PEH Blog

Author: David Legge

  • Neocolonial ISDS, Abused, Biased, Costly, and Grossly Unfair

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    By Jomo Kwame Sundaram in Inter Press Service, 7 Feb 2024 Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions in international trade and investment agreements – long abused by opportunists with means – are slowly being rejected by cautious governments. Jomo Kwame SundaramDeveloping country governments need to be much more wary of ISDS and its implications, and should…

  • What the GDP Hides

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    From Prabhat Patnaik, in People’s Democracy, 4 Feb 2024 THERE are well-known problems associated with the concept of gross domestic product as well as with its measurement. The inclusion of the service sector within GDP is something that Adam Smith would have objected to on the conceptual grounds that those employed in this sector constituted…

  • Corporate greed and rich countries cowardice lead WTO to abandon proposed sharing of Covid treatment technologies

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    WASHINGTON, D.C. — Last night, news broke that the World Trade  Organization (WTO) is preparing to reject a proposal that would have  relaxed pharmaceutical monopolies and supported global sharing of  COVID-19 therapeutic and diagnostic technologies.  In response, Global Trade Watch director Melinda St. Louis issued the  following statement:  “In a pandemic, among the most precious…

  • Global Tax Evasion Report 2024

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    This report produced by the European Tax Observatory (and authored by Annette Alstadsæter, Sarah Godar, Panayiotis Nicolaides, and Gabriel Zucman) reviews the various initiatives launched over the last 10 years to reduce international tax evasion. Yet despite the importance of these developments, little is known about the effects of these new policies. Is global tax evasion…

  • The Middle East and North Africa Gap: Prosperity for the rich, austerity for the rest

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    This Oxfam briefing paper (by Alexandros Kentikelenis, SaharMechmech, Amine Bouzaiene, Rowaida Moshrif, and Nabil Abdo, October 2023) examines growing inequality in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, focusing on Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and the cost of living crisis. It examines the lack of adequate…

  • Settler Colonialism under a Shroud of Victimhood

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    Analysis by Prabhat Patnaik, 20 November 2023, published originally in People’s Democracy and re-posted in the IDEAS Blog. /// The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had witnessed the emergence of two different paradigms of colonialism: the first, of which India was the classic example, involved the conquest of countries which had had a history of established…

  • When economists shut off your water

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    Research report by Adrian Wilson, Irene Nduta, and Somo Abdi; published on Africasacountry.com in November 2023, based on research conducted in 2022. /// Access to water in Nairobi is horribly unequal. The World Bank, Nairobi Water Company, and development economists exploited this unjust context to treat poor Kenyans like guinea pigs. In August 2020, people…

  • Constructing an economics consistent with the biophysical limits to economic growth?

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    In this special issue of the Real-world Economics Review a collection of heterodox economists respond to the following invitation: For over a century economics has loosely guided the global economy’s national economies. Natural science tells us that the climate crisis has been both caused by the global economy and ultimately threatens its continuing existence. Because…

  • Implications for developing countries/LDCs of the JSI E-commerce text (Revision 5)

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    By Jane Kelsey December 2023; published on bilaterals.org. /// Developing countries and least developed countries (LDCs) facegrowing pressure to participate in and adopt the outcomes ofplurilateral negotiations on electronic commerce, known as theElectronic Commerce Joint Statement Initiative (JSI), that are beingconducted by a sub-group of WTO Members outside the WTO’smandated procedures and bodies. As the…

  • The Political Determinants of Health Inequity – Another End of the World is Possible

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    By Remco van de Pas Ten years ago, The Lancet-University of Oslo Commission on Global Governance for Health released a report on the political origins of health inequity. (Ottersen et, al., 2014) The independent academic commission was formed in 2011. It was initiated by The Lancet and the Ministry of Health in Norway to examine…