to the inability of ordinary people to understand the risks involved in novel forms of mortgage loan, such as a mortgage loan that does not require the borrower to have any equity in his home and does not give him the secu- rity of a fixed interest rate.