Category: Research Reports
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Water Flowing Upwards: Net financial flows from developing countries
from C. P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh on Real-World Economics Review blog, 1 May 2024, originally published in the Business Line on April 29, 2024 Once again, low and middle income countries (LMICs) are at the brutal receiving end of the fickle trajectory of international capital flows. As Figure 1 indicates, net financial flows to such countries, which…
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Looming debt crisis, deepening inequality, lack of investment in climate mitigation and adaptation: UN Trade and Development calls for structural reform
Globally, in the first quarter of 2024, economic growth is slowing; private investment is stagnant, income inequality is increasing; and consumption expenditure is increasingly sustained by private borrowing. The UN Trade and Development Report Update (April, 2024) is a ‘must read’ for understanding the structure and direction of the global economy. Higher interest rates in…
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Global South Stagnating under Heavier Debt Burden (Jomo Kwame Sundaram)
Much higher interest rates – due to Western central banks – are suffocating developing nations, especially the poorest, causing prolonged debt distress and economic stagnation. US Fed-induced stagnation After the greatest US Fed-led surge in international interest rates in more than four decades, developing countries spent $443.5 billion to service their external government and government-guaranteed debt in…
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Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and Paradigms of Political Economy: Transmodernity, DecolonialThinking, and Global Coloniality
RAMÓN GROSFOGUEL, TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, 1(1), 2011 Can we produce a radical anti-systemic politics beyond identity politics?1 Is it possible to articulate a critical cosmopolitanism beyond nationalism and colonialism? Can we produce knowledges beyond Third World and Eurocentric fundamentalisms? Can we overcome the traditional dichotomy between political-economy and…
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Hyper-Imperialism: A Dangerous Decadent New Stage
Tricontinental, 23 January 2024 It has been a scant 30 years since the ‘end of history’ was declared by bourgeois ideologists in pantomimes of wish-fulfilment for sensing the inviolability of United States imperialism. For peoples’ struggles and movements feeling the boot of imperialism on their necks, no such end was in sight. In the face…
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Sick development: how rich-country governments and World Bank funding to for-profit hospitals causes harm, and why it should be stopped
Anna Marriot, Oxfam International, June 2023. Development finance institutions owned by European governments and the World Bank Group are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on expensive for-profit hospitals in the Global South that block patients from getting care, or bankrupt them, with some even imprisoning patients who cannot afford their bills. At the height…
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World Bank Enables Foreign Aid Theft
Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Jan 17 2024 (IPS) – World Bank aid encourages governments to enable illicit financial outflows to offshore tax havens by reducing capital controls, thus draining precious foreign exchange and government resources. Aiding elite wealthAid disbursements to highly aid-dependent countries coincide with sharp increases in bank deposits in offshore financial centres known for banking…
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A worldof debt: A growing burden to global prosperity
UN GLOBAL CRISIS RESPONSE GROUP, July 2023 Public debt can be vital for development. Governments use it to finance their expenditures, to protect and invest in their people, and to pave their way to a better future. However, it can also be a heavy burden, when public debt grows too much or too fast. This…
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Inequality Inc.
How corporate power divides our world and the need for a new era of public action Oxfam, 14 January, 2024 Since 2020, the richest five men in the world have doubled their fortunes. During the same period, almost five billion people globally have become poorer. Hardship and hunger are a daily reality for many people…
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AFTINET briefing paper on ISDS
Australian Fair Trade and Investment (AFTINET) updated briefing paper on Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), January 2024 AFTINET has produced an updated briefing paper on ISDS. It provides background and the latest evidence on ISDS cases including Clive Palmer’s three cases against the Australian government, which total nearly $410 billion. It documents other case studies and…
