Deborah Johnston (SOAS).

In her presentation at the Food and Nutrition in Development Summer School, Deborah Johnston explored the definitions and literature around famine. She discusses the causes of famine and how famines can be predicted and prevented.

Dr Deborah Johnston is Pro Director Learning & Teaching at SOAS University of London and Reader at the Department of Economics.

The Food and Nutrition in Development Summer School at SOAS University of London is designed for students, academics and practitioners interested in gaining knowledge on food, nutrition and health in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). The course will cover three areas: global food, nutrition and health-related challenges facing low and middle-income countries; key aspects of changing food systems and the politics of food; responses to hunger, malnutrition and poor health.

The course will offer theoretical aspects combined with case studies and methods to start approaching complex aspects of food systems, malnutrition, and heath in LMICs. It is aimed at providing knowledge on fundamental debates in these areas of study and policy making and, crucially, at stimulating critical thinking on these issues. The contents draw on a range of disciplinary perspectives, such as political economy, nutritional science, and anthropology.

The course does not require students to have prior qualifications in economics. The summer school includes lectures followed by tutorials, interactive activities and talks from experts in relevant fields.

Speaker(s): Dr Deborah Johnston (SOAS).

Event Date:

01 August 2017

Released by:

SOAS Economics Podcast

This podcast has been edited.

Otaviano Canuto (World Bank)

Otaviano Canuto, Executive Director at the World Bank, is discussing the future of international trade and global governance.

ECON+ have the honour of hosting Otaviano Canuto, Executive Director at the World Bank on the 31st July at the SOAS. He will be travelling over from Washington DC to share his insights on global trade and international economic governance.

As the world shows increasing signs of division, global trade is under scrutiny and the geopolitical landscape in flux. ECON+ will explore this important theme with a renowned expert, following on from our recent podcasts. We aim to ask questions on how to share the gains from trade with workers and whether we are doomed to go through an age of weaponized economics and trade wars

Speaker(s): Otaviano Canuto (Executive Director of the World Bank), Victoria Collins (ECON+) and Luisa Porritt (ECON+).

Event Date:

31 July 2017

Released by:

SOAS Economics Podcast

Elisa Van Waeyenberge (SOAS) Jasmine Gideon (Birkbeck) Gabriela Alvarez (Birkbeck), Elaine Unterhalter (UCL) and Lynsey Robinson (Birkbeck),

IFIs, Neoliberalism and Knowledge Cluster (SOAS, University of London) and IIPPE Training Workshops present: Privatisation through Time and Space, an Interdisciplinary Workshop

Elisa Van Waeyenberge (SOAS) discusses privatization of social housing policy in development with an emphasis on the World Bank’s agenda with regards to social housing policy.

Jasmine Gideon (Birkbeck) and Gabriela Alvarez (Birkbeck) discusses the different phases of Neoliberalism in Chile and in particular the conservative resistance to reproductive rights policies in Chile and their link to privatization

Elaine Unterhalter (UCL) discusses the expansion of private involvement in mass education systems using the themes of gender, race and class inequalities and their bearings on education.

Lynsey Robinson (EQUIPPPS) discusses the Education Commission Report and the funding of education.

Participants will discuss how privatisation, broadly conceived as the promotion of private interests in the organisation of social and physical infrastructure, has changed during the ‘neoliberal period’. Central to these developments is how forms of financialisation made possible by privatisation and changing roles of the state have encouraged new forms of private sector involvement in provisioning, with important implications for social and economic reproduction. These developments may also be seen as a form of variegated policy transfer from the OECD to non-OECD countries, aided and abetted by international institutions, as well as a result of policy experimentation through state/finance nexuses.

Speaker(s): Gabriela Alvarez (Birkbeck), Jasmine Gideon (Birkbeck), Elaine Unterhalter (UCL) and Lynsey Robinson (Birkbeck), Elisa Van Waeyenberge (SOAS)

Event Date:

28 June 2017

Released by:

SOAS Economics Podcast

Ben Fine (SOAS University of London)

IFIs, Neoliberalism and Knowledge Cluster (SOAS, University of London) and IIPPE Training Workshops present:

Privatisation through Time and Space, an Interdisciplinary Workshop

Professor Ben Fine takes a long view on today’s privatization programmes examining the changing nature of state intervention in the economy. Privatization is discussed alongside the first, second and third phases of neoliberalism, whose scholarship, ideology and policy-in-practice form a particular world vision which shifts over time, place, and issue.

Participants will discuss how privatisation, broadly conceived as the promotion of private interests in the organisation of social and physical infrastructure, has changed during the ‘neoliberal period’. Central to these developments is how forms of financialisation made possible by privatisation and changing roles of the state have encouraged new forms of private sector involvement in provisioning, with important implications for social and economic reproduction. These developments may also be seen as a form of variegated policy transfer from the OECD to non-OECD countries, aided and abetted by international institutions, as well as a result of policy experimentation through state/finance nexuses.

Speaker(s): Ben Fine (SOAS)

Event Date:

28 June 2017

Released by:

SOAS Economics Podcast

Keun Lee (Seoul National University)

XIV SOAS Industrial Development and Policy (IPD) Lecture

There is an emerging call for a need to integrate the two approaches, GVC and IS (innovation systems), with the recent initiatives by Lundvall (Lundvall, 2015, 2016). The current study can also be considered as an attempt to seek a linkage between the two approaches or integrating the two. The integration of the two approaches is important since just joining the GVC does not guarantee upgrading, and an economy might be stuck in low value activities, without functional upgrading. This paper thus proposes the In-out-and In again hypothesis that while at the initial stage of growth more GVC is desirable for learning from outside, functional upgrading requires some effort or stage of seeking separation and independence from the existing foreign-dominated GVC, and that the latecomer firms and economies might have to seek again for an opening to integrate back into the GVC after building up their own local value chains. This paper has tried to verify this ‘N-shaped, In-Out-In again’ hypothesis first by looking into cases of ‘upgrading’ in Korea, Brazil, and India, and second by checking the national level data of the share of domestic value-added (DVA). It is shown that the trends of FVA in successful catching-up economies are consistent with this In-Out-In again pattern. The paper also confirms some correlations between the degree of local creation and diffusion of knowledge and the values of DVA. This illustrates the linkage between the innovation system variables (knowledge localization) to the GVC variable of the DVA (1-FVA).

Keun Lee is the winner of the 2014 Schumpeter Prize for his monograph on Schumpeterian Analysis of Economic Catch-up (2013 Cambridge Univ. Press). He is now the President of the International Schumpeter Society, an editor of Research Policy, a council member of the World Economic Forum, and a member of the governing board of Globelics. He is a Professor of Economics at the Seoul National University.

Speaker(s): Keun Lee (Seoul National University), Antonio Andreoni (SOAS)

Event Date:

27 June 2017

Released by:

SOAS Economics Podcast

Sue Konzelmann, Birbeck College, University of London, Marc Fovargue-Davies, Birbeck College, University of London

XIII SOAS IDP Lecture - Industrial Development and Policy Cluster, Department of Economics

Labour, Finance and Inequality is a study of the interaction between politics, economics, social dynamics and the legal framework - and the process of change in the conventional wisdom and the policies informed by it. these are examined against the backdrop of British history from the early twentieth century to the present, to access why change happens, why it doesn't always happen when it might be expected to and relative power of key segments of society on this process. We will also take into account shifts in the relative power of the state and international business and finance, and how this has affected both the policy options available to national governments and their relative effectiveness.

Book reference: Sue Konzelmann, Marc Fovargue-Davies, Frank Wilkinson and Simon Deakin (forthcoming) Labour, Finance and Inequality: The Changing Nature of Economic Policy in Britain. Routledge

Speaker(s): Sue Konzelmann (Birbeck College, University of London) Marc Fovargue-Davies (Birbeck College, University of London), Antonio Andreoni,(SOAS University of London)

Event Date:

07 June 2017

Released by:

SOAS Economics Podcast

Alessandro Vercelli, University of Siena and SOAS University of London

This book argues that the neoliberal development trajectory pursued in recent decades is unsustainable, and posits that neither sound macroeconomics nor empirical data support the unqualified faith in free markets that inspired it. The first part suggests a broad critical perspective on key concepts such as freedom, free market, free trade, globalisation and financialisation, before going on to analyse the long and deep recent crisis as a result of the neoliberal policy strategy adopted since the early 1980s. The alternative narrative outlined in the book provides insights into the policy strategy required to achieve a sustainable development trajectory.

Book reference Alessandro Vercelli. 2017. Crisis and Sustainability. The delusion of Free Markets. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Speaker(s): Alessandro Vercelli (University of Siena and SOAS), Jan Toporowski (SOAS) and Antonio Andreoni (SOAS)

Event Date:

24 May 2017

Released by:

SOAS Economics Podcast

Prof John Weeks, SOAS University of London

Zambia has a small economy with a foreign exchange market dominated by large banks and mining companies. Copper accounts for over 80% of the country's exports. This combination, a small country, a forex market with large private participants and one dominant export, implies that the Kwacha does not trade in a market of rice takers. All the large private trades are aware that their actions have predictable and measurable consequences. This affects the manner in which they form their expectations. This study employed quantitative and qualitative techniques to explain how those expectations are formulated. the purpose of the study was to provide the Bank of Zambia with insights to improve its exchange rate management.

Reference: Geda, A. and J. Weeks (2016) Short Run Movements in the Kwacha: Analytical Study for the Bank of Zambia, IGC and Bank of Zambia, London.

Speaker(s): Prof John Weeks (SOAS), Antonio Andreoni (SOAS)

Event Date:

10 May 2017

Released by:

SOAS Economics Podcast

Prof Michael Landesmann, The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (wiiw) and Johannes Kepler University, Austria.

External imbalances, disparate developments in export capacity and unbalanced growth patters characterise the wider European economy (i.e. the economy of the European Union and its neighbourhood). This talk reviews the major forces that push towards divergence and discusses the possibilities of resolving the dilemmas of policy frameworks that could tackle these. A positive political economy approach will be adopted to identify conflicts of interest between national and cross-border economic interest and the possibilities of policy developments will be discussed. A development and industrial policy perspective to deal with unbalanced growth and peripherisation within the EU and in its neighbourhood will be emphasised in particular.

Speaker(s): Prof Michael Landesmann (wiiw), Antonio Andreoni (SOAS)

Event Date:

26 April 2017

Released by:

SOAS Economics Podcast

Prof Photis Lysandrou (City University of London), Prof Simon Mohun (Queen Mary University of London), Prof Jan Toporowski (SOAS).

The IIPPE Financialisation Working Group invites you to a discussion on ‘Financialisation and the periodisation of capitalism’.

As the concept gains prominence within social sciences, debates arise about situating financialisation within the history of capitalism. Is financialisation a contingent product of the economic shifts of the 1970s and 1980s? Is it a long-run tendency of capitalism?

Join us for a discussion about these issues with Prof. Photis Lysandrou (City University of London), Prof. Simon Mohun (Queen Mary University of London), and Prof. Jan Toporowski (SOAS). The speakers will introduce their different viewpoints and discuss some theoretical implications concerning the incorporation of contextual aspects with respect to space and time, based on questions prepared by IIPPE financialisation working group. A general Q&A session will follow. The event is open to everyone, and is chaired by Dr Ulrich Volz, head of the department of Economics at SOAS.

Speaker(s): Prof. Photis Lysandrou (City University of London), Prof. Simon Mohun (Queen Mary University of London), Prof. Jan Toporowski (SOAS), Ulrich Volz (SOAS)

Organiser: IIPPE Financialisation Working Group

Event Date:

25 April 2017

Released by:

SOAS Economics Podcast