The Costs of Risk: Examining the Missing Link between Globalization and Social Spending

Globalization is often credited with the expansion of the welfare state and increased spending on social insurance programs. However, empirical evidence on the relationship between globalization and social welfare spending is mixed. One possible explanation for these mixed results might be country-specific factors that mediate the effect of globalization on social spending, such as key characteristics of a country's labor market. Countries with fluid, flexible labor markets likely respond to globalization differently than countries with rigid, inflexible markets. At the micro level, workers who find it costly to adjust to market volatility will likely demand compensatory and insurance programs to offset the high costs of adjustment. Given this, the relationship between globalization and social insurance is likely to be more sharply positive among countries with relatively immobile labor. I test this argument using data on social expenditures in both developed and developing countries. The findings indicate that trade exposure increases social spending in countries where workers face high adjustment costs. When workers face low adjustment costs, trade exposure has a strong reductive effect on social spending. This reductive effect declines as adjustment costs increase.

Greece’s creditors are paying the price for not relaxing their conditions prior to the 2015 election

Greece has submitted new proposals to its creditors in an attempt to finally end the deadlock over the release of further bailout funding. Stephanie J. Rickard writes that the present impasse could have been avoided if the strategy pursued by the International Monetary Fund in previous loan programmes to other countries had been repeated. Drawing on a study of democratic countries under IMF programmes, she notes that the IMF has typically relaxed loan programme requirements in the leadup to elections. By failing to do so in the Greek case, the foundations were set for Syriza to come to power on an anti-austerity platform, making a compromise far more difficult

Economic geography, politics, and policy

Globalization has reduced the importance of distance between countries. Yet, within countries, geography matters now more than ever. Economic activities, including production and employment, occur unevenly across space within countries, and globalization consequently impacts various regions differently. Some areas benefit from international economic integration while others lose, and as a result, economic geography shapes citizens’ experience of globalization. Economic geography also influences governments’ responses to globalization and economic shocks. Economic geography consequently merits the attention of political scientists. By examining economic geography, researchers will find new traction on long-standing theoretical debates and valuable insights on recent developments, including the growing backlash against globalization. The challenges of studying economic geography include causal complexity and measurement issues

Compensating the losers: an examination of Congressional votes on trade adjustment assistance

Globalization intensifies political conflict between citizens whose circumstances improve from foreign trade and those whose lives deteriorate as a result of trade. To pacify these rival interests, governments may assist citizens who become unemployed due to trade. When and under what conditions will legislators fund such assistance programs? The current study addresses this question by examining Congressional roll call votes in the United States during a period of rapid economic integration (1980–2004). The analysis reveals that protrade legislators who represent relatively more exporters are more likely to vote for increased spending on Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) programs. Exporters and their elected representatives arguably support such expenditures to broaden the protrade coalition

Think globally, buy locally: International agreements and government procurement

Abstract Do international treaties constrain national governments? The answer appears to be "yes" when it comes to the use of traditional barriers to trade, such as tariffs. Yet, while many governments have cut tariffs to comply with international agreements, they have often raised non-tariff barriers in their place. One increasingly prominent non-tariff barrier is discrimination in public procurement. Governments frequently discriminate against foreign suppliers in favor of domestic ones when buying goods and services. In an attempt to reduce procurement discrimination, international organizations, such as the World Trade Organization, have devoted ever more attention to members' procurement practices. Additionally, a growing number of preferential trade agreements seek to regulate public procurement. It remains unclear, however, whether international rules are effective in changing governments' purchasing behavior. Using original data, we find that neither multilateral nor preferential procurement agreements substantially reduce governments' propensity to "buy national." These results illustrate the difficulty of regulating non-transparent policy areas via international treaties

Cancer incidence in persons with type 1 diabetes : a five-country study of 9,000 cancers in type 1 diabetic individuals

An excess cancer incidence of 20-25% has been identified among persons with diabetes, most of whom have type 2 diabetes. We aimed to describe the association between type 1 diabetes and cancer incidence. Persons with type 1 diabetes were identified from five nationwide diabetes registers: Australia (2000-2008), Denmark (1995-2014), Finland (1972-2012), Scotland (1995-2012) and Sweden (1987-2012). Linkage to national cancer registries provided the numbers of incident cancers in people with type 1 diabetes and in the general population. We used Poisson models with adjustment for age and date of follow up to estimate hazard ratios for total and site-specific cancers. A total of 9,149 cancers occurred among persons with type 1 diabetes in 3.9 million person-years. The median age at cancer diagnosis was 51.1 years (interquartile range 43.5-59.5). The hazard ratios (HRs) (95% CIs) associated with type 1 diabetes for all cancers combined were 1.01 (0.98, 1.04) among men and 1.07 (1.04, 1.10) among women. HRs were increased for cancer of the stomach (men, HR 1.23 [1.04, 1.46]; women, HR 1.78 [1.49, 2.13]), liver (men, HR 2.00 [1.67, 2.40]; women, HR 1.55 [1.14, 2.10]), pancreas (men, HR 1.53 [1.30, 1.79]; women, HR 1.25 [1.02,1.53]), endometrium (HR 1.42 [1.27, 1.58]) and kidney (men, HR 1.30 [1.12, 1.49]; women, HR 1.47 [1.23, 1.77]). Reduced HRs were found for cancer of the prostate (HR 0.56 [0.51, 0.61]) and breast (HR 0.90 [0.85, 0.94]). HRs declined with increasing diabetes duration. Type 1 diabetes was associated with differences in the risk of several common cancers; the strength of these associations varied with the duration of diabetes.Peer reviewe

The effect of tidal forcing on biogeochemical processes in intertidal salt marsh sediments

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Early diagenetic processes involved in natural organic matter (NOM) oxidation in marine sediments have been for the most part characterized after collecting sediment cores and extracting porewaters. These techniques have proven useful for deep-sea sediments where biogeochemical processes are limited to aerobic respiration, denitrification, and manganese reduction and span over several centimeters. In coastal marine sediments, however, the concentration of NOM is so high that the spatial resolution needed to characterize these processes cannot be achieved with conventional sampling techniques. In addition, coastal sediments are influenced by tidal forcing that likely affects the processes involved in carbon oxidation.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In this study, we used in situ voltammetry to determine the role of tidal forcing on early diagenetic processes in intertidal salt marsh sediments. We compare ex situ measurements collected seasonally, in situ profiling measurements, and in situ time series collected at several depths in the sediment during tidal cycles at two distinct stations, a small perennial creek and a mud flat. Our results indicate that the tides coupled to the salt marsh topography drastically influence the distribution of redox geochemical species and may be responsible for local differences noted year-round in the same sediments. Monitoring wells deployed to observe the effects of the tides on the vertical component of porewater transport reveal that creek sediments, because of their confinements, are exposed to much higher hydrostatic pressure gradients than mud flats.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our study indicates that iron reduction can be sustained in intertidal creek sediments by a combination of physical forcing and chemical oxidation, while intertidal mud flat sediments are mainly subject to sulfate reduction. These processes likely allow microbial iron reduction to be an important terminal electron accepting process in intertidal coastal sediments.</p

State Control and the Effects of Foreign Relations on Bilateral Trade

Do states use trade to reward and punish partners? WTO rules and the pressures of globalization restrict states’ capacity to manipulate trade policies, but we argue that governments can link political goals with economic outcomes using less direct avenues of influence over firm behavior. Where governments intervene in markets, politicization of trade is likely to occur. In this paper, we examine one important form of government control: state ownership of firms. Taking China and India as examples, we use bilateral trade data by firm ownership type, as well as measures of bilateral political relations based on diplomatic events and UN voting to estimate the effect of political relations on import and export flows. Our results support the hypothesis that imports controlled by state-owned enterprises (SOEs) exhibit stronger responsiveness to political relations than imports controlled by private enterprises. A more nuanced picture emerges for exports; while India’s exports through SOEs are more responsive to political tensions than its flows through private entities, the opposite is true for China. This research holds broader implications for how we should think about the relationship between political and economic relations going forward, especially as a number of countries with partially state-controlled economies gain strength in the global economy

International demands for austerity: examining the impact of the IMF on the public sector

What effects do International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans have on borrow-ing countries? Even after decades of research, no consensus exists. We offer a straight-forward explanation for the seemingly mixed effects of IMF loans. We argue thatdifferent loans have different effects because of the varied conditions attached to IMFfinancing. To demonstrate this point, we investigate IMF loans with and withoutconditions that require public sector reforms in exchange for financing. We find thatthe addition of a public sector reform condition to a country’s IMF program signifi-cantly reduces government spending on the public sector wage bill. This evidencesuggest that conditions are a key mechanism linking IMF lending to policy outcomes.Although IMF loans with public sector conditions prompt cuts to the wage bill in theshort-term, these cuts do not persist in the longer-term. Borrowers backslide oninternationally mandated spending cuts in response to domestic political pressures

Measuring the availability of human resources for health and its relationship to universal health coverage for 204 countries and territories from 1990 to 2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019

Background: Human resources for health (HRH) include a range of occupations that aim to promote or improve human health. The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the WHO Health Workforce 2030 strategy have drawn attention to the importance of HRH for achieving policy priorities such as universal health coverage (UHC). Although previous research has found substantial global disparities in HRH, the absence of comparable cross-national estimates of existing workforces has hindered efforts to quantify workforce requirements to meet health system goals. We aimed to use comparable and standardised data sources to estimate HRH densities globally, and to examine the relationship between a subset of HRH cadres and UHC effective coverage performance. Methods: Through the International Labour Organization and Global Health Data Exchange databases, we identified 1404 country-years of data from labour force surveys and 69 country-years of census data, with detailed microdata on health-related employment. From the WHO National Health Workforce Accounts, we identified 2950 country-years of data. We mapped data from all occupational coding systems to the International Standard Classification of Occupations 1988 (ISCO-88), allowing for standardised estimation of densities for 16 categories of health workers across the full time series. Using data from 1990 to 2019 for 196 of 204 countries and territories, covering seven Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) super-regions and 21 regions, we applied spatiotemporal Gaussian process regression (ST-GPR) to model HRH densities from 1990 to 2019 for all countries and territories. We used stochastic frontier meta-regression to model the relationship between the UHC effective coverage index and densities for the four categories of health workers enumerated in SDG indicator 3.c.1 pertaining to HRH: physicians, nurses and midwives, dentistry personnel, and pharmaceutical personnel. We identified minimum workforce density thresholds required to meet a specified target of 80 out of 100 on the UHC effective coverage index, and quantified national shortages with respect to those minimum thresholds. Findings: We estimated that, in 2019, the world had 104·0 million (95% uncertainty interval 83·5–128·0) health workers, including 12·8 million (9·7–16·6) physicians, 29·8 million (23·3–37·7) nurses and midwives, 4·6 million (3·6–6·0) dentistry personnel, and 5·2 million (4·0–6·7) pharmaceutical personnel. We calculated a global physician density of 16·7 (12·6–21·6) per 10 000 population, and a nurse and midwife density of 38·6 (30·1–48·8) per 10 000 population. We found the GBD super-regions of sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia, and north Africa and the Middle East had the lowest HRH densities. To reach 80 out of 100 on the UHC effective coverage index, we estimated that, per 10 000 population, at least 20·7 physicians, 70·6 nurses and midwives, 8·2 dentistry personnel, and 9·4 pharmaceutical personnel would be needed. In total, the 2019 national health workforces fell short of these minimum thresholds by 6·4 million physicians, 30·6 million nurses and midwives, 3·3 million dentistry personnel, and 2·9 million pharmaceutical personnel. Interpretation: Considerable expansion of the world's health workforce is needed to achieve high levels of UHC effective coverage. The largest shortages are in low-income settings, highlighting the need for increased financing and coordination to train, employ, and retain human resources in the health sector. Actual HRH shortages might be larger than estimated because minimum thresholds for each cadre of health workers are benchmarked on health systems that most efficiently translate human resources into UHC attainment