Global Economic Challenges

3 Key excerpts on "Global Economic Challenges"

• 

  eBook - ePub

  Challenge and Change

  Global Threats and the State in Twenty-first Century International Politics

  • Norma C. Noonan, Vidya Nadkarni, Norma C. Noonan, Vidya Nadkarni, Norma C. Noonan, Vidya Nadkarni(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  © The Author(s) 2016

  Norma C. Noonan and

  Vidya Nadkarni (eds.)

  Challenge and Change 10.1057/978-1-137-48479-6_5

  Begin Abstract

  5. The Economic Dimensions of Globalization

  David Bartlett 1 

  (1) American University, Washington, DC, USA

   

  End Abstract

  Introduction

  The global economic downturn of 2008–2009 commonly known as the Great Recession invites comparisons with previous upheavals in the world economy. An obvious point of comparison is the 1970s when a cartel of oil producing countries (OPEC) engineered global price hikes that threw the advanced industrialized countries into recession. The rise of OPEC encouraged calls by the G-77 group of developing countries for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) to recalibrate relations between the North and South.

  NIEO foundered, in large part because of the unwillingness of Middle Eastern oil producers to link threats against energy consuming developed countries with G-77 demands for increased developmental assistance, preferential trade arrangements, and heightened control of Western multinational corporations. Increased oil production by non-OPEC countries weakened the cartel’s capacity to manipulate global oil prices. Meanwhile, many developing countries in the G-77 group became mired in debt, balance of payments crises, and IMF-supervised austerity programs.

  1

  Subsequently, the end of the Cold War diverted attention from the traditional North-South axis and prompted the entry of new players in the global economy (notably China and Russia) whose relationship with developing countries in the Southern Hemisphere has proven complicated.

  The Great Recession looms as a far more significant development in modern economic history than the turbulence of the 1970s. During the latter period, assertions of increased power by developing countries proved ephemeral. By contrast, the recent upheaval presages an enduring transformation of the balance of power in the world economy.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  World Economic Situation and Prospects 2018

  • United Nations DESA(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • United Nations

    (Publisher)

  The slow withdrawal of stimulus by the Fed has thus far not led to a significant tightening of global financial conditions. Financial market volatility remains low, and capital has started flowing back towards developing economies. Many of the crisis-related legacies — such as sluggish demand, fiscal austerity and bank fragility — are easing, fostering a more conducive environment for a recovery in investment. Nonetheless, numerous cyclical and longer-term challenges persist in the world economy, including a legacy of weak investment and low productivity growth since the crisis, declining or stagnant average incomes in several regions, emerging protectionist tendencies in some arenas, and high levels of global debt.

  Despite the improved short-term outlook, the global economy continues to face risks and longer-term challenges

  Current high asset price valuations suggest an underpricing of risk, and developing economies — especially those with more open capital markets — remain vulnerable to spikes in risk aversion, an abrupt tightening of financing conditions, and sudden capital withdrawal. Elevated levels of policy uncertainty continue to cloud prospects for world trade, development aid, migration and climate targets, while rising geopolitical tensions could sharpen a tendency towards more unilateral and isolationist policies. These outlook risks and the policy challenges they pose are developed further in Chapter II.

  Despite risks and uncertainties, current conditions include an alignment of the economic cycle among major economies, stability in financial markets and the absence of negative shocks such as commodity price dislocations.

  Current macroeconomic conditions offer policymakers greater scope to spur progress on sustainable development

  As conditions for wider global economic stability solidify, there is a diminishing need to focus policy efforts on stabilizing short-term growth and mitigating the effects of economic crises. Coupled with improving macroeconomic and financial conditions to support the vast investment needed to progress towards many of the SDGs, this paves the way to reorient policy towards longer-term issues, such as strengthening the environmental quality of economic growth, stimulating more inclusive growth, and tackling institutional deficiencies that are hindering development prospects.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Political Economy of the Environment

  • Simon Dietz, Jonathan Michie, Christine Oughton(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  1     Environmental Challenges of the Twenty-first Century and the need for Interdisciplinary Political Economy Simon Dietz, Jonathan Michie and Christine Oughton

  In 2008, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) published the latest in its regular series of audits of the state of the environment, taking a global perspective and looking out to 2030 (OECD 2008). Noting that progress had been made on, for example, pollution from industrial sources (in OECD member states at least) and emissions of ozone-depleting substances, the OECD nevertheless flashed a ‘red-light’ warning on several environmental issues, including climate change, biodiversity loss and water scarcity. In many ways its findings are reminiscent of earlier reports, such as the World Bank’s well-known assessment of the relationship between economic development and environmental degradation published nearly 20 years ago (World Bank 1992). In it, the Bank observed that while some environmental problems such as access to adequate sanitation appeared to improve monotonically with economic development, and others such as urban air quality appeared to improve only after a certain level of economic development had been attained, still others such as greenhouse gas emissions worsened monotonically with rising per capita incomes.1 Thus, while some environmental problems seemed to be largely a symptom of poverty, there was little prospect that the world could grow out of this third category of problems, or at least not without an unprecedented societal response.

  Both reports observe that what we might call twenty-first century environmental problems – namely those such as climate change and biodiversity loss that show no signs of being ‘decoupled’ from economic development – are of a particularly intractable nature. What marks them out is, roughly speaking, interconnectedness – they are complex and usually global in nature, and their impacts may only become apparent over long time frames. Climate change is a clear example. A ‘carbon footprint’ is embodied in almost all of the goods and services transacted in the modern economy, thanks in large part to the burning of fossil fuels for energy.2 Once emitted, greenhouse gases mix in the atmosphere and, through a highly complex and uncertain process, eventually cause changes to climate that are distant in time and (partly) in space from the emitter. To solve the problem by mitigation (i.e. reducing greenhouse gas emissions), it would further appear from the evidence that a broad portfolio of measures is needed, as the sheer magnitude of emissions reductions that are considered necessary ultimately overwhelms the economies of scale associated with any one currently practicable measure (e.g. Enkvist et al

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book