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Articles 1 - 14 of 14
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Can Advocacy-Led Certification Systems Transform Global Corporate Practices? Evidence And Some Theory, Michael E. Conroy
Can Advocacy-Led Certification Systems Transform Global Corporate Practices? Evidence And Some Theory, Michael E. Conroy
PERI Working Papers
There is emerging evidence that globalization is beginning to provide new opportunities for global coalitions of advocacy groups to bring market-based pressures to bear upon major transnational firms in a way that promotes higher standards of social and environmental responsibility in production processes and trade relations. This can be seen as successful citizen-led attention to the “production and process methods” which the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations explicitly chose to omit. More broadly it may reflect the increased importance of global branding, improved awareness in both consumer and financial markets of the social and environmental practices of firms, and collaboration …
Defending The Public Domain: Pollution, Subsidies And Poverty, Paul H. Templet
Defending The Public Domain: Pollution, Subsidies And Poverty, Paul H. Templet
PERI Working Papers
In recent decades, industry has come under criticism for failing to cover the environmental costs of doing businesses. When companies are allowed to pollute, or to use natural resources without paying their full price, they are in effect appropriating natural capital – land, air, and water – without compensation to society at large.
Empowerment Through Risk-Related Information: Epa's Risk Screening Environmental Indicators Project, Nicolaas Bouwes, Steven M. Hassur, Mark D. Shapiro
Empowerment Through Risk-Related Information: Epa's Risk Screening Environmental Indicators Project, Nicolaas Bouwes, Steven M. Hassur, Mark D. Shapiro
PERI Working Papers
Public access to information can drive change more effectively than regulations alone. Some regulatory agencies are now taking such an approach to advance their objectives. Right-to-know legislation, such as the Emergency Planning and Community Right-toKnow Act of 1986 (EPCRA), provides the basis for many of the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) information disclosure initiatives. By requiring that the public be informed about releases of toxic chemicals in their communities, EPCRA— through its Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) in particular—can help to empower community residents, heighten industry accountability to the citizenry, and support efforts to ensure environmental justice.
China's Urban Unemployement: Exposed "Disguised Unemployment" Or Insufficient Aggregate Demand?, Minqi Li
China's Urban Unemployement: Exposed "Disguised Unemployment" Or Insufficient Aggregate Demand?, Minqi Li
PERI Working Papers
China’s enterprise reform has resulted in large-scale layoff of workers from state and collective owned enterprises. Mainstream Chinese economists argue that many of the workers in these enterprises are “disguisedly unemployed” and have to be laid off to achieve better economic performance. In this paper, I argue that the productivity of state and collective owned enterprises to a large extent depends on capacity utilization and the level of aggregated demand. If the government undertakes active aggregate demand policy, the performance of state and collective owned enterprises can be substantially improved without large number of workers being laid off.
Building Social Capital To Protect Natural Capital: The Quest For Environmental Justice, Manuel Pastor
Building Social Capital To Protect Natural Capital: The Quest For Environmental Justice, Manuel Pastor
PERI Working Papers
Across the United States, the concept of environmental justice has been gaining ground. Initially defined in the negative – a reduction in the disproportionate exposure of minority residents to various hazards – environmental justice advocates often took as a first task raising awareness of environmental disparities both nationally and locally. In this effort, activists have had success at changing policies as well as projects. In 1994, for example, President Clinton acknowledged the issue in a Presidential Executive Order directing all federal agencies to take into account the potentially disproportionate burdens on U.S. minority communities of pollution or hazard siting. In …
Threat Effects And The Internationalization Of Production, James Burke, Gerald Epstein
Threat Effects And The Internationalization Of Production, James Burke, Gerald Epstein
PERI Working Papers
Multinational corporations (MNCs) have become an increasingly important force in the dynamics of the global economy. For example, according to the United Nations, during the last 20 years, the gross product of the foreign affiliates of multinational corporations increased faster than global GDP while foreign affiliate sales increased faster than global exports. Sales of foreign affiliates worldwide ($14 trillion in 1999 versus just $3 trillion in 1980) are now nearly twice as large as global exports. And the ratio of world FDI stock to world GDP increased from 5% to 16% during the last twenty years. Taking into account both …
Shifting From The Home To The Market: Accounting For Women's Work In Taiwan, 1965-95, Elissa Braunstein
Shifting From The Home To The Market: Accounting For Women's Work In Taiwan, 1965-95, Elissa Braunstein
PERI Working Papers
If one accounts for the shift of women’s work from the household to the market during the course of economic development, what does the trajectory of growth and structural change look like? In this paper, I present an accounting of one such shift by looking at the role of women in Taiwanese growth between 1965 and 1995, a thirty-year stretch when an enviable per capita market growth rate of 6.9 percent, which later came to be called the “East Asian miracle,” was accompanied by large increases in female labor force participation.
Threat Effect Of Foreign Direct Investment On Labor Union Wage Premium, Minsik Choi
Threat Effect Of Foreign Direct Investment On Labor Union Wage Premium, Minsik Choi
PERI Working Papers
This paper explores the impact of “threat effects” of foreign direct investment on labor markets in the United States. In this context, the term “threat effect” refers to the use by employers of the implicit or explicit threat that they will move all or part of their production to a different location, even if they do not actually do so. In this paper, I construct a unique industry level panel data set and I show that the union wage premium has been negatively associated with the stock of outward FDI in the U.S. manufacturing sector for the period of 1983-1996. …
Economic Performance In Post-Crisis Korea: A Critical Perspective On Neoliberal Restructuring, James Crotty, Kang-Kook Lee
Economic Performance In Post-Crisis Korea: A Critical Perspective On Neoliberal Restructuring, James Crotty, Kang-Kook Lee
PERI Working Papers
This paper evaluates the neoliberal economic restructuring process implemented in Korea following the 1997 Asian financial crisis. We first argue that the austerity macroeconomic policy of late 1997 and early 1998 was the main cause of the economic collapse in 1998, and that the decision of the IMF and President Kim Dae Jung to impose a radical neoliberal transformation of financial markets and large industrial firms in the depressed conditions of 1998, though defensible on political grounds, made the failure of these reforms virtually inevitable. A detailed analysis of the macro economy, labor markets, financial markets, and nonfinancial firms in …
Two Different Export-Oriented Growth Strategies Under A Wage-Led Accumulation Regime, Özlem Onaran, Engelbert Stockhammer
Two Different Export-Oriented Growth Strategies Under A Wage-Led Accumulation Regime, Özlem Onaran, Engelbert Stockhammer
PERI Working Papers
The aim of the paper is to compare the relationship between distribution, growth, accumulation and employment in Turkey and South Korea. These countries represent two different export-oriented growth experiences. Thereby they provide examples for comparing different economic policies. The paper tests whether accumulation and employment are wage-led in these two countries by means of a post-Keynesian open economy model. The model, in addition to the goods market, includes a demand-driven labor market and a reserve army effect in the Marxian sense. The model is estimated in a structural vector autoregression form. The results show that decreasing the wage share does …
Financial Markets And Economic Development In Africa, Léonce Ndikumana
Financial Markets And Economic Development In Africa, Léonce Ndikumana
PERI Working Papers
The role of financial markets in economic development continues to attract increasing attention both in academia and among policy-makers.1 Evidence from recent empirical studies suggests that deeper, broader, and better functioning financial markets can stimulate higher economic growth (Levine, Loayza and Beck 2000; Beck, Levine, and Loayza 1999; King and Levine 1993a, 1993b). Although evidence on Africa is still limited, the results from existing empirical work supports the view that financial development has a positive effect on economic growth in African countries (Ndikumana 2000; Allen and Ndikumana 2000; Gelbard and Leite 1999; Odedokun 1996; Spears 1992). The discussion of strategies …
Democratizing Global Economic Governance: A Peri Symposium, Jane D'Arista, Keith Griffin, Lisa Jordan, James Crotty, Eva Paus, J. Mohan Rao
Democratizing Global Economic Governance: A Peri Symposium, Jane D'Arista, Keith Griffin, Lisa Jordan, James Crotty, Eva Paus, J. Mohan Rao
PERI Working Papers
This working paper is the fruit of a symposium on Democratizing Global Economic Governance held at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) on October 20, 2000, an event co-sponsored by the Five-College Peace and World Security Studies program. The speakers were asked not only to critique briefly the principal institutions of global economic governance – the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank – but also to suggest progressive alternatives. In other words, they were asked for their views on not only what progressives should be against, but also what they should be for.
Globalization And The Fiscal Autonomy Of The State, J. Mohan Rao
Globalization And The Fiscal Autonomy Of The State, J. Mohan Rao
PERI Working Papers
Public finance in less developed countries is the focal point - both as source and destination - of many of the dilemmas and conflicts posed by development. Revenue mobilization for the allocative, distributive and stabilization functions of the state is severely constrained by the narrowness and instability of the tax base. The latter, in turn, is the result of political constraints rooted in socioeconomic inequalities, economic constraints arising from the structures of production and trade, and administrative constraints reflecting a weakly developed state apparatus. As a consequence, public infrastructure and human development expenditures, which are among the most effective vehicles …
The Sanctity Of Property Rights In American History, Gerald Friedman
The Sanctity Of Property Rights In American History, Gerald Friedman
PERI Working Papers
Society makes property. Economic systems are defined by what they allow to become property, and the extent of property varies enormously. Some allow property claims to fixed objects, such as land and trees, sometimes including the ephemeral, such as wildlife or flowing water. Some extend property to include ideas (patents); a few include human beings themselves as chattel slaves.