Brazilian Agricultural Development, 1950-1985
Between 1950 and 1985, the United States provided an ongoing flow of resources to support Brazilian agriculture. These were granted regardless of the orientation of the dominant political party in both countries. This book documents the Cold War-driven aid programs, the private capital, and investment from American philanthropists that laid the foundation for economic development to soar in Brazil through to today. Earl Richard Downes explains how Brazil became a major catalyst for change with US assistance and a military government. This rich history includes conflict over land titles, displacement of farm laborers, environmental damage, as well as political and social turbulence. The book breaks down how Brazil's military inserted itself into major components of the agricultural revolution, including mechanization, fertilization, credit, technical assistance, research, processing, and marketing. Chapters break down the global impact made through the frameworks and models used to develop Brazilian agriculture. Downes also offers insight into the nation's first agricultural research corporation, the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (EMBRAPA).
The War Below
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION AND THE 2024 FINANCIAL TIMES AND SCHRODERS BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD This unprecedented look inside the global battle to power our lives is "required reading for anyone interested in the 360-degree impacts of the energy transition" (Daniel Poneman, former US Deputy Secretary of Energy) from acclaimed Reuters reporter Ernest Scheyder. To build electric vehicles, solar panels, cell phones, and millions of other devices means the world must dig more mines to extract lithium, copper, and other vital building blocks. But mines are deeply unpopular, even as they have a role to play in fighting climate change and powering crucial technologies. These tensions have sparked a worldwide reckoning over the sourcing of necessary materials, and no one understands the complexities of these issues better than Ernest Scheyder. The War Below reveals the explosive brawl among industry titans, conservationists, community groups, policymakers, and many others over whether the habitats of rare plants, sensitive ecosystems, Indigenous holy sites, and other places should be dug up for their riches. With accessible and "illuminating" (Chris Miller, author of Chip War) writing, Scheyder shows the human toll of this war and explains why recycling and other newer technologies have struggled to gain widespread use. He also expertly chronicles Washington's attempts to wean itself off supplies from China, the global leader in mineral production and processing. The War Below paints a powerfully honest and nuanced picture of what is at stake in this new fight for energy independence, revealing how America and the rest of the world's hunt for the "new oil" directly affects us all.
Dollar Dominance
In a world shaken by crises, why does the dollar continue to dominate? In this book, Photis Lysandrou explores the interaction between global instability and the enduring strength of the dollar. Drawing on examples from the 2008 Great Financial Crisis to the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the author reveals how uncertainty and instability in global trade, production and politics drives investors towards the safety of the dollar, reinforcing its dominance over other currencies. With clear and insightful analysis, Lysandrou reveals the true global financial foundations of dollar dominance, and lays out what it would take for other currencies such as the Euro to challenge its position.
Is the Chinese Economy a Miracle or a Bubble?
Since China undertook economic reform and opened its economy to the world in the late 1970s, its economy has been growing at an average annual rate of over 9 percent for more than four decades. No other economy in recorded history has grown at such a high rate and for such a long period as China has done. The questions that naturally arise are: Was the Chinese economy a miracle? Or was it a mere bubble? Will the Chinese economy begin to stagnate like the Japanese economy did in the 1990s, and perhaps decline? Will it be able to escape the 'middle-income trap'? If it is not a miracle, can the Chinese development experience be replicated elsewhere?This book provides a comprehensive and detailed discussion of the remarkable growth of the Chinese economy over the past decades, by scrutinising the sources of economic growth. It also evaluates the strategies adopted by the Chinese government to promote the transition from a centrally-planned economy to a market-based economy through the 'dual-track' approach. It is argued that, while the Chinese economy is unique and exceptional in many ways, its development experience can be explained and attributed.
Power Lines
On American energy and its persisting power to destroy. In the United States, the promise of a green-energy future is complicated by its realities. The country's legacy energy systems are decrepit; the rollout of new technologies is unequal and piecemeal; households find themselves increasingly without reliable or affordable access; and Americans are excluded from the decisions that shape their energy futures. Having power in America has become an exercise in race, class, and wealth--in more ways than one. Power Lines is a sweeping portrait of American energy in the twenty-first century, rendered in terms of its increasing--and inevitable--human costs. Coal miners in West Virginia lose their livelihoods as energy markets change; historically marginalized households cannot easily access new technologies; children in "sacrifice zones" adjacent to mineral-mining sites suffer health problems and limited resources; and cities and towns are burdened from the production of alternative energies. Sanya Carley and David Konisky show current challenges and an uncertain future of America's greatest policy imperative. The result is not only sobering but also essential for planning and pursuing a clean-energy transition that improves on the errors of the past.
Social Coordination and Public Policy
This volume explores how public policy can foster or limit social coordination in the market, civil society, and within various levels of government. Some chapters in this volume are more theoretical, applying public choice and market process theory to public policy issues, while other chapters examine practical, real-world case studies.
Your Shopping Superpower
Your Shopping Superpower provides an insightful guide and strategies for shoppers to align the contents in their carts with their personal values. Are there harmful toxins in your food and body care? Who makes the products you purchase and under what conditions? What impact does the production of these items have on the environment? If 70% of the U.S. economy is driven by consumer spending, then every purchase we make has a physical and social impact on the world. Unfortunately, our shopping choices can unintentionally contribute to climate change and social injustice. Many people wish they could do more to combat these unjust and unsustainable outcomes. So what is the connection between our purchases and this impact? Your Shopping Superpower explores this important question and offers a comprehensive guide that navigates toward positive and sustainable shopping practices by providing pragmatic tips, tools and revealing how our habits can help reduce climate change, support companies with equitable workplace conditions, and foster diverse, local businesses. Broken into categories including People, Planet, Community, and Health, Diane Osgood expands on key issues regarding climate degradation, labor exploitation, products containing carcinogens and toxins, and the importance of supporting local, women-owned, and minority-owned businesses while covering an array of products that include food, fashion, gifts, household items, and personal care. Addressing shoppers' doubts about whether consumer choices truly have an impact and their concerns about costs and accessibility, Osgood shows how making these easy changes fosters happiness. With helpful diagrams and firsthand stories on climate and social injustice, Your Shopping Superpower informs and guides shoppers on how to: Implement one change per week Identify trustworthy certifications, rating systems, and apps Detect greenwashing and other misleading marketing Determine which purchases to switch for maximum impact Handle and approach choices that aren't easy or affordable By changing what we buy, we can initiate the change in our economy's environmental footprint and social impact. To enact change, we must start simple; it's about progress, not perfection.
A Crash Course on Crises
An incisive overview of the macroeconomics of financial crises--essential reading for students and policy experts alike With alarming frequency, modern economies go through macro-financial crashes that arise from the financial sector and spread to the broader economy, inflicting deep and prolonged recessions. A Crash Course on Crises brings together the latest cutting-edge economic research to identify the seeds of these crashes, reveal their triggers and consequences, and explain what policymakers can do about them. Each of the book's ten self-contained chapters introduces readers to a key economic force and provides case studies that illustrate how that force was dominant. Markus Brunnermeier and Ricardo Reis show how the run-up phase of a crisis often occurs in ways that are preventable but that may go unnoticed and discuss how debt contracts, banks, and a search for safety can act as triggers and amplifiers that drive the economy to crash. Brunnermeier and Reis then explain how monetary, fiscal, and exchange-rate policies can respond to crises and prevent them from becoming persistent. With case studies ranging from Chile in the 1970s to the COVID-19 pandemic, A Crash Course on Crises synthesizes a vast literature into ten simple, accessible ideas and illuminates these concepts using novel diagrams and a clear analytical framework.
The Land Trap
How the world's oldest asset secretly shapes our modern economy In The Land Trap, Mike Bird--Wall Street editor at The Economist--reveals how this ancient asset still exerts outsize influence over the modern world. From the speculative land grabs of colonial America to China's real estate crisis today, Bird shows how fortunes are built--and destroyed--on the bedrock of land. Tracing three centuries of history, Bird explores how land quietly became the linchpin of the global banking system, driving everything from soaring housing prices to rising geopolitical tensisons. As governments wrestle with inequality and land grows ever scarcer, The Land Trap offers a powerful new framework for understanding the hidden force behind today's most urgent challenges. This is the book for anyone who wants to see beyond markets and money to the real game being played on a foundation as old as civilization itself. Timely, provocative, and essential, The Land Trap will change how you see the ground beneath your feet.
Political Process
Political Process: New Perspectives on the Virginia and Bloomington Schools explore the concept of political process using insights from the Virginia and Bloomington schools of political economy. The chapters examine the processes of collective decision-making theoretically and through applied case studies from multiple disciplines.
Behold the Leviathan
In defiance of the stereotypes trotted out by yesterday's pundits, modern India's rise is both unusual and unexpected. It is unusual because some of the sharpest economic improvements are being observed in those sections of Indian society which were thought to be the most disadvantaged: women, oppressed castes and rural India. It is unexpected because of the widespread view. Until a couple of years ago, India's democratic construct was inferior to China's single-party state. In Behold the Leviathan: The Unusual Rise of Modern India, Saurabh Mukherjea and Nandita Rajhansa provide a gripping picture of how 1.5 billion Indians are combining to spectacular effect to create a range of social and economic outcomes which have no precedent in any emerging economy. For example, India now has as many chess grandmasters as the United States, and the expertise of its scientists has guided India's space modules to the dark side of the moon, a feat no other country has achieved. In this zeitgeist-defining book, the authors have also explored, through pathbreaking research, why the vast majority of India's companies are struggling to grow their profits even as a small minority of these companies have gone on to build globe-girdling franchises worth tens of billions of dollars. Written over two years, during which the authors crisscrossed India hundreds of times and interviewed over fifty of the country's leading thinkers in business, policymaking, media, and academia, Behold the Leviathan has been hailed by the cognoscenti as 'a firecracker of a read, ' challenging decision-makers, policymakers, and opinion leaders to reevaluate their long-standing perceptions of India's development.
Global Economic Prospects, January 2025
Global Economic Prospects is a World Bank Group Flagship Report that examines global economic developments and prospects, with a special focus on emerging market and developing economies, on a semiannual basis (in January and June). Each edition includes analytical pieces on topical policy challenges faced by these economies.
Leveling the Playing Field
Structural sources of Africa's inequality are rooted in laws, institutions, and practices that create advantages for a few but disadvantages for many. They include differences in living standards that come from inherited or unalterable characteristics, such as where people are born and their parents' education, ethnicity, religion, and gender. They also arise from market and institutional distortions that privilege some firms, farms, and workers to access markets, employment, and opportunities while limiting access for the majority and limiting earning opportunities. Leveling the Playing Field: Addressing Structural Inequalities to Accelerate Poverty Reduction in Africa argues that policies to address high levels of structural inequality in Africa are also at the heart of what is needed to accelerate progress in reducing extreme poverty. There is nothing inevitable about structural inequality. Economies that put up barriers to opportunities can also remove and replace them with policies that create a level playing field. Indeed, across the world, countries where opportunities are distributed more fairly grow faster and have lower poverty incidence. Broadening access to opportunities represents one of Africa's key prospects for raising productivity and earnings and accelerating poverty reduction. Leveraging the most recent data available for the region, Leveling the Playing Field provides recommendations aimed at improving the productive capacity of the poor, the ability of poor individuals to use their capacities for well-paying job opportunities, and the design of fair fiscal policies.
Pathways to Prosperity for Adolescent Girls in Africa
Africa stands at a crossroads, with its future prosperity hinging on the policy and investment decisions it makes today. The continent has an opportunity to shape the trajectories of generations to come by investing in the success of a pivotal population: its adolescent girls. With over 145 million adolescent girls calling Africa home, the potential for transformative change is immense. Yet challenges persist: from high rates of child marriage to limited educational opportunities. Over half of African girls ages 15 to 19 are out of school or married or have children. How can African countries overcome these challenges to ensure that adolescent girls enter adulthood empowered to thrive? Pathways to Prosperity for Adolescent Girls in Africa offers a groundbreaking road map for change. This landmark report - Outlines concrete, actionable policy recommendations; - Provides a comprehensive review of evidence-based interventions; - Presents a data-driven categorization of African countries to guide investments in adolescent girls; and - Introduces an innovative framework for understanding and measuring adolescent girls' empowerment. Drawing on extensive research and consultations with adolescent girls, policy makers, and practitioners, this report reveals that investing in adolescent girls can yield a tenfold return in economic impact. It outlines six key areas for targeted action: building human capital, enhancing economic success, focusing on the most vulnerable girls, adopting a holistic approach, addressing data and evidence gaps, and mobilizing diverse stakeholders. Whether you are a policy maker, researcher, development practitioner, or advocate, this report will equip you with the knowledge and tools to drive meaningful change. Discover how empowering adolescent girls can transform individual lives and African economies. Join the movement to secure a brighter future for Africa's adolescent girls and nations alike. The time for action is now.
Agribusiness and Rural Enterprise
Originally published in 1987, this book is written primarily for planners, public administrators and project managers in countries or international agencies considering a development strategy in which agribusiness and rural enterprise projects are viewed as a desirable policy instrument for generating employment and income.
Rural Restructuring
Originally published in 1990, this volume discusses the broad theme of rural restructuring looking at the nature of rural related responses to global processes of change.
Labour and Locality
Originally published in 1992, the volume shows through the lens of labour processes how global forces are played out at the local level. A range of important issues is addressed, including the commoditization and transformation of rural labour, and the role played by state policy in restructuring rural labour markets.
Rural Enterprise
Originally published in 1991, the focus of the contributions in this book is the relationships between rurality and small-scale production, particularly in Europe.
Regulating Agriculture
Originally published in 1994, this volume brings together a set of essays reflecting the complex political, social and institutional problems encountered by modern states in seeking to manage their agricultural sectors.
Human Capital Development
Academic Paper from the year 2024 in the subject Economics - Micro-economics, language: English, abstract: This paper explores the critical role of human capital development in driving rural economic transformation in Namibia. Using a mixed method of policy gap analysis, informed group consultations and semi-structured interviews, it delves into the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats related to human capital development in rural areas, emphasizing the significance of community-based education initiatives, government support programs, and traditional knowledge and skills. Additionally, the paper examines the policy environment and gaps, challenges, and cross-cutting issues associated with human capital development in rural Namibia. It recommends for an integrated cross-sectoral policy framework to enforce institutional commitments at rural development level. Furthermore, the paper highlights the need for increased investment in education and training, promotion of entrepreneurship and innovation, and addressing gender disparities in access to education and training as essential strategies for advancing human capital development in rural Namibia. Multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral research in the future would suffice to unravel the challenge of rural transformation from different perspectives
Labour and Capital Use in Indian Manufacturing
This book strengthens our understanding of the Indian manufacturing. It argues that structural transformation should be guided by the given factor endowments.
How Economics Can Save the World
Our world is in a mess. The challenges of climate change, inequality, hunger and a global pandemic mean our way of life seems more imperilled and society more divided than ever; but economics can help! From parenting to organ donation, housing to anti-social behaviour, economics provides the tools we need to fix the biggest issues of today. Far from being a means to predict the stock market, enrich the elite or track money around the globe, economics provides a lens through which we can better understand how things work, design clever solutions and create the conditions in which we can all flourish. With a healthy dose of optimism, and packed with stories of economics in everyday situations, Erik Angner demonstrates the methods he and his fellow economists use to help improve the lives of people and the society in which they live. He shows us that economics can be a powerful force for good, awakening the possibility of a happier, more just and more sustainable world.
21 Equations That Shaped the World Economy
This accessible and engaging textbook provides an introduction to the equations that have defined economics and shaped the global economy. It not only presents the ideas, concepts, and applications that underpin these equations, but also places them within their broader social and historical contexts. Simple mathematical examples and illustrations of the real-world application of the equations are combined with an overview of the implications to give a complete understanding of the power and importance of each equation. It will be relevant to economics students wishing to broaden their understanding of mathematics, mathematical economics, applied economics, and the history of economic thought.
The Political Economy of Chinese FDI in Africa
This book provides unique insight into Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) in Africa. With a particular focus on Ethiopia, it examines the impact of FDI on Africa's industrial and manufacturing sector and the potential for productive FDI to advance industrialisation and create jobs for a large and young labour market. The creation of government policies and an institutional framework for the management of FDI is also examined, alongside lessons that can be learnt from policies that were less successful.This book offers a comparative perspective on FDI to highlight the forms of government intervention that maximise the economic benefits of FDI. It will be relevant to students, researchers, and policymakers interested in development economics and the political economy.
Rethinking Illicit Economies in Opium and Cocaine
This book investigates the cross-border trade in illicit drug crops in the global south.
Shifting Production to Southeast Asia
This book investigates Vietnam's integration into the changing global and regional electronics production networks since the 2000s. It reveals that instead of driving only by the traditional lead firms and the lower costs, this complex production reconfiguration has been co-led by various firms and non-firm actors under different emerging dynamics.
Time Series for Economics and Finance
Focusing on methods for data that are ordered in time, this textbook provides a comprehensive guide to analyzing time series data using modern techniques from data science. It is specifically tailored to economics and finance applications, aiming to provide students with rigorous training. Chapters cover Bayesian approaches, nonparametric smoothing methods, machine learning, and continuous time econometrics. Theoretical and empirical exercises, concise summaries, bolded key terms, and illustrative examples are included throughout to reinforce key concepts and bolster understanding. Ancillary materials include an instructor's manual with solutions and additional exercises, PowerPoint lecture slides, and datasets. With its clear and accessible style, this textbook is an essential tool for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in economics, finance, and statistics.
As Gods Among Men
"In this masterly book, [Alfani] offers an insightful long-run perspective and fascinating lessons for the future. A must-read!"--Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century A sweeping narrative that shows how the rich historically justified themselves by helping their societies in times of crisis, why they no longer do, and what that may mean for social stability The rich have always fascinated, sometimes in problematic ways. Medieval thinkers feared that the super-rich would act 'as gods among men'; much more recently Thomas Piketty made wealth central to discussions of inequality. In this book, Guido Alfani offers a history of the rich and super-rich in the West, examining who they were, how they accumulated their wealth and what role they played in society. Covering the last thousand years, with frequent incursions into antiquity, and integrating recent research on economic inequality, Alfani finds--despite the different paths to wealth in different eras--fundamental continuities in the behaviour of the rich and public attitudes towards wealth across Western history. His account offers a novel perspective on current debates about wealth and income disparity. Alfani argues that the position of the rich and super-rich in Western society has always been intrinsically fragile; their very presence has inspired social unease. In the Middle Ages, an excessive accumulation of wealth was considered sinful; the rich were expected not to appear to be wealthy. Eventually, the rich were deemed useful when they used their wealth to help their communities in times of crisis. Yet in the twenty-first century, Alfani points out, the rich and the super-rich--their wealth largely preserved through the Great Recession and COVID-19--have been exceptionally reluctant to contribute to the common good in times of crisis, rejecting even such stopgap measures as temporary tax increases. History suggests that this is a troubling development--for the rich, and for everyone else.
