Relatively little is known about the patterns of inequality in developing countries, despite their importance for designing social and economic policies. This column analyses administrative and household data to describe the trends in earnings inequality and dynamics in Brazil since late 1980s. The findings suggest that the observed fall in earnings inequality and volatility
Tunisia s informal trade networks reflect growing trends: the country s progressive shift away from Europe, and the rise of Turkey and China as major trade partners.
Stephanie Schmitt-Grohe, Martín Uribe
After a period of widespread financial instability in the 1980s and 1990s, mostly concentrated among commodity exporters, only a handful of developing countries have been hit by systemic banking crises over the past two decades. Several factors have contributed to this state of affairs, including an extended period of sustained economic growth, financial deepening, and favourable external conditions, most notably a protracted period of stable and high commodity prices. Figure 1 shows that banking crises in low-income countries are clustered between the late 1980s and the early 1990s, when commodity prices declined and volatility increased, especially at the high end of the distribution. By contrast, crises have been almost absent in the 2000s, in correspondence with the commodity super-cycle. But since ‘graduation’ from banking crises has so far proven elusive (Reinhart et al. 2010), when the commodity super-cycle came to an end in the mid-
At first blush, Joe Biden’s election as U.S. president brings respite from a world threatened by Donald Trump’s climate-denialist, dictator-coddling, xenophobic, racist, misogynist, rules-breaking regime. On second thought, 2021 will also initiate an unwelcome restoration of legitimacy to Western imperialism akin to Barack Obama’s rule.
“Biden’s” (2020) recent
Foreign Affairs article began by stressing how since 2017, “the international system that the United States so carefully constructed is coming apart at the seams.” In reconstructing imperialism, Biden may draw upon a legislative and public-advocacy record dating to the 1980s, based upon consistent service to several internationally ambitious circuits of U.S. capital:
By Jeemol Unni
Ahmedabad University organized an interesting online conversation on the gender differences in the North, South, East and West India (February 10, 2021). Alice Evans, King’s College, was in conversation with Jeemol Unni, Ahmedabad University. Listen to the conversation here. The starting point was Alice Evans’ blog on ‘Why are North and South India so different on gender?’ which was gaining attention on the social media platform, Twitter. Alice is also in the process of writing a book on the global history of gender, a long and ambitious project.
Alice began her conversation with dramatic opening questions: Why is North South India so different on gender? Why are South and North-Eastern women more likely to survive, be more educated, marry later, choose their own husbands, bear fewer children, own more assets, move more freely, exercise more control over their dowry, socialize with friends, interact more closely with their husbands, and work alongside men?