In IS210, we will be reading about domestic political economy next week. Understanding the role of state and market, politics and economics, we can learn about what causes some countries’s economies to grow quite rapidly and other countries’ economies to grow more slowly. We’ll look at the role of domestic institutions and policy choices as key root causes in economic development. [How does this contrast with Inglehart’s arguments, or Weber’s idea of the ‘Protestant work ethic?’] Increasingly, though, our ever more globalized and interdependent world economy provides domestic economies with opportunities and threats that didn’t exist to nearly this extent even 50 years ago. We’ll look at economist N. Gregory Mankiw’s New York Times editorial piece on the “trilemma of international finance.”
Have a look at this Frontline excerpt on the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and the role that fixed exchange rates played:
This week POLI 1140 will be focused on the international political economy (IPE). As we’ll learn, much of the international institutional infrastructure for the current global economy was set up at a meeting in July 1944 in the New Hampshire mountain resort town of Bretton Woods. At the meeting, which the ailing economist John Maynard Keynes attended, created the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). (The International Trade Organization, which was planned, never came to fruition, and the General Agreement on Trades and Tariffs (GATT), would later be formed, which has been morphed into the World Trade Organization (WTO). These three institutions–World Bank, IMF, WTO–support the liberal (neoliberal) economic order, each of which provides a different main function.
Yesterday, US President Barack Obama named an academic–Dartmouth College president Jim Yong Kim–as his nominee to head the World Bank. Convention dictates that the USA be given the power to select the World Bank president while European states are given the right to select the head of the IMF.
This definitely counts as an “outside-the-box” pick for Obama. First, Dr. Kim is a global health expert, and not an economist. This may signal a change in direction and philosophy at the World Bank.The New York Times reports:
Highly respected among global health experts, Dr. Kim is an anthropologist and a physician who co-founded the nonprofit Partners in Health and a former director of the department of H.I.V./AIDS at the World Health Organization.
“The leader of the World Bank should have a deep understanding of both the role that development plays in the world and the importance of creating conditions where assistance is no longer needed,” President Obama said Friday. “It’s time for a development professional to lead the world’s largest development agency.”
This move bears watching in the future. It also signals one of the major differences between Democratic and Republican presidents. It is highly doubtful that any of the Republican candidates for president would name somebody with a similar resume as the head of the World Bank.
For a quick video of the creating of the Bretton Woods system, see the video below (the relevant excerpt begins at 36:36).
In the National Post, Peter Godspeed argues that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s pending visit to China represents somewhat of a foreign policy pivot for the Conservative government.
Like the United States, Canada is in the midst of a foreign policy pivot in Asia…
…Tuesday, Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister, arrives in the Chinese capital for what almost amounts to a traditional “Team Canada” trade mission, seeking to strengthen economic ties with Canada’s second-largest trading partner.
With four cabinet ministers — John Baird, the Foreign Affairs Minister, Ed Fast, the International Trade Minister, Gerry Ritz, the Agriculture Minister, and Joe Oliver, the Natural Resources Minister — and seven MPs and 40 business executives and academics, he hopes to build on rapidly expanding ties that have pushed bilateral trade to US$57.7-billion a year in 2010.
“China’s growth as an emerging market is very significant for Canada’s business community, and it is an economic relationship that requires the attention of the highest political level,” said Peter Harder, president of the Canada-China Business Council.
From the perspective of foreign-policy decision-making in IR theory, the makeup of the Team Canada mission to China would indicate the importance of the pluralist and organizational/bureaucratic models. The pluralist model notes the impact of powerful interest groups, such as the Canada-China Business Council, and business executives and academics. Radicals, especially Marxists, would note the absence of any environmental or union groups amongst the mission’s members.
About the tone of the trip, NDTV reports that
The visit can be seen as a change in attitude for Canada, which has a record of taking a hard stance on the Chinese regime’s human rights abuses, as it looks as if economic ties between the two nations are warming.
The average person may not know the difference between “offshoring” and “outsourcing”, but one would think that it would be a condition of employment for someone who writes for the business section of the Washington Post. In an otherwise informative story on the decreasing attractiveness of China as an “outsourcing” location for US companies, we are witness to another example of a member of the traditional media seemingly uninformed of basic facts.
Outsourcing is simply the idea that a company chooses to have another company produce a good or service rather than produce that same good or service in-house. Outsourcing has been happening for a long time, and an example is when the Ford Motor Company decided that it would be better to use their productive capacity to produce engines, and outsource the task of making tires to a different company rather than make tires itself. This helped increase productivity by allowing Ford to concentrate on the making of engines, and have the other company (Goodyear, Bridgestone) focus on making better tires.
Offshoring simply means sending work beyond one’s national boundaries. Notice that not all offshoring is also outsourcing. In fact, I have previously read (but I can’t find the source) that most offshoring is, in fact, not also outsourcing. How can this be? Well, what happens when General Motors decides to close down a car factory in Flint and make begin producing vehicles in Windsor, Ontario instead? That production (and the jobs accopanying it) has been offshored (moved to a different country–Canada) but it hasn’t been outsourced, since GM is still producing the vehicles. Here’s a little chart that will help you understand the difference.
As for the article itself, it demonstrates that rising fuel costs have increased the cost of shipping to such an extent that the potential savings for a US company of producing in China are completely eliminated. One such company has repatriated production to the US from China (I suppose that’s called “onshoring”?) We read:
SHANGHAI — Harry Kazazian built his business on sleeping bags that are made in China and shipped across the ocean to the United States, but he realized recently that the math doesn’t work anymore.
With fuel prices at record highs, the cost of sending a standard 40-foot container of goods has gone from $3,000 in 2000 to about $8,000 today, squeezing profit.
So this summer Kazazian, chief executive of Exxel Outdoors, a Los Angeles-based maker of recreational equipment, did something radical: He moved the manufacturing back to Haleyville, Ala.
Soaring energy costs, the falling dollar and inflation are cutting into what U.S. manufacturers call the “China price”– the 40 to 50 percent cost advantage once offered by Chinese producers.
The export model that has powered China and other Asian countries for three decades will be compromised if fuel prices continue to rise, said Stephen Jen, a managing director for Morgan Stanley.
“Globalization has gone a little bit too far. It has overshot,” Jen said. “We’re not saying Asia is going to crumble, but we are saying Asia enjoyed extraordinary conditions in the past. Now the conditions are changing very quickly because of the energy shock, and Asia is coming under pressure.”
The ripple effects have been far-reaching. The trade imbalance between the United States and China — a source of political tension for years — is beginning to right itself as Chinese exports fall and U.S. exports rise. Global trade routes are being transformed, suggesting a possible return to a less integrated world economy.
PBS broadcast a tremendously informative series called Commanding Heights, which took a look at the the battle over the world’s political economy during the 20th century. Below you’ll find a portion of the episode on Latin America, which has been uploaded to You Tube. The clip below explains the concept of dependency theory–the theoretical impetus behind the establishment of the political economic institution of import-substitution-industrialization (ISI). Unfortunately, ISI did not work very well in practice, and Moises Naim–the editor of Foreign Policy Magazine, explains why in the clip below.
P.S. “The Chicago Boys” were not Michael, Scotty, and Phil. 🙂
When I was younger, my friend’s father would often respond to our childhood rantings with the question, “but what’s that got to do with the price of tea in China?” I still don’t really understand what it means, but in this increasingly globalized world, there is a direct causal link bewtween the price of soybeans and smog in the Argentinian capital city of Buenos Aires. The causal mechanism is outlined in this Bloomberg news report:
April 17 (Bloomberg) — Smoke from fires set by farmers to clear fields for grazing covered the city of Buenos Aires and shut down some highways leading into the Argentine capital.
Interior Minister Florencio Randazzo called the smoke a “disaster” and said 292 separate fires covering 70,000 hectares (173,000 acres) had been detected in the provinces of Buenos Aires and neighboring Entre Rios.
Farmers are burning more land as they create pastures for cattle that previously grazed fields now dedicated to soybeans, said Randazzo. An 89 percent increase in soybean futures prices in the past year, part of a global explosion in food costs, has prompted Argentine farmers to increase the area sown to the oilseed by 10 percent, according to the Agriculture Secretariat.
“Those responsible are farmers who are burning their meadows to cut costs and maximize profits without considering the consequences,” said Randazzo in a news conference at the Presidential Palace. “We are conducting investigations to find those responsible.”
Notice this chart of soybean prices below and the fact that many farmers are moving into the soybean growing business and I think we could have the potential for an intermediate-term top in the soybean market. As in many speculative markets, many would-be speculators rush in just at (or even just after) the top has been set for that particularly stock or commodity. It’s not a surprise the the record number of sales transactions for US real estate occurred in the month (around Summer 2005) as a top was setting in. If I had to bet, I’d wager that many of those new soybean farmers will wish they had remained cattle farmers.
On the first day of class, I made the argument that in order for me to fulfill my pedagogical goals this semester, I need your help. I needed you to understand that what you choose to do (or not to do) in the classroom (and on your blog) will affect not only the grade you receive and how much you learn in this course, but will also affect the learning and grades of your peers sitting beside you in class. We live in societies, in which we all–to a greater or lesser extent–have an effect on those with whom we come into contact, with whom we share work places, roads, stadia, and class rooms. We all understand that if your neighbor’s house is unkempt and the lawn is overgrown, this will have a detrimental effect on your own property values.
Since we’re talking about property and the effects of social interaction, how is it that the town of Narvik, Norway (on the Arctic Circle) has had to miss a payroll for its municipal workers as the result of residents of Stockton (CA), Miami (FL), Flint(MI), and Worcester (MA), no longer being able to pay their residential mortgages? This New York Times article helps explain, and so does Jon Stewart’s guest, CNN Personal Finance editor Gerri Willis:
— At this time of year, the sun does not rise at all this far north of the Arctic Circle. But Karen Margrethe Kuvaas says she has not been able to sleep well for days.
What is keeping her awake are the far-reaching ripple effects of the troubled housing market in sunny Florida, California and other parts of the United States.
Ms. Kuvaas is the mayor of Narvik, a remote seaport where the season’s perpetual gloom deepened even further in recent days after news that the town — along with three other Norwegian municipalities — had lost about $64 million, and potentially much more, in complex securities investments that went sour.
”I think about it every minute,” Ms. Kuvaas, 60, said in an interview, her manner polite but harried. ”Because of this, we can’t focus on things that matter, like schools or care for the elderly.”
Norway’s unlucky towns are the latest victims — and perhaps the least likely ones so far — of the credit crisis that began last summer in the American subprime mortgage market and has spread to the farthest reaches of the world, causing untold losses and sowing fears about the global economy.
Where all the bad debt ended up remains something of a mystery, but to those hit by the collateral damage, it hardly matters.
Tiny specks on the map, these Norwegian towns are links in a chain of misery that stretches from insolvent homeowners in California to the state treasury of Maine, and from regional banks in Germany to the mightiest names on Wall Street. Citigroup, among the hardest hit, created the investments bought by the towns through a Norwegian broker…
…But Narvik has $34.5 million in a second Citigroup-devised investment, known as a collateralized debt obligation, which has also lost value as a result of the broader market turmoil. The town stands to lose at least some of that money, too.
Those investments represent a quarter of Narvik’s annual budget of $163 million, and covering the losses would necessitate taking out a long-term loan, which the town could only pay off by cutting back on services.
”You can calculate this in terms of places for schoolchildren or help for the elderly,” said Mr. Hermansen, a soft-spoken man who sat in his office in near-darkness, the lights switched off…
…In 2004, Narvik and a number of other towns took out a large loan, using future energy revenue as collateral. They invested the money, through Terra Securities, in the Citigroup debt vehicle, which offered a better return than traditional investments. In June 2007, as the subprime problems were brewing, Narvik shifted some money from that investment into an even more complex one, again through Terra Securities.
Do read the whole thing as it is interesting. Note, however, the really key part of the whole story in bold in the paragraph above and use the experience of Narvik to learn a very important lesson about investing. There is a clear immutable relationship in the investing world: the higher the expected return, the higher the level of risk associated with that return. If you expect to receive outsized returns, be prepared to accept outsized risk. Period. There may have been fraud perpetrated here (and it’s difficult to know without reading the signed agreements), but caveat emptor would have been valid advice in this situation.
What is the general link between subprime mortgages and other collateralized debt obligations (CDOs)–such as auto loans, student loans, and credit card debt–and the international political economy. Is there a general systemic risk to the global economy from new financial instruments, which Warren Buffett has referred to as “financial weapons of mass destruction?” Here is a panel at the 2008 World Economic Forum in Davos, which will shed more light on the financial industry.
There has been a rapid increase in food prices over the last couple of years, seen most dramatically in the recent 30% one-day rise in the price of rice worldwide. This is putting tremendous pressure on the poor and is leading to instability in countries around the world. There have been violent demonstrations–and equally violent government responses–to food rioting in Egypt and Haiti in the last couple of weeks. They may be but a harbinger of the economic and political instability to come. Here is a report from the BBC, in which an expert argues that IMF policies have contributed to the rise in food prices:
“Poor countries need to invest heavily in agriculture to feed their people. There’s been a dearth of investment in agriculture in poor countries, mainly because of IMF and World Bank policies…”
The Serbian coalition government, with moderate nationalist Vojislav Koštunica as Prime Minister–has collapsed following dissension within the multi-party governing coalition over the “loss of Kosovo.” Voters will go to the polls to elect a new government on May 11th having to make a stark choice in the polling booth: whether to side with the nationalists in their struggle to forestall Kosovar independence, or to vote in a more moderate pro-European government, thereby placating not only members of the European Union but calming the nerves of wary international investors, who have become the life-blood of the Serbian economic system. As reports reports:
…The coalition government collapsed at the weekend, with nationalist Prime Minister Vojislav Koštunica blaming disunity over the conflicting goals of pursuing European Union membership versus defending Kosovo, the province which seceded last month with EU backing.
“Right now, around 1.0 billion euros worth of investments have been put on hold,” [Deputy Prime Minster Božidar] Djelić said. “There is a growing risk perception considering that some parties want to halt Serbia’s road to Europe. The elections will be a choice between Europe and investors are extremely careful.”
Heavily reliant on foreign investment for growth, Serbia is believed to need between 3.0 billion and 5.0 billion euros a year to ensure solid economic growth, single digit inflation and financing of its current account gap of 16 percent of GDP.
“In the absence of the required level of foreign investment, foreign creditors could also decide to put on hold lending to Serbian companies,” said Pavle Petrović of the FREN/CEVES thinktank said.
“The resulting crisis would lead to forcible reduction in external gaps through inflation, currency depreciation, a fall in output and wages. In that case, the central bank could soothe and postpone, but not eliminate the crisis,” he said.
We won’t explicitly cover IPE (international political economy) until the second half of the semester, but it will certainly come up when dealing with views about what constitutes power (state power, specifically). How does the fact that China has built up a 1.53 trillion dollar Forex (foreign exchange) reserve affect its power relationship with the United States? Should the US be worried? Do you know if this affects, or could affect how much interest you pay on your mortgage, car or student loan?
James Fallows has a new article in the Atlantic, in which he analyzes the nature of the China-US trade relationship. He writes:
Through the quarter-century in which China has been opening to world trade, Chinese leaders have deliberately held down living standards for their own people and propped them up in the United States. This is the real meaning of the vast trade surplus—$1.4 trillion and counting, going up by about $1 billion per day—that the Chinese government has mostly parked in U.S. Treasury notes. In effect, every person in the (rich) United States has over the past 10 years or so borrowed about $4,000 from someone in the (poor) People’s Republic of China. Like so many imbalances in economics, this one can’t go on indefinitely, and therefore won’t. But the way it ends—suddenly versus gradually, for predictable reasons versus during a panic—will make an enormous difference to the U.S. and Chinese economies over the next few years, to say nothing of bystanders in Europe and elsewhere.
You can find more about the specifics of China’s forex holdings here.
es. The causal mechanism is outlined in t
Clouds, Clocks, and Sitting at Tables 
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