Trade and Development Blog

The following film will be shown at Hunter this Saturday Nov 22nd at 3pm in Hunter West room 714. I haven't seen the film myself so I cannot comment on it in much detail, but it features interviews with economists Amartya Sen, Joseph Stiglitz and a few others. The film would seem to offer a left-of-center perspective on the causes of world poverty, and a call to action to do something about it. It is narrated by actor Martin Sheen. More information about the film, including a trailer can be found here: http://www.theendofpoverty.net/

    There is no doubt that conflict can lower economic activity by raising insecurity and draining labor and talent out of productive activities and into military/criminal/redistributive activities. Economists have long recognized this possibility and pointed out that the likelihood of conflicts depends, amongst other things, on the relative returns.     Ray Fishman over at Slate summarizes a nice recent research paper by economists Oeindrila Dube and Juan Vargas which looks at the relationship between commodity prices and conflict in Colombia.  Fishman's  post is entitled "Will there be blood? Will falling commodity prices cause civil war?"  There are two opposing forces.  A few excerpts:  ...Poor farmers impoverished by lower crop prices may be eager recruits for rebel groups who can promise a better livelihood from stolen loot than what the soil can provide (not to mention protection from pillaging, since unaligned farmers may be easy prey for either rebels or governm...

Today's New York Times ran an article on an interesting and controversial crusader for outcasts in India. The article is " When Crusader Sees Wealth as Cure for Caste Bias "(you may need to register -for free- to view full article). Relevant for the start-of-semester readings/discussion on 'What is development? Think of Amartya Sen 's ideas on income, development and exclusion as you read. Lots of bits in the article on the role of markets, discrimination, and policies to promote development. A few choice quotes: ... There are about 200 million Dalits, or members of the Scheduled Castes, as they are known officially, in India. They remain socially scorned in city and country, and they are over-represented among India’s uneducated, malnourished and poor. ...When Chandra Bhan Prasad visits his ancestral village in these feudal badlands of northern India, he dispenses the following advice to his fellow untouchables: Get rid of your cattle, because the care of anim...

Gapminder -- is an amazing interactive online tool for visualizing how the world distribution of income, life-expectancy and access to health and other basic services has evolved across 'countries' over time, beginning in the early 1800s. Explore the site, and once you've gotten familiar with the general idea, spend a good while exploring the data yourself using Gapminder World . As an interesting exercise with Gapminder World focus on a couple countries in Asia (e.g. India, China, Korea, Bangladesh) and compare their performance over time to countries in Africa (e.g. Kenya, Malawi, Sierra Leone) or Latin America (e.g. Guatemala, Argentina, Brazil). Press 'Play' and follow their comparative evolution over time. Google Earth -- many of you may be familiar with google maps as a way to navigate city streets, but this is literally a world apart. Once you download and install a (free) file to you computer and if you have a fast internet connection you can now visu...