Oil elite networks in a transforming global oil market

This article analyses oil elite formation in light of the wider transformation that is taking place in the global oil order due to the rise of powers from the Global South, including Russia: in particular, the expansion and integration of the state-owned oil companies into the global oil market. This is done by analysing the networks that the directors of the world's largest oil companies create through their affiliations with a) other corporations, b) policy planning bodies and c) with the state. The most important finding is that the increased cooperation between the Western private oil companies and the non-Western state-owned oil companies has not yet translated into increased integration between their respective elite networks. It is argued that this indicates we are witnessing a transition towards a more multi-polar global oil order that increasingly needs to take into account the rising powers of the Global South. © The Author(s) 2012

Outsourcing Governance: States and the Politics of a ‘Global Value Chain World’

Politics, and by extension states, are marginal in debates about the genesis, evolution and functioning of the GVC-based global economy. We contend here that the core complexity of state agency and state power needs to be much more carefully understood in GVC and related debates, as a basis on which the governance of the evolving GVC world can be properly theorised as revolving around the inseparability of economic and political power. We advance a framework for understanding the role of politics and states in the construction and maintenance of a GVC world, using a three-fold typology of facilitative, regulatory and distributive forms of governance, and propose a notion of ‘outsourcing governance’ as an attempt to capture the ways in which states purposefully, through active political agency, have engaged in a process of delegating a variety of governance functions and authority to private actors. Our overarching argument is normative: ‘outsourced governance’ of the form we currently observe is associated with regressive distributional outcomes, and is antithetical to an inclusive and sustainable global economy

The Political Economy of Failure: The Euro as an International Currency

How do international currencies get established and consolidated? What domestic and international political foundations support an international currency? And what kinds of macro-economic flows enable an international currency? In this essay we consider these perennial questions of modern IPE scholarship in reverse order to ask whether the euro could ever have become, or seek to become, a true international currency rivalling the US dollar, used not only for passive foreign exchange reserves but also as a major commercial currency outside the EU. We argue that the EU lacks the will, the ideas and the capacity to promote the euro into the status of an international currency. In this article, we concentrate on this final issue of capacity, as the will and ideas issues have already been well explored. Capacity is an issue coeval with, if not prior to, the first two issues. The EU's current institutional arrangements and its economic geography create macro-economic consequences that diminish the euro's capacity to operate as a top currency. These conflicts go beyond the well-recognized issue that the euro-zone is not an optimum currency area. Examining the euro's debilities sheds light not only on the euro's (in)capacity to rival the dollar as an international currency, but also on the future of both the euro and the dollar in the aftermath of the euro-zone crisis

Is trade liberalization a solution to the unemployment problem?

This paper examines how trade liberalization affects the growth rate of sectoral employment in developed and developing countries. The estimation results imply that trade openness in the form of higher trade volumes has not been successful in generating jobs in developing countries. The overall weak, negative employment response to trade volumes may be explained by the negative output response to trade openness in these countries. Our estimates also indicate that higher trade volumes have adverse effect on industrial employment in developed countries. Moreover, while they have positive effect on employment in industry and services in developing countries, trade barriers have adverse effect on employment growth in services for developed countries. Our overall results imply that while trade barriers have relatively little adverse effects and/or in some case a positive effect on employment both in developing and developed countries, higher trade volumes have an adverse effect on industrial employment in developed economies. Thus, trade openness is not in itself a solution to the unemployment problems of developing countries and yet it has not been the prime factor to blame for the lower employment levels in developed countries.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

States and the political economy of unfree labour

A growing body of academic and policy research seeks to understand and address the problem of contemporary unfree labour. In this article, we argue that this literature could be strengthened by a stronger conceptualization of, and more systematic attention towards, the role of national states. In particular, we argue that there is a need to move beyond simplistic conceptualisations of states as simple agents of regulation and criminal justice enforcement who respond to the problem of unfree labour, and to recognize the causal and multifaceted role that national states play in creating the conditions in which unfree labour can flourish. We propose a framework to understand and compare the ways in which national states shape the political economy of unfree labour. Focusing on the United States, we outline three arenas of governance in which national states have been particularly central to enabling the conditions for unfree labour: the regulation of labour mobility, labour market regulation, and business regulation. We conclude by reflecting on the comparative political economy research that will be required to understand the role of different states in shaping the conditions in which unfree labour thrives or is eliminated

Introduction: new research in monetary history - A map

This handbook aims to provide a comprehensive (though obviously not exhaustive) picture of state-of-the-art international scholarship on the history of money and currency. The chapters of this handbook cover a wide selection of research topics. They span chronologically from antiquity to nowadays and are geographically stretched from Latin America to Asia, although most of them focus on Western Europe and the USA, as a large part of the existing research does. The authors of these chapters constitute, we hope, a balanced sample of various generations of scholars who contributed to what Barry Eichengreen defined as "the new monetary and financial history" – an approach that combines the analysis of monetary aggregates and policies with the structure and dynamics of the banking sector and financial markets. We have structured this handbook in ten broad thematic parts: the historical origins of money; money, coinage, and the state; trade, money markets, and international currencies; money and metals; monetary experiments; Asian monetary systems; exchange rate regimes; monetary integration; central banking and monetary policy; and aggregate price shocks. In this introduction, we offer for each part some historical context, a few key insights from the literature, and a brief analytical summary of each chapter. Our aim is to draw a map that hopefully will help readers to organize their journey through this very wide and diverse research area

Hegemonic Currencies During the Crisis: The Dollar Versus the Euro in a Cartalist Perspective

This paper suggests that the dollar is not threatened as the hegemonic international currency, and that most analysts are incapable of understanding the resilience of the dollar, not only because they ignore the theories of monetary hegemonic stability or what, more recently, has been termed the geography of money; but also as a result of an incomplete understanding of what a monetary hegemon does. The hegemon is not required to maintain credible macroeconomic policies (i.e., fiscally contractionary policies to maintain the value of the currency), but rather to provide an asset free of the risk of default. It is argued that the current crisis in Europe illustrates why the euro is not a real contender for hegemony in the near future