This title was first published in 2000: Most African countries experienced dramatic agricultural market reforms over the 1990s. This has resulted in significant changes in the operation of the agricultural markets and, consequently, in income generation and welfare of rural households. In the case of Madagascar, the results suggest that market reforms and corresponding adjustments in rural markets have had an average positive effect on food security for the rural households. However, richer households seemed to have benefited more than the poorer households. This text provides a study of the market reforms, focusing particularly in the changes brought to welfare, income and environmental sustainability in rural areas. The study aims to be of particular interest to economists and those involved in development and environmental issues.

Agricultural markets have entered a long-term process of liberalization, with the aim of reducing imposed market imperfections such as monopolistic public trade, entry barriers and subsidies. The experience of more than a decade of agriculture liberalization offers a good opportunity to review and analyze the outcome of this process and to draw lessons for the future. The central topic in Agricultural Markets Beyond Liberalization is the relationship between market structure and how markets perform in a dynamic context during a liberalization process. The topic is studied from both a micro and macro viewpoint and refers to different types of agricultural markets. This volume brings together the dynamics of agricultural markets in several parts of the world, with a special focus on transition economics and Africa. The different studies cover geographical areas as wide as a district as well as a group of countries, and institutions from individual contracts to multi-national organizations. The analysis of liberalization under different circumstances, and the different methods of analysis used by the authors provide a valuable foundation for the assessment of liberalization.

This book defines oil price as a social institution that exists beyond supply-demand mechanisms. Discussing oil markets in the context of the broader sociology of prices, it covers a number of theoretical and practical dimensions, such as new market uncertainties and trends, and social perceptions of energy security and of power. Further, based on case studies it explores the implications for OPEC, Russia, and Central and Eastern Europe, as well as for the energy transition and for international investment arbitration. Featuring contributions from leading academics, researchers and business professionals, the book offers an interdisciplinary perspective on the oil price. “This book brings together an impressive team of scholars with fresh perspectives on the oil price. Even as the world attempts energy transition, oil consumption continues and the oil price is likely to become even more unpredictable and unclear than in the past. This book helps make sense of this challenging topic.” -Indra Overland is a Research Professor and Head of Centre for Energy Research, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) “A revealing and multidimensional analysis of oil price fluctuations in a market that seeks less uncertainty. This book discusses market and price evolution in the context of market theories, history and real-time market analysis. A welcome and timely contribution to our understanding of global energy markets.” Dr. Sara Vakhshouri is Founder and President of SVB Energy International and Professor of Energy Security at the Institute of World Politics.

Starting from the observation that the establishment of free trade as such will substantially impact upon economic development, the different contributions focus on the potential contribution of non-traditional aspects of EPAs.

Latin American income distribution is among the most unequal in the world. Both the poor and the wealthy have paid a price for this inequality, which is in part responsible for the region's low growth rates. The essays in this book propose new ways of reducing inequality, not by growth-inhibiting transfers and regulations, but by enhancing efficiency—eliminating consumption subsidies for the wealthy, increasing the productivity of the poor, and shifting to a more labor and skill-demanding growth path. In Beyond Tradeoffs, Latin American experts demonstrate how market-friendly measures in key policy areas can simultaneously promote greater equity and greater efficiency. By identifying win-win strategies, the authors challenge the conventional wisdom that there is always a tradeoff between these two objectives. Extensive macroeconomic reforms in the region have provided opportunities to implement such strategies across many sectors. The volume aims at building a "Latin consensus" on a second round of reforms—reforms that address the urgent issue of inequality without undermining efficient growth. Contributors include Jonathan Coles, Rene Cortazar, Ricardo Hausmann, Juan Luis Londoño, Nora Lustig, Moises Naím, and Joseph Stiglitz. Copublished with the Inter-American Development Bank

Because their economies were regulated, their financial systems ‘repressed’ and their states interventionist, for many years the countries of East Asia challenged the Washington consensus, offering an alternative development paradigm. However, in the 1990’s, Asian capitalism was disrupted following Japan’s stagnation and the financial crisis of 1997-98. Treading the unexplored theoretical terrain created by the simultaneous decline of the Washington Consensus and Asian developmentalism, this revealing book analyzes the comparative political economy of East Asia and Latin America. Divided into four key sections, it covers: Theoretical Framework Results of Globalization Converging and Diverging of Paths of Economic Development Finance and Regionalism. Through the juxtaposition of countries in East Asia and Latin America, leading academics analyze the impact of government intervention, institutional malfunction, social transformation and financial change as well as conflict and power on economic development. This book will prove to be invaluable to students and academics of development economics.

This collection presents the difficult challenges of the new economic era as well as a set of alternative economic policies for managing the open Latin American economies of the early twenty-first century. Ideas that were removed from the reform agenda over the past two decades are seen as critical to the improved economic and social performance that liberalization has so far failed to produce. These ideas include a role for counter-cyclical macroeconomic policies, including restrictions on capital mobility; active productive sector and technological development policies; and the need to pay greater attention not only to social policies, but also to the links between economic policies and social outcomes, in order to guarantee a desirable social performance. This collection sheds new light on issues that were largely overlooked during the reform period, and that must be faced squarely to overcome the deficiencies that Latin America has faced during its phase of liberalization and its dismal economic performance since the Asian crisis.

Seeking to extend our understanding of the contemporary global political economy, this book provides an important and original introduction to the current theoretical debates about social reproduction and argues for the necessity of linking social reproduction to specific contexts of power and production. It illustrates the analytic value of the concept of social reproduction through a series of case studies that examine the implications of how labor power is reproduced and how lives outside of work are lived. The issues examined in countries including the Ukraine, Chile, Spain, Nepal, India and Indonesia, consist of: Human trafficking and sex work Women and work Migration, labor and gender inequality Micro-credit programs and investing in women Health, biological reproduction and assisted reproductive technologies The book lends a unique perspective to the understandings of transformation in the global political economy precisely because of its simultaneous focus on the caring and provisioning of the everyday and its relationships to policies and decisions made at the national and international levels of both formal and informal institutions. With its multi-disciplinary approach, this book will be indispensable to students and scholars of International Political Economy, Development Studies, Gender or Women’s Studies, International Studies, Globalization and International Relations.

Have structural adjustment programmes in Africa largely failed? Ought the World Bank and the IMF to be paying more attention to the particular circumstances of individual countries and to the alternative policies being proposed by the Africans? The contributors to this volume assert both positions. Case studies of education, health, public services and import-export performance demonstrate the frequent lack of success of structural adjustment. These are followed by alternative approaches to overcoming Africa's economic and human crises, including the importance of democracy in securing responsiveness of state policy to public needs, the structural advantages of regional integration, sustainable development strategies that build on the continent's resource base, and a new partnership between state and market.

The wave of liberalization that swept world markets in the 1980s and 90s altered the ways that governments manage their economies. Reinventing State Capitalism analyzes the rise of new species of state capitalism in which governments interact with private investors either as majority or minority shareholders in publicly-traded corporations or as financial backers of purely private firms (the so-called “national champions”). Focusing on a detailed quantitative assessment of Brazil’s economic performance from 1976 to 2009, Aldo Musacchio and Sergio Lazzarini examine how these models of state capitalism influence corporate investment and performance. According to one model, the state acts as a majority investor, granting the state-owned enterprise (SOE) financial autonomy and allowing professional management. This form, the authors argue, has reduced many agency problems commonly faced by state ownership. According to another hybrid model, the state uses sovereign wealth funds, holding companies, and development banks to acquire a small share of equity ownership in a corporation, thereby potentially alleviating capital constraints and leveraging latent capabilities. Both models have benefits and costs. Yet neither model has entirely eliminated the temptation of governments to intervene in the operation of natural resource industries and other large strategic enterprises. Nevertheless, the longstanding debate over whether private ownership is superior or inferior to state capitalism has become irrelevant, Musacchio and Lazzarini conclude. Private ownership is now mingled with state capital on a global scale.