Triple Crisis blogger Timothy A. Wise was interviewed by the Real News Network about his work on the costs of U.S. dumping to Mexican farmers, which he summarized in a previous blog post. His monograph and policy brief are part of the report, “Subsidizing Inequality: Mexican Corn Policy Since NAFTA,” which will be presented January 18 in Washington at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Wise will participate in the panel presentation of the report, which will be webcast live at 3 pm.
Economists Demand Ethics Code for U.S. Economists
As Triple Crisis blogger Gerald Epstein pointed out in two recent blog posts (here and here), the economics profession has no official standards or ethical code to regulate potential conflicts of interest between economists’ roles as experts and their frequent roles as consultants and agents of private firms. As the American Economics Association (AEA) convenes today for its annual conference, Epstein and coauthor Jessica Carrick-Hagenbarth have spearheaded an effort to remedy this issue with a sign-on letter to the AEA, which has garnered the support of close to 300 economists and drawn the attention of the national media.
Read the economists’ letter to the American Economic Association.
Read the coverage in the New York Times and Bloomberg.
Lost Finances: The fight against secrecy jurisdictions
This post from Gerhard Schick will be his last, as he will no longer be a regular blogger. Triple Crisis thanks him for his insightful and timely contributions.
Estimates of the total amount of untaxed resources held offshore by individuals range from $7.4 trillion (the 2010 Global Wealth Report of the Boston Consulting Group) to $11.5 trillion (Tax Justice Network (TJN)). By definition, it is impossible to identify the exact figure, but these are highly instructive estimates. Taking TJN’s number as a basis, approximately $250 billion in taxes are illegally evaded on an annual basis. If these resources had been collected from 2000 to 2015, they could have almost entirely financed the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals.
Tax evasion has an even more direct impact on developing countries since they are entitled to the majority of unpaid taxes. James Henry, former Chief Economist at McKinsey & Co, estimates that about $6.2 trillion of the total amount held offshore by individuals represents developing country wealth. He calculates that failure to tax this wealth deprives developing countries of an amount estimated between $64 billion to $124 billion in annual tax receipts.
The above estimates are based on the offshore wealth of individuals. By including money moved offshore by private companies, the scale of losses would easily exceed the roughly $103 billion that developing countries receive annually in overseas aid.
Inclusion-Enhancing Public Investment in Infrastructure
Roberto Sansón Mizrahi, re-posted from Opinion Sur, a Triple Crisis partner. We will periodically cross-post items of interest.
Public investment in infrastructure is often considered a “growth engine”. Indeed, the development of roads, energy, communications, potable water, irrigation, sewer and storm drains, ports, dwelling solutions, among other types of infrastructure, drives social and economic growth. What is not always spelled out is the type of growth such engine serves.
This is so because the destination of public investment in infrastructure, as well as the form in which it is executed, have a huge impact on the nature of national and local development. It should cause no surprise, then, that certain public investments in infrastructure successfully advance social and economic inclusion, while others do not.
Foreign Aid: Famished for Credibility
Jens F. Laurson and George A. Pieler, re-posted from the World Policy Institute’s World Policy Blog, a Triple Crisis partner. We will periodically cross-post items of interest.
There’s been a good deal of blowback against Wikileaks, but who didn’t enjoy the juicier parts of the disclosures?
Among them is the revelation that the US used foreign aid to essentially buy votes for last year’s Copenhagen summit on climate change. It’s a useful tale that reminds us why everyone should drop their illusions about foreign aid.
Many sincere aid advocates perceive it solely as a means of alleviating poverty and preventing starvation. But that’s not quite so. Aid is first and foremost an instrument of national policy, and often serves as a convenient cover for the hypocritical policies of many aid-giving nations.
Triple Crisis Economists Sign on to New Economic Approach
A group of economists, including many from the Triple Crisis blog, convened in São Paulo and crafted ten theses toward a “New Developmentalism” – the tenets of a new approach to economic theory and policy that nations could embark upon in the aftermath of the current economic crisis. View the “ten theses” and the list of initial signatories at Ten Theses on New Developmentalism.
By a more rational institution
Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira, Guest Blogger
The crisis as a whole shows a more general aspect: the governments of States are more rational than the private agents and their enterprises.
During the 30 Neoliberal Years we have learned that the State was the source of all evil; that the private sector was always balanced because it was coordinated by the market, whereas the State, governed by politics, was the object of economic populism and was a major obstacle to growing with stability. Apart from being antidemocratic, this idea was false, because the financial crises demonstrated throughout the years that the market has never been able to control the speculative behavior of private agents. And it was a half-truth in relation to the State, because there are populist politicians, but most of them are fiscally responsible, because they know that their survival depends on this responsibility.
Downward to Stagnation: Wage policies in times of crisis
The Triple Crisis Blog is pleased to welcome Janine Berg, Senior Labour Economist at the International Labour Office in Brasilia, Brazil, as a regular contributor.
Not surprisingly wages have fallen during the economic crisis. A new report produced by the ILO, Wage Policies in Times of Crisis, provides evidence on the decline in wage growth during the crisis, and highlights the particularly severe reductions that have occurred in industrialized countries.
The world’s salaried employees suffered a decline in real wage growth from 2.2 percent in 2007 to 0.8 percent in 2008 and 0.7 percent in 2009 (excluding China, due to difficulties with the data). Real wages fell in 12 of 28 industrialized countries in 2008, including Australia (-0.9%), Germany (-0.4%), Italy (-0.7%), Japan (1.9%), Mexico (-2.6%), S. Korea (-1.5%) and the U.S (-1.0%). And although some countries recovered in 2009 (in some cases due to the fall in inflation), real wage growth continued to be negative in Germany (-0.4%), Mexico (-5.0%), Japan (-1.9%), and S. Korea (-3.3%), whilst France (-0.8%), the U.K (-0.5%), and Russia (-3.5%), also entered into negative territory. Moreover, these figures likely over-represent real wage growth, as job losses have been more concentrated on low-wage workers, who by no longer working are no longer considered in the sample. By 2009, the ranks of the unemployed had reached 210 million, a global unemployment rate of 6.4 percent.