Political Economy Commons^™

Moving Beyond Boycotts: Strategies For Shared Responsibility In The Collegiate Apparel Industry, Scott Kelley

Mission and Ministry Publications

the factory collapse at Rana Plaza in Bangladesh is a painful reminder that labor issues in the apparel industry are abundant and troubling. Catholic Colleges and Universities (CCUs) are confronted with the reality that many apparel manufacturers can operate in stark contrast to the vision of economic justice found in Catholic social thought (CST). In response, activists on CCU campuses have demanded that CCUs boycott apparel manufacturers that they believe to be in violation of their school’s values. While activism can draw much needed attention to problems in the industry, it can be a problematic response. While CST offers principles …

Meeting The Challenge Of Reconstruction And Development In Fragile States: Lessons From Aceh, Haiti, And South Sudan, Josef Leitmann

International Institute for Infrastructure Resilience and Reconstruction (I3R2) Conference

Reconstruction and development in poor, fragile countries present a double challenge: tackling the issues of poverty and underdevelopment as well as the constraints posed by instability, poor governance, and weak capacity. This context generates a range of problems that include: insecurity, insufficient planning, inadequate implementation capacity, poor financial management, misprocurement, corruption, a volatile fiscal environment, ineffective donor coordination, and negative environmental and social impacts. The paper draws lessons from positive and negative experiences in meeting these challenges in three conflict- and/or disaster-affected cases: Aceh Province, Indonesia (postdisaster reconstruction and postconflict development following the tsunami and earthquakes of 2004), Haiti (postdisaster …

Ltv Re Adj Notes, Anwar Shaikh Phd

Archives of Anwar Shaikh

This collection includes:

• Ltvcalc1998stdreadjfixed.xmcd by Anwar Shaikh, PhD. (Unpublished work).
• Podkaminer, L. (2005). A note on the statistical verification of Marx: Comment on Cockshott and Cottrell. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 29(4), 657–658. Oxford University Press.
• Eigen_by_matrixsize_2002.xlsx by Anwar Shaikh, PhD. (Unpublished work).
• Shaikh, A. (2014). Variations in p(r) w.r.t to r/R come solely from subdominant term (Unpublished manuscript).

Rust-Belt Recovery: The Cleveland Model As Economic Development In An Age Of Economic Stagnation And Climate Change, Ross Lenihan

Pepperdine Policy Review

The economic outlook of the United States is dire. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, poverty has not lessened even as U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has rebounded following the Great Recession. This paper explores the development potential of joint worker-community cooperative structures during the current economic downturn by analyzing the “Cleveland model,” a network of worker-owned cooperatives supported by local education/healthcare "anchor" institutions and financed and organized by a non-profit community development corporation. I find that while worker and community-owned enterprises hold significant promise for both workers and communities in times of economic stagnation and ecological danger, existing market …

Happiness In Public Policy, Laura Musikanski

Journal of Sustainable Social Impact

The happiness movement represents a new paradigm where social, economic, and environmental systems are structured to encourage human well-being in a sustainable environment. Bhutan has adopted Gross National Happiness (GNH) as a way of determining its society’s success in contrast to purely economic goals and the singular use of the gross domestic product indicator. Bhutanese policy promulgation includes use of a GNH screening tool. In the United Kingdom, happiness indicators are being used to collect data and the government is starting to explore their application to policy. The Bhutanese GNH policy screening tool has been adapted for the grassroots activists, …

The Youth Unemployment Crisis Facing Welfare Regimes: How States Develop New Social Policy, Andrew C. Campbell

Senior Independent Study Theses

No abstract provided.

Digging Deeper Into Hardin's Pasture: The Complex Institutional Structure Of "The Tragedy Of The Commons", Daniel H. Cole, Graham Epstein, Michael D. Mcginnis

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The institutional and ecological structure of Hardin’s “tragedy of the commons” appears deceptively simple: the open-access pasture eventually will be overexploited and degraded unless (i) it is privatized, (ii) the government regulates access and use, or (iii) the users themselves impose a common-property regime to regulate their own access and use. In this paper, we argue that the institutional structure of the “Herder Problem” (as it is known to game theorists) is far more complicated than it is usually portrayed. Specifically, it is not just about the pasture. It is equally about the grass that grows on the pasture and …

Advancing The Empirical Research On Lobbying, John M. De Figueiredo, Brian Kelleher Richter

Faculty Scholarship

This essay identifies the empirical facts about lobbying which are generally agreed upon in the literature. It then discusses challenges to empirical research in lobbying and provides examples of empirical methods that can be employed to overcome these challenges—with an emphasis on statistical measurement, identification, and casual inference. The essay then discusses the advantages, disadvantages, and effective use of the main types of data available for research in lobbying. It closes by discussing a number of open questions for researchers in the field and avenues for future work to advance the empirical research in lobbying.

Export Controls: A Contemporary History, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Provides highlights of my recently published book Export Controls: A Contemporary History. Describes the roles played by multiple U.S. Government agencies and congressional oversight committees in this policymaking arena including the Commerce, Defense, State, and Treasury Departments. It also reviews the roles played by international government organizations such as the Missile Technology Control Regime, export oriented businesses, and research intensive universities.

The Plight Of Kenyan Domestic Workers In Gulf Countries, Caroline Muthoni Gikuru

Master's Theses

Kenya’s economy remains the regional leader within the East African Community (EAC) and among East African countries at large. However, political instability such as the 2007 post-election violence and the region’s social and political instability trickling into Kenya, have negatively affected the country’s economic growth. To bridge the economic gap, Kenyan women are seeking employment in the domestic service sector in the Gulf Countries, with Saudi Arabia being the most popular destination. At their destination countries, some domestic workers are subjected to various forms of abuse by their employers, leaving the worker without recourse due to the lack of legal …

South-South Relations And The English School Of International Relations: Chinese And Brazilian Ideas And Involvement In Sub-Saharan Africa, Joseph Marques, Anthony Spanakos

Department of Political Science and Law Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The rise of large developing countries has led to considerable discussions of re-balancing global relations and giving greater priority to understanding South-South relations. This paper, in exploring the central ideas of Chinese and Brazilian foreign policy and the behavior of these two rising Southern countries toward Sub-Saharan Africa, argues that the English School of International Relations is well suited to understanding the intentions and actions that characterize South-South relations.

The Primacy Of Context: An Exploration Into The Causes Of Food Insecurity In Kitere, Kenya., William O. Aludo

Capstone Collection

The purpose of this study was to explore the specific reasons why households in Kitere village, Kenya experience persistent food insecurity every year while the region enjoys the advantage of two planting/harvest seasons in a year. Kitere village lies within the lakeside region of Nyanza Province in Kenya, generally considered to be one of the more agriculturally productive parts of the country. The Participatory Rural Appraisal method was employed to gather qualitative data on the causes of food insecurity in Kitere village. The data sources were focus groups and a self-administered, one-time survey of random and non-random samples of key …

The Impact Of Us Political Pressure On The Rmb Exchange Rate, Wenjie Zhang

LUX: A Journal of Transdisciplinary Writing and Research from Claremont Graduate University

The US-China game of Renminbi (RMB)/US Dollar exchange rate has aroused increasing attention recently. From the US perspective, appreciation of RMB exchange rate could reduce the US-China trade deficit, boost the US economy and thus lower the unemployment rate (Cheng and Zhang, 2012). Therefore it is crucial for the US government to figure out whether there is an influence from US political pressure on RMB flexibility and the most effective way to accelerate the appreciation of RMB exchange rate. Aminian et al (2008) believed that US political pressure may be one of the causes for the appreciation of RMB exchange …

How Foreign Firms Transformed Ireland’S Domestic Economy, Paul Donnelly

Articles

Today, Ireland is host to 1,033 multinational corporations. They directly employ 152,785 and account for 70 per cent or €122.5bn of exports. It’s a story that has its roots in the 1940s.

From Coercion To Politics To Law: The Evolution Of Property Rights Protection, Fali Huang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper shows how property rights security improves over time as a result of increasing legal quality and political democratization in a political economy context, where political and legal institutions adapt to evolving factor composition of land and capital in the dynamic economic development process. There seems to exist a clear sequence of di⁄erent forms of protection in that it is unlikely to have a strong rule of law with an exploitative political regime, or to have a democratic political system when the distribution of potential coercive power is too skewed. The routine form of protection thus shifts from coercion …

Of Hawks And Doves: Monetary Policy By Heterogeneous Committees, Gregor Schubert

Undergraduate Economic Review

This paper develops an institutional explanation based on strategic, heterogeneous committee members for the phenomenon of inertia in monetary policy rates, by exploring variations of a game-theoretic two-period, two-player bargaining model with an endogenous status quo. The results show that inertial policy-making can arise from heterogeneity in preferences and that gridlock and policy inefficiency can become more likely due to variability in agenda-setting power, or decreases in uncertainty over the future. These conclusions are shown to accord with the empirical evidence on monetary policy setting by committees at major central banks over the last decade.

Do Foreign Direct Investment And Foreign Aid Promote Good Governance In Africa?, Adugna Lemi, Blen Solomon, Sisay Asefa

International Journal of African Development

The literature on the roles that governance/political and economic stability play to attract capital flows into African economies has been burgeoning. Good governance, liberalization, infrastructure, incentive packages have been regarded as cures to break the deadlock to reverse the economic plight, to attract inflow of capital and, in some cases, to reverse outflows of African economies. The flow of capital, however, has undesirable side effects on host economies’ working conditions, environmental standard, inequality, and culture, among others. These economic and social external or negative spillover effects are due to the phenomenon of “race-to-the-bottom” where companies invest in economies with lax …

The Political Economy Of Poverty Reduction, Abu Girma Moges

International Journal of African Development

Poverty reduction strategies and policies have gained considerable popularity in recent policy discourse and international economic relations. These policies and strategies are framed in the context of the Millennium Development Goals that set specific quantitative targets to be achieved within a specified time framework. The goals specify the targets and require countries to design national poverty reduction strategies and achieve them with a generous financial assistance from the international community. However, the domestic political economic forces remain to shape the extent and effectiveness of such strategies in addressing and reducing the extent and depth of poverty in the reforming countries. …

The Dangers Of Aggressive Trade Liberalization: Why The Washington Consensus Is Not A Global Consensus, Stephen T. Hanshaw

Government Undergraduate Publications

The theory of trade and capital market liberalization has been floated around in discussions about economic stability and development for decades. Due to the fact that the world is becoming more and more interdependent and interconnected each and every day, the necessity for a global market emerged in the early 1990’s. The Western response to globalization in many cases was dubbed the "Washington Consensus," of which trade liberalization is a huge part. The idea of trade liberalization is centralized in the idea of a free-market economy, originally posited by Adam Smith. His model proposed the idea of the "invisible hand", …

Conflicting Currencies: An Examination Of The Usd And The Geoeconomics Of The International Monetary System, Cullen Millikin

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

What is the future of the United States dollar within the international monetary system? The dollar has certainly enjoyed supremacy as a unit of account, store of value, and medium exchange since World War II, but what about new challengers (most notably the euro and Chinese yuan)? Using “geoeconomic” analysis to determine what strategies or actions a state might pursue in the international political economy can help to begin answering these questions. Geoeconomic considerations used in this paper do not dismiss cultural, political, or military aspects of international power relations, they supplements them. The short-run status of USD preeminence within …