PEH Blog

Category: Analysis

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

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    Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Feb 7 2024 (IPS) – 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. Developing country governments need to be much more wary of ISDS and its implications, and should urgently withdraw from existing commitments. They…

  • Financialization Hypothesis: A Theoretical and Empirical Critique

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    Turan Subasat, Stavros Mavroudeas. Financialization Hypothesis: A Theoretical and Empirical Critique. World Review of Political Economy 2023 The financialization hypothesis (FH) is a popular leitmotiv which argues that the financial system conquers the commanding heights of the capitalist economy. It maintains that finance gained independence from productive-capital and began to dominate it. The FH bases…

  • The IMF and the Argentinian Right

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    C. P. Chandrasekhar, January 25, 2024 On January 10, the IMF announced its decision to release $4.7 billion out of a $57 billion bailout package sanctioned in 2018 to perennially debt-distressed Argentina, then under a right-wing government headed by Mauricio Macrio. That surprised some. Going by the IMF’s stated ‘principles’, the disbursal should not have…

  • The Scourge of Unemployment

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    Prabhat Patnaik The unemployment situation is worse today than it has ever been in post-independence India. There are two distinct elements that have contributed to this situation. One is the fact that the output recovery from the fall caused by the pandemic-linked lockdown has not been accompanied by a comparable employment recovery. In fact, even…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…