The YSI Economic Development Working Group is pleased to announce a Call for Papers for the North America Convening, 22-24 February 2019, USC Dornsife, Los Angeles. We invite theoretical and empirical contributions on these broad topics. This may include (but not limited to):
-The political economy of development.
-The impact of global financial liberalization on developing countries’ macroeconomic policy space.
-Structural change, input-output analysis and the scope for industrial policy in the Global South.
-Dependency theory and unequal exchange, and the role of international trade and financial organizations.
-The links between political regime changes/political polarization in the core and the periphery.
-Growth and distribution, group-based inequalities.
-Gender economics and economic development.
-Economic development and the transition towards a green economy.
Few countries have been able to climb the ladder of development over the last five decades. In this sense, when underdeveloped countries aim to grow at high rates for a sufficiently long period, it seems that they inevitably reach the limits to growth, often related to their current accounts (trade deficit), the balance of payments (financial crisis) or political limits (instability or institutional weaknesses).
These are the same countries that have been historically and are often still subject to oversight by international financial institutions, that subscribe to a narrow, one-size-fits-all framework of growth and development. The recommendations tend to fluctuate around measures such as the liberalization of the capital and financial account, and a prudential macroeconomic policy that includes tools such as inflation targeting and fiscal consolidation, amongst others. These type of measures contributed to the “lost decade” for Latin America and Africa in the 1980s and reduced the ‘national policy space,’ that is, the capacity of national-level political economy institutions to pursue objectives such as full employment and growth (Kregel, 2008)[1]. In a context of rising interest rates by the Federal Reserve in the US, unfettered flows of global capital typically result in outflows of capital from peripheral countries, thus reducing the space for development through accentuating financial and exchange rate risk. Trade policy is also limited by similar types of international organizations (i.e., WTO), which provide asymmetric opportunities for policies that support the industrialization and export sectors in peripheral countries compared to core countries. Political crises can also be the cause or consequence of these phenomena.
Although the balance of payments and financial crises have been studied incisively in the literature (Díaz Alejandro, 1963[2]; Krugman & Taylor, 1978[3], among others), political crises or regime changes (Kalecki, 1943)[4] have not. In this context, we observe at a national level, in Europe, the United States, and Latin America a tendency toward political polarization. It would be of interest to explore the relationship between economic development and radical changes of political regimes, both within developing countries and between the core and the periphery.
For any queries regarding the call for papers, please contact Santiago and Karmen at the following email address: [email protected]
Submission
Apply here: https://ysd.ineteconomics.org/rc
Deadline: 18 December
Attachments: