Real-world-economics-meeting-notes Mtg GDP

24 April 2015
mtg-garry-notes-150424

0.0.1 Notes for RWE outline



0.0.1.1 Globalization framework

Economic phenomena linked to the formal and informal economies at various spatial scales.

actors white (licit) grey black (illicit)
finance banks, bonds money laundering
global actors direct land investment narco / arms / mafias / range
individual agens remittances illegal migrants & “evaders of the state”



0.0.1.2 Inequality

  • Unequal localities - mental health and stress for rising in the social hierarchy

    • Tim Jackson - social hierarchy

    • Spirit level - book

    • Conspicuous consumption - Consuming to be seen and get status.

      • Thorstein Vebleen

      • Veblen goods

  • Unequal nations - less government investment in public health

    • Link to Picketty and higher degree of return on financial capital weatlh

    • Quality of democracy

      • Median voter theorem

      • Regulatory capture

        • Case: Endangered Species Act - strong, but not implemented, because state governments do not fund it.

      • Political economy

    • Concentrated media and unempowering junk information?

      • Australia - media owned by coal ownership

      • Employment in PR industry versus journalism

      • Role of large media corportations in demochratic sustainable transitions

        • Communication of information about non-empowering information/news

  • Global inequality - Historical political ecology

    • Henrik on Soviet Union and regime shifts

    • Mark Davis - late Victorian-holocausts

      • El-Nino, famines, and the making of the third world

    • India: Climate shocks used to be normal in India - colonialism blocked institutional adaptation - Raj - modern society -

    • Luis et al. - mass die-offs of native americans to European settlement - onset of the Anthropocene

    • Shock doctrine and the socio-ecological as well as macroeconomic consequences today



0.0.1.3 Financial innovation

  • a roving bandits strategy

  • is financial innvoation a strategy for escaping regulation

  • black and grey markets

    • money laundering - tax havens

  • “black/deviatnt globalization (book)”

    • using globalization to evade prosecution

    • cross-border crime as a business to benefit from administrative

  • illegal waste dumbing in Italy, starting out as legal waste exports in Germany

  • Gomorrah movie



0.0.1.4 Illicit financial flows

  • Estimate size of flows

  • Find good cases

    • Illicit flows from China (to Garry’s hometown)

      • Partially off the books businesses moving capital out of country to obscure tracking.

      • Main investors in China are global tax havens.

    • “Narko states” - e.g. Colombia, Mexico

      • Effects on land use change dynamiscs

        • E.g. Colombia, spraying fields will generate new areas with deforestation for coca plantations.

  • Global Financial Integrity

  • drugs

    • Cocaine production World Bank report - What Do We Know

  • human trafficking (probably treat separate from drugs)

    • a problem and a solution

      • new people in countries as source of conflict

        • ethnic diversity as a source of conflict or a sign of different cultures

      • new people in countries as a source of innovation (REFS from economic geography)

        • new economic ventures started up by immigrants

        • immigrants in canadian households earning more than native-born canadians

        • interlinked-chains of skilled migrants between coupled bilateral systems



0.0.1.5 family financial networks

  • Hawala

  • Informal Transfer Systems - IMF report on Hawala

  • framed under a teleccoupled financial

  • References

    • Do international migration and remittances reduce poverty in developing countries

    • Remittances, financial development and growth - Highly cited paper

    • Evaluating the Economic Impact of International Remittances on Developing Countries

  • possible structuring

    • global markets and on the ground effects

      • financial flows

    • local networks and the global impact and context

      • most illicit flows



0.0.1.7 Integrating with the core of the socio-economic sciences

  • Deeper integration with economic and social sciences

    • Going away from individualism, having a more rich view of how societies function - corruption - brutality - goodness - norms - war & conflict (blind spots - myopias - cognitive disonance - understand the world and see the seeds of good) - decision making / participatory stuff

  • Advanced economic modelling (maybe not for this paper)

    • Game theory - Chaos - Buzz Braug -



0.0.1.8 Market dynamics

  • Socio-ecological consequences of financial and market dynamics

    • The principal agent problem

      • What are employees evaluated for and what is the goal of the institution

  • National bankruptcies - socio-ecological consequences of economic shocks

    • Asian financial crisis

    • Latin American crises -

      • Argentina - rangelands

      • Brazil - forest dynamics

    • Somalia - cautionary tale of socio-ecological drivers of piracy in a economically and democratically collapsed state



0.0.1.9 Future perspectives

  • How can sustainability science go on from here in interacting with a broad set of large real world (socio-)economic and financial issues

  • Co-production - what happens when scientists collaborate

    • Challenges of co-production

    • How do you think about having socially good processes, without being over-normative.

  • Key guideline for what may be considered more controversial bits - looking at the empirical side of things



0.0.1.10 Next steps

  • Meeting with Daniel and Anne Sophie

  • Online repository for readings - Garry on Eboks.

  • Potential collabs

    • Neil Adger & Kate Brown

    • Berkes

    • Kate Brown - development geography - adaptation to climate change

    • Billy Lee Turner

    • Hal Mooney

  • Peter - talk to Gretchen and Carl and Cecilia.

0.0.1.11 Framework for migration flows - capital flows - Daniel project

  • captial in, migration in

  • capital out, migration out

  • capital in, migration out

  • capital out, migration in

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