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G20 Summit, Global Policy, and Internal Issues: The Economic Situation in Brazil During Lula’s Third Term – Developing Economics
In January 2023, Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva, leader of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), began his third term as the president of Brazil, the largest economy in Latin America. The economic outlook is promising, with steady growth, controlled inflation, and declining unemployment rate. Despite challenges from a difficult Congress, Lula aimed to revive social…
Climate and Trade Explainer – Developing Economics
The Gender and Trade Coalition was initiated in 2018 by feminist and progressive activists to put forward feminist trade analysis and advocate for equitable trade policy. This article is the fourth in a series of short, Q&A format ‘explainers’ unpacking key trade issues produced for the Gender and Trade Coalition by Regions Refocus. It was…
Back to the White Elephants – the West’s new development strategy in Africa – Developing Economics
"Europe’s new external investment strategy needs to reconnect with historical business models we are going back to white elephants of 1970s – because that’s what partners want" - G7 official in a speech on Trade and Finance. "The era of Western dominance has indeed definitely ended" - Josep Borrell (2024), High Representative of the European…
The Nobel Illusion: Why the Nobel Prize in Economics Needs to be Abolished – Developing Economics
Every year the Nobel Prize is awarded to different disciplines including Economics. And each year it generates a wave of euphoria and hype. But unlike literature and natural sciences, economics is the only social science where the Nobel is awarded. Even critical voices within the discipline get swayed by the hype of Nobel. Notwithstanding the…
The nobel of influence in Economics or Why theories fail – Developing Economics
The only Nobel Prize that has nothing to do with the will of its creator, Alfred Nobel, was announced on Monday, October 14th. As usual, the announcement sparked a range of reactions, and as economist Noah Smith points out, this prize has traditionally been awarded to influential scholars within the sphere of economic discipline. This…
The white saviour industrial complex and global AI governance – Developing Economics
In the realm of international development, the ‘white saviour’ trope has long been a subject of critique and controversy. This phenomenon, often rooted in colonialist attitudes, positions Western individuals or entities as benevolent rescuers of non-Western communities, usually without acknowledging or addressing systemic multidimensional inequalities, colonial/racial privilege, and local agency of indigenous communities. The white saviour complex…
Copper and Economic Sovereignty – Developing Economics
By Robrecht Declercq & Duncan Money 7 January 1968 was a day of celebration across the Congolese Copperbelt, marked with marches and festivities in the mining towns, bonuses for mineworkers and medals for those who had labored many years in the industry. All this marked the one-year anniversary of the foundation of Gécamines, the state-owned…
Where is Ethiopia going after the deal with the IMF? – Developing Economics
The agreement recently negotiated between the Government of Ethiopia and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) not only imposes austerity on the government, but also risks destroying the country’s model of economic development. Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most populous country, has featured tremendous progress in its economic development in the past twenty years. A developmental state driving public…
C. T. Kurien and Rethinking Economics – Developing Economics
Born in 1913, C. T. Kurien contributed to rethinking economics through his various writings, particularly books and his vision for a practical B.A degree in Economics at Madras Christian College (MCC), an autonomous college situated in Chennai, a port city in Southern India. Besides MCC, another institution he contributed to was Madras Institute of Development…
Migration and Trade Explainer – Developing Economics
The Gender and Trade Coalition was initiated in 2018 by feminist and progressive activists to put forward feminist trade analysis and advocate for equitable trade policy. This article is the third in a series of short, Q&A format ‘explainers’ unpacking key trade issues produced for the Gender and Trade Coalition by Regions Refocus. It was…
The state in Africa is a colonial state – Developing Economics
Map of Africa from 1583 The default unit of analysis for many economists when dealing with national economics is the state. Yet, in economics textbooks ‘the state’ is often assumed to be a neutral actor exogenous to economic processes. It is assumed to be the same – in essence - everywhere. This conception is based…
What is the impact of international economic law on developing countries? – Developing Economics
Just as at the time of Bretton Woods, international economic law is essential to discourage destructive national policies. But it is also vital to understand how law, regulations and institutions are located within a longer historical trajectory of colonialism, inequality and exploitation. The Covid-19 pandemic and the climate crisis demonstrate how the world today is…
On recentring people’s voices to decolonise FinTech narratives – Developing Economics
In 2009, I was interested in studying the phenomenon of M-Pesa as a legal scholar—just a year after its launch and intense rollout. My standpoint enabled me to see the initial regulatory paradoxes that M-Pesa presented. In 2010, I began my PhD, exploring what a regulatory framework should look like. My analysis focused on the…
On recentring women’s grassroots struggles to decolonise FinTech narratives – Developing Economics
Drawing realised by artist Pawel Kuczyński for Serena Natile's book The Exclusionary Politics of Digital Financial Inclusion: Mobile Money, Gendered Walls I came to the study of fintech as a feminist socio-legal scholar researching the gender dynamics of South-South migration. While doing fieldwork in Kenya for my PhD in 2012, I came across M-Pesa, a…
Decolonising for Whom? Recentring grassroots struggles and voices in the ‘decolonising fintech’ narrative – Developing Economics
By Serena Natile and Joy Malala Over the last few years ‘decolonisation’ has become an increasingly popular subject in Western academia. Broadly considered the process of recognising and undoing the intellectual and institutional structures that enabled and maintain the reproduction of imperial power, calls for decolonisation have opened uncomfortable debates about epistemological privilege, forcing us…
Anti-Colonial Solutions to climate change – Developing Economics
When we discuss the climate crisis in economics, we are often confronted with a debate resting on technical solutions, emissions paths, and energy use: a certain amount of time to go from coal to turbines means a certain amount of carbon dioxide emitted, which means a certain likely degree of global temperature change. In environmental…
Misreading Indigenous Politics: A Eulogy for the Eurocentric Left – Developing Economics
Response to Thomas Meaney, “Red Power” in LRB (Vol. 46, No. 14, 18 July 2024) In the latest issue of the London Review of Books under the title of “Red Power: Indigenous Political Strategies,” Thomas Meaney has written a review of three recent award-winning books by historians of Native North America: Pekka Hämäläinen’s Indigenous Continent;…
Is It Possible to ‘Decolonize’ Economics?* – Developing Economics
Calls for decolonizing disciplines, fields, even businesses have proliferated. The goals and meaning are not always clear, but any decolonizing process necessarily entails deconstructive and reconstructive tasks. In Economics, the first task must challenge dominant and domineering paradigms – orthodox and heterodox – and expose mechanisms of exclusion in the profession (Zein-Elabdin and Charusheela 2004).…
Is women’s access to land path dependent? Evidence from Punjab (Pakistan) – Developing Economics
Women have historically been excluded from formal land rights in the Indian subcontinent. For its rural population, land remains the most prevalent and significant asset, making bequests of land parcels the main channel through which women can acquire land (Gazdar, 2003; Nelson, 2011; Agarwal, 1994). Customary land rights prevented inheritance along gendered lines and in…
Post-Conflict Recovery and Trade Explainer – Developing Economics
Produced by Regions Refocus with WILPF and Nawi, May 2024 The Gender and Trade Coalition was initiated in 2018 by feminist and progressive activists to put forward feminist trade analysis and advocate for equitable trade policy. This article is the second in a series of short, Q&A format ‘explainers’ unpacking key trade issues produced for…
Gender and Trade Explainer’ – Developing Economics
This article is the first in a series of short, Q&A format ‘explainers’ unpacking key trade issues produced for the Gender and Trade Coalition by Regions Refocus. It was written by Erica Levenson (Regions Refocus) with inputs from Fatimah Kelleher (Nawi–Afrifem Macroeconomics Collective), Mariama Williams (ILE), Hien Nguyen Thi (APWLD), and Senani Dehigolla (Regions Refocus).…
Imperialism: Its relevance for food systems – Developing Economics
Imperialism is still a relevant concept today, woven much more tightly into the structures of countries and economies than ever. The outcome of those seeking to expand their ownership or influence has stayed just as colonial and imperialist as ever before, especially now with the massive amount of capital accumulated in developed countries and the…
Fieldwork as a Feminist Methodology in Economics – Developing Economics
What is a feminist methodology? Academicians and scholars of gender and feminist studies have focused on feminist research methodology since the introduction of gender studies as a course in universities.Feminist methodology has developed as a result of several objections towards traditional positivist research. Theory and methodology can be seen to be closely interrelated in a…
Condensing the Gaza crisis – Developing Economics
The Gaza crisis has underscored the deep fractures of domestic politics in Western Europe, the US and Australia. It is as much a domestic political crisis as a conflict in the Middle East. What is the nature of this crisis? Well, it is not one but multiple crises that are condensed around the Gaza war.…
So You’re a Professor? Here’s What You Can Do to Oppose Genocide – Developing Economics
By Steve Salaita Feeling helpless does not mean being useless. It is possible to support Palestinians from afar. College instructors, particularly those in Europe and North America, are generally limited when it comes to meaningful intervention in imperialist horrors afflicting the Global South. Nevertheless, it is usually their governments either orchestrating or abetting the horror. …
Palestine Changes Everything – Developing Economics
The on-going ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians in 2023, marks the end of the façade of the peaceful Western liberal order. At least 940,000 people have been killed by direct war violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan. While these countries were subject to the different ebbs and flows of US imperial violence. Palestinians have paid…
When economists shut off your water – Developing Economics
Researcher Irene Nduta in Kayole-Soweto. By Adrian Wilson, Faith Kasina, Irene Nduta and Jethron Ayumbah Akallah In August 2020, people all over the development world started talking about water in Nairobi. There was a lot of anger, and some calls for sending people to the guillotine. The reason: the publication of results from a development randomized controlled trial (RCT), run…
Palestine and the Meaning of Global Antifascism – Developing Economics
Photo: Courtesy of the Laura Rodig Brigade, Coordinadora Feminista 8M. What is particularly harrowing about the current situation in Gaza not only has to do with the multiplication of war crimes and with the moral and ideological bankruptcy of a Western liberal order that seeks to obfuscate, by all means – media blackouts, censorship, stigmatization,…
The three-stage process through which African resource sovereignty was ceded to foreign mining corporations – Developing Economics
In the 1960s, newly independent African governments asserted sovereignty over their metal and mineral resources, in a reversal of their prior colonial exploitation by European mining corporations. In this excerpt from his new book Disrupted Development in the Congo: The Fragile Foundations of the African Mining Consensus, Ben Radley shows how transnational corporations have once…
Why Palestine is a feminist and an anti-colonial issue – Developing Economics
I am writing this short commentary to bear witness of the ethnic cleansing that is going on since 7 October. As I write this short text, over 13000 including 5000 children have been killed by Israel in Palestine (Gaza and the West Bank), many thousand people are missing under the rubbles and as many have…
Impotent Capital – Developing Economics
It is an uncontroversial observation that the history of capitalist development in South America is characterised by its subsumption to global capital accumulation through the production and export of agricultural and mining commodities for the world market. From this common starting point, however, there emerge divergent ways to account for the reproduction, and development limits,…
Absorbing pressure: Bodily ‘tension’ in a changing Himalayan world – Developing Economics
The Gaddi community of the Indian Himalayas experience the present as fraught with various, entangled pressures – pressure to ensure upward social mobility and inclusion in India’s middle class, pressure to secure stable domestic incomes, pressure to maintain sexual and gendered propriety. Written by Nikita Simpson, this piece examines how such pressures are not evenly…
The Ideal Amount of Work and Leisure – Developing Economics
Narayana Murthy, the founder of Infosys, has attracted significant attention for his recent interview in which he advises Indian youth to work 70 hours a week to contribute to the nation’s growth. Mr. Murthy, who also happens to be the father-in-law of the UK’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, supports his advice by drawing parallels to…
Degrowth and the Global South: remarks on the twin problem of structural interdependencies – Developing Economics
By Claudius Gräbner-Radkowitsch and Birte Strunk The degrowth movement is a radical attempt to challenge our current economic system, arguing that its excessive focus on economic growth will ultimately harm people and planet. It has recently gained increasing attention, not only because it has found its way into mainstream political debates (see, for example, the…
Neoclassical Economics and Urban Planning: A Contentious Theoretical and Policy Making Relationship – Developing Economics
Neoclassical economics – and contemporary extensions of it – has an outsized presence in academic and policy making circuits. This position of privilege builds upon more than a century of theoretical development, comprising the contemporary “mainstream” of economic science. The characteristics and rise of this mainstream, determined in many cases by means beyond pure intellectual…
The city of the evicted: lives under pressure in the margins of an urban fantasy in Benin – Developing Economics
by Joël Noret & Narcisse M. Yedji Since 2017, Cotonou – the economic capital of Benin – has witnessed several urban development projects. Aiming to showcase the city as the new face of a new Benin, attractive to both businessmen and tourists, the plans have involved extensive tarmacking projects, the development of the city’s first…
So, Global or International Development: Why Not Both? Marx in the Field, Planetary Immanent Development, and Centering Political Economy in Development Studies – Developing Economics
In a compelling new contribution in the journal Development and Change, a political economy collective led by Jeorg Wiegratz builds a strong case against calls to “universalize” Development Studies shifting the focus from “International” to “Global” Development. Indeed, many such calls at universalization – at least in the two influential “pandemic papers” the collective thoroughly…
What Pressure Produces: The Generative Aspects of Pressure amidst Urban Displacement in Dakar – Developing Economics
Figure 1: The old terminus building in Dakar, known simply as “La Gare” During my early days of fieldwork in the old city centre of Dakar, Senegal, I was sitting with the trader Fatim in her tiny market stall under a tattered, weather-worn parasol. Fatim watched over her goods that were balanced on top of…
De-dollarisation and Internationalisation of Other Currencies: Geopolitics and Implications for Dollar Diplomacy – Developing Economics
By Sangita Gazi and Christabel Randolph In a 2022 report, International Monetary Fund (IMF) states that ‘[t]he dollar’s share of global foreign-exchange reserves fell below 59 percent in the final quarter of last year, extending a two-decade decline’. However, surprisingly, the decline in the dollar is not associated with the ‘increase in the shares of…
Decolonising development with Frantz Fanon – Developing Economics
The great cultural theorist Stuart Hall called Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth ‘the bible of decolonisation’ as it encapsulated the urge for freedom across the colonial world (1). Fanon illuminates how racism represented an organising principle for capitalist classes by systematically devaluing the lives of the majority of the world’s population. ‘For centuries the capitalists have behaved…