Week 1 Flashcards
Globalization
increased flow of goods, services, capital and people across borders around the world
Death by distance
technological development enabled communication, information and transport around to a high degree
Foreign direct investment
FDI, when a company from one country buys a company in another, bringing in money, skills and technology
Hechscher-Ohlin-Samuelson model of international trade
Assumes full factor mobility. This means that capital or labor can be easily transferred to other sectors if the demand for their own sectors fall. When this assumption fails, people get left behind.
Compensation principle
Neoclassical thought. globalization creates an aggregate gain for the winners bigger than the aggregate losses of the losers. Therefore, there would be room to compensate all the losers, while the winners still have something left behind too
Two drivers of globalization
- political decisions
2. technological opportunities
Era of modern globalization and its three phases
- 1820s-WW1: British Empire after they defeated the other key European powers
- post WWII-1990s: triadization of world economy
- 2000s: rise of the rest
Rise of the rest
3rd modern globalization period from 2000s. Four distinctive features:
- acceleration of technological change
- multinationals with global value chains
- rise emerging markets
- growing importance of trade in services
Mercantilist opposition against free trade
- national power perspective: trade as a zero-sum game, gold hoarding mentality
- protecting infant industries from foreign competitors
Corn laws
Tariffs and other trade restrictions on imported food and corn were enforced in the United Kingdom between 1815 and 1846. The word corn in British English denotes all cereal grains, including wheat, oats and barley.
The Chang view on globalization, four main arguments
Unrestricted free trade is bad for development as
- Large multinationals undermine industrial capacity building in developing countries.
- Allows exploitation of lax labour and environmental standards, low taxes, and low wages in DC: ‘race to the bottom’.
- Facilitates the formation of transnational oligopolies.
- Governments lose a crucial source of revenue.
Drivers for political agents and decision-making outcomes
Three Is
- Interest: material gains of actors
- Ideas: what actors believe to be in their interest
- Institutions: procedures through which decisions are being made
Characteristics of American school in IPE
- Closer to economics
- Methods-driven
- Mostly quantitative
Characteristics of British School in IPE
- Interdisciplinary: history, law, sociology, economics, politics, anthropology
- Problem-driven
- Mostly qualitative
Static argument
Following the Stolper-Samuelson theorem, freer trade should help reduce poverty in countries that use their comparative endowment advantage of labor.
dynamic argument on trade and poverty
Two-step argument: Trade promotes growth and growth reduces poverty.
- Generally speaking, the growing effect of trade must come from links between accumulation and innovation.
- Details of the situation depending on which model you use.
Main argument “kicking away the ladder”
Now-developed countries of the west are ‘kicking away the ladder’ by which they themselves climbed to the top, by advocating for other countries to trade openly, while these western countries used to have strong protectionist policies as well.
Elasticity
Measure of responsiveness that is unit-free, the percent change in one variable resulting from a 1 percent change in another variable.