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We discuss the sanctions against Russia from three perspectives: legal, economic, and political. The sanctions fit into a trend towards recomprehensivation and the use of autonomous rather than multilateral sanctions. We highlight (a) sanction innovation and lasting changes in the EU sanctions domain, (b) the determinants and economic dynamics of sanctions that are important for an intermediate evaluation of this case, and (c) the uncertainty of the ultimate political outcome of large-scale economic sanctions. The case suggests that autonomous sanctions are and will remain a central response to serious violations of international law.

This working paper analyses the interaction between economic and political variables paying special attention to how this interaction develops over time. We use an innovative approach to sanctions that provides a dynamic, forward-looking, perspective and deals with the economic and political outcome of sanctions simultaneously. We use Impulse Response Functions to report the main results of a comprehensive set of unrestricted Vector Auto Regression models that we use to analyse how negative oil and gas shocks impact on the economy and politics in Russia and Iran in order to find out differences and agreements between those cases. In both cases we find that the limitation of energy rents can improve political conditions in the short to medium term, but also that the beneficial impact of sanctions is limited as both economic and political behaviour adjust when time passes by.

This working paper deals with the comparatively low levels of trade in the MENA region with a focus on the impact of the Palestinian Israeli conflict. The methodological focus is on the application of the gravity model for international trade. We provide an innovative systematic review that does not only use the standard approach (search engine search) but also identifies primary studies by means of expert interviews. We identify 118 studies of potential relevance. We identify best practices and review estimates on trade potential. In terms of citations reported in Google Scholar a study by Arnon, Spivak and Weinblatt (published in World Economy 1996) is the most influential paper on this topic. The last year for which a trade potential estimate according to our systematic review is available is 1999. This paper fills this gap by providing estimates for the year 2019. We first replicate, extend, and update the study Arnon, Spivak and Weinblatt taking best practices as identified by the systematic review into account. Based on the best practice identified in the systematic review we estimate a panel PPML gravity model for 76 countries and the years 1991-2019 inclusive. Next, we use two alternative approaches to estimate the intra MENA trade potential that could be reaped as a consequence of a geopolitically more stable and open Middle East. In the year 2019 this ‘pot of gold’ in percent of intra MENA trade amounts to 10% to 54% (import based) and 21% to 48% (export based), respectively. These estimates are lower than those reported in the earlier literature. The conclusion is that an economically significant trade potential still exists.

How can we think about solidarity in ways that are attentive to the diversity of stories, spaces, practices, bodies, and temporalities shaping a city? Situated in diverse geo and body political locations as researchers, we argue that holding space for otherwise unseen and non-intelligible plural forms of solidarity, that is solidarities, is at the heart of such an endeavour. In The Hague, The Netherlands, the COVID-19 pandemic has fuelled an interest in understanding solidarity towards migrants’ communities. However, dominant theories of solidarity do not suffice to unpack the many forms of solidarity in the city. These theories explain solidarity either as enacted upon “others” or as limited to a delineated community. In both cases, solidarity is assumed to be disengaged from basic forms of reciprocity between city dwellers and the places and daily practices that exist for urban life to thrive. In this article, we move beyond these disengagements. Departing from our own practices of solidarity as researchers, with different migratory backgrounds and belongings, as well as a basic understanding of solidarity as an embodied and enfleshed set of relations of care, we interrogate how solidarity practices unfold across different locations in the city of The Hague, weaving city and residents together. Embarking upon this explorative journey, we as researchers ended up becoming part of the communal bodies and learned about solidarity firsthand as our stories became interwoven. Rather than visibilizing stories, we held the space for our and the communities’ stories (Cairo 2021). This paper then is not just about what we learned, but also about how we learned. In doing so, we highlight the need to reconceptualize solidarity in a way that allows for differences to come forward and to be creative with those differences (Lorde 2017 [1979]), and to grapple with how this plurality shapes The Hague. In advocating for creativity with rather than tolerance of difference, we underline the power that lies in turning the nondominant differences between us into strengths, as a way to forge new urban relationships, to think and live in the city and ways of thinking and practising (Lorde 2017 [1979]). We also highlight the potential of research as a praxis of transformation rather than data collection and extraction

In the geography of trade insularity has been recognized by many as a potentially important factor, but the direction of the impact on trade is unclear. The findings of empirical trade flow modelling are heterogeneous with respect to magnitude, sign and significance of the impact of insularity. While insularity has been a customary included controlling variable in the gravity trade model since the second half of the-1990s, no study exists specifically on the question of the trade impact of being an island. We collected 95 primary studies that deploy the gravity model and use a dummy for islands as a controlling variable in order to meta-analyse the ‘true’ underlying impact in the empirical literature. Following the 2020 MAER-net Protocol for reporting and conducting of Meta-Analysis in Economics, we meta-analyse 95 primary studies that report a total of 2044 estimated island parameters. Our analysis rejects the presence of any (publication) bias in the empirical literature. The primary studies reveal a statistically positive and economically meaningful meta effect. The genuine effect of insularity on trade is significantly positive, also after accounting for the effects of differences in study designs. Our analysis, however, shows that this result also depends on the research methodology, in particular the treatment of zero flows. We also find that the reported effects are larger for primary studies that have been published in peer reviewed studies. Together the identified methodological sources of heterogeneity provide a strong argument for replications of earlier studies with more advanced econometric methods as well as more focussed and dedicated studies on the trade impact of being an island. On balance and in the average, the advantages of being an island (accessibility of sea transports and locations along shipping lines) appear to outweigh the disadvantages (trade cost and geographical discontinuity). Based on the meta-analysis the ‘best practice’ genuine effect conditional on the identified heterogeneity is 0.477 (significant at the 1% level). This finding implies that being an island is on average associated with sixty percent larger trade.

Against the background of recent IMF forecasts that seem to imply that the Russian Economy has not been hit as hard as was expected by international institutions and academic modelling teams, this working paper provides context, showing the need to take the proper counterfactual into account. The paper discusses statistical problems (including the war paradox of National Accounts and the secrecy that both bias official data). Focusing on the success and failure rates of sanctions, the paper clarifies the need to distinguish economic impact and political success and argues that potential success and failure rates need to be compared to other available international policy tools. The paper discusses an alternative modelling approach for the mainstream economic forecasts. A family of VAR models takes both dynamic interactions between economic and political variables into account and enables a direct focus on two variables of interest: military expenditures and impact on the Chief Executive. A key finding is that economic sanctions influence both variables in the desired direction and thereby help to create a window of opportunity that, however, is closing after three to four years.

The history of economic thought has discussed issues related to trade and religion predominantly from a Western perspective. In order to fill this gap in the literature, we investigate the historical roots of Asian views on trade and globalization. We discuss the positions of traders, merchants, and their commercial activities across the five major philosophies of life (religions and schools of thought) in ancient Asia. The paper follows history’s timeline starting with the ideas about trade in the Vedic religion (ancient Brahmanism and Hinduism), Buddhism, Confucianism, Chinese Legalism, and Islam. We find significant dissimilarities in the appreciation and perception of international economic activities both across ancient Asian philosophies of life as well as with Western economic thought. While Islam and Buddhism were trade-friendly, Confucianism looked down on commerce, Hinduism tried to exploit traders as low esteem servants, and Legalism saw international trade essentially as a threat. These ideas embedded in ancient religions and philosophies of life have shaped societies and attitudes towards trade and globalization and we review their impacts in today’s world. We conclude that the history of ancient Asian thinking on trade and traders is important for understanding international economic relationships in a world of growing multi-dimensional integration.

Manfred Max-Neef’s model of human needs, articulated in the 1980s, became and continues to be quite frequently used across many contexts and around the world. The model contains: first, a matrix of fundamental needs and diverse satisfiers (ways of actualizing/fulfilling needs); second, a theorization of satisfiers; third, a methodology for satisfier specification, for use in diagnosing current systems, sketching preferred alternative systems, and considering how to move from one towards the other. This paper aims to give a fuller understanding of the model, based on attention to its purposes, context of emergence and contexts of application, and to its theorization of satisfiers and the system for satisfier specification, not only to its famous matrix. Part One outlines how the model emerged as an instrument to pursue an agenda of ‘Human Scale Development’ and ‘Barefoot Economics’ (titles of two of Max-Neef’s early books) in Latin America and more widely. It continues in use 35 years later, now in a range of settings. Part Two notes that Max-Neef did not introduce the conception of fundamental needs, nor the distinction between needs and satisfiers, and instead drew on earlier authors. His distinctive contribution was to enrich thinking about satisfiers by considering multiple existential modes and the impacts of satisfiers on multiple needs. Further, he handled his concepts as practical tools to consider (alternative) patterns of living, that could be viewed as systems of needs, satisfiers and goods. Part Three looks at functions of the model and its components, conscious that it was intended for use in practical development work not in academic philosophy or psychology. It notes some of the range of applications, for diverse levels and topics; by Max-Neef himself and close collaborators, especially for local sustainable development; and by various recent authors not connected to Max-Neef or ecological economics, in situation assessments of the lives of poor and marginalized groups, and in creative policy design and planning.

Our focus is the interplay of macroeconomic and political variables following a boycott of Russian oil and gas and on how these factors codetermine the result of sanctions. This paper uses an innovative approach to sanction success that provides a dynamic, forward-looking, perspective and deals with both the economic and the political outcome of economic sanctions simultaneously. We report the main results of a comprehensive set of 14 unrestricted VAR models that we use to analyse how negative oil and gas shocks impact on the Russian economy and Russian politics. A similar approach has been used before to analyse sanctions against Iran (Dizaji and van Bergeijk in Journal of Peace Research 2013) and offers us the possibility to investigate the dynamics of the economic-political interactions. The impact of an energy boycott is considerable, and economic costs act as powerful incentives

East Africa as a region is increasingly attracting attention, especially in view of its significant achievements since the turn of the Millennium. It has been documented that the region has a remarkable resilience despite tsunami of negative foreign trade and investment shocks of the last decade. Policymakers in the region need to strengthen resilience by diversifying beyond gold, tourism, and traditional cash crops, boosting private sector backed growth and competitiveness, and preparing for competitiveness-led export growth. There is a need to ensure that the benefits of international specialization trickle down not only to strengthen economic growth, but also to create jobs and reduce poverty. The stylized facts of applied gravity analysis are that regional integration has comparatively speaking progressed well in the EAC, that trade creation by far outweighs trade diversion and that EAC is the most advanced in terms of tariff liberalization. Given this existing body of knowledge, in this working paper, we focus on a relatively under-researched area where important differences exist between EAC member states, namely: the trade impact of the time and costs that firms incur when they comply with documentary requirements and border procedures. The gravity model is estimated using a panel dataset consisting of EAC, SADC, COMESA and their major trading partners for the period 2015 – 2018, applying the Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood (PPML) estimator. Our empirical findings highlight that reducing time and costs for documentary requirements and crossing borders is an important issue within the EAC, especially since streamlining procedures, one stop portals, reducing handling time, as well as the use of common standards that facilitate EAC internal trade flows do not require large financial investments while they do have a high payoff. Considering economic arguments as a basis to form regional entities, our findings consistently stress the need to enhance the efficacy of the various regional trading blocs.

This is a critical note on the international comparative assessment of the energy dependence of countries based on measures of energy intensity that are employed to contrast and analyse peer sectors or firms. Energy use per unit of GDP or GDP produced per unit of energy are inspired by measures that are constructed to compare coequal firms/sectors’ value-added relative to their consumption of energy. While the measure seems innocent, it is questionable to apply it as a metric for comparison without considering other contextual factors. To obtain credible results, the incorporation of contextual factors such as stage of development and the structure of the economy is essential for a meaningful macro-comparison across countries.

This paper examines the short and long run effects of the 2010 Iranian energy subsidy reform on macro indicators including GDP and inflation. The subsidy reform, which consists of a simultaneous energy subsidy cut and a cash transfer to households, is not fiscally motivated but instead aims to reduce energy consumption. Using timeseries to analyse the dynamics of the macro variables in response to the subsidy reform elements (energy price increase, and cash transfer), I find that the subsidy reform has a negative effect on the economy in the short-term, and the cash transfer to households does not fully compensate for this adverse effect. These results are robust and consistent across specifications. The strongest channel that transmits the effect of energy price to GDP is value-added of industry and service sectors. The long run analysis rejects the existence of a long-run relationship between the energy subsidy reform and GDP. The findings indicate that the energy subsidy reform does not result in a reduction in energy consumption. These findings challenge the environmental aspect of the fossil fuel subsidy reforms as stand-alone policies without major reforms in the energy efficiency of economic sectors.

This working paper studies the case of the sanctions against the Russian war with the Ukraine in 2022 against the background of four major and well-documented historical sanction episodes: (a) the anti-Apartheid sanctions of the 1980s, (b) the sanctions against the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait in 1990, (c) the sanctions against Iranian nuclear capabilities and (d) the US and EU sanctions against the Russian annexation of the Crimea. Two cases (South-Africa and Iran) have a comparatively low ex ante probability of success based on pre-sanction proportional trade linkage and regime type (the autocracy score). The key to understanding their success is in the banking channel (debt-crisis and SWIFT sanctions) and the behaviour of the private sector (divestment and over-compliance). The failure of the sanctions against Iraq underscores the importance of regime type and the need for a viable exit strategy and shows that some decision-makers cannot be influenced with economic hardship. The 2014 sanctions against Russia illustrate the comparative vulnerability of the European democracies and their weakness in organizing comprehensive sanctions that bite. Given the increased Russian resilience, the increasingly autocratic nature of President Putin’s government, the credibility of his 2014 tit-for-tat strategy and the failure of European democracies to implement appropriate strong and broad-based measures smart and targeted sanctions are unlikely to influence the Kremlin’s calculus. The European Union could only influence that calculus by restoring its reputation as a credible applicant of strong sanctions, including an embargo on capital goods and a boycott of Russian energy.

Energy prices increased several folds due to the 2010 Iranian Energy Subsidy Reform. This study assesses the impact of the reform on the performance of manufacturing firms using a detailed micro-panel dataset at the 4-digit ISIC level for the period 2009 to 2013. Since the reform universally affected all firms, the analysis relies on a quasi-experimental framework implementing first an explorative before-after design with structural fixed-effects and second a difference-in-difference analysis exploiting energy-sensitivity. The subsidy removal caused a shrinkage in output and manufacturing value-added of at least 3 and 7%, respectively. This results in a deterioration of profits by nearly 9%. Manufacturing firms have been affected through three channels: increasing costs of direct energy inputs, pass-through costs for inputs from upstream firms and an energy-price-induced demand contraction. To successfully implement an energy subsidy reform while maintaining growth in the manufacturing sector, not only the direct but also the indirect, pass-through effects have to be considered since capital or technology-led responses to mitigate negative repercussions in the short-run are unlikely at large scale. The results can inform price reforms that aim to mitigate climate change.

This research paper presents the case study of a youth centre situated in a small town in northern Italy. Based on ethnographic research, I investigate the care practices performed inside this centre between staff and youth. The variety of data and the layers of meaning of the place and of the interactions inside of it require a post-structuralist approach that allows to understand these practices in their everyday evolution. The physical space of the centre is where this dialogue can start and the location of the centre in the disadvantaged outskirt of the town brings additional meaning to it. The migrant youth frequenting the centre are labelled as disadvantaged, yet such labelling plays little role once at the centre where they find a place to enjoy privacy, exercise agency, have control over the labels attached to them and to allow themselves to face their vulnerabilities or to take a breather from them. The guiding research question is about the practice of care being performed beyond policy guidelines. The ethnographic fieldwork, in addition to my previous work experience in the same place, allowed me to read the fine print of the place and of the people who live it and to work it out against the bureaucracy surrounding both the profession and youth centres. The lack of clear-cut guidelines on both sides generates an unclear and composite reality and facilitates diversity in implementation leaving the needed flexibility of action that is core to this type of work. The closing of the work is that this unscripted practice of care is so fundamental that running a youth centre exclusively following the rules would strongly diminish the efficacy of the intervention. Note: The podcast is co-created with three participants in the research; its aim is to be a long-lasting product made from and for the participants where they had the chance to talk about the centre in the way they preferred. This has also been done following an ethics of care. The language used is Italian and some parts are silenced or cut to preserve the anonymity of the place and of the participants.

The collapse of world trade in 2020 due to lockdowns in response of the COVID-19 pandemic has fuelled a rethinking of globalization with policies being reoriented towards strategic autonomy and local production by means of nearshoring and insourcing. Comparing the impact of the COVID-19 trade shock to the Great Depression, this article focusing on resilience and recovery argues that international value chains and the global trading system have helped to weather the impact of the global unprecedented response to a health shock.

This paper engages with the translation of technological upgrading into migrant workers’ opportunities for employment and decent work in agriculture, a sector commonly disregarded in the debate about the future of work in an era of automation. Zooming in on migrant workers in Dutch horticulture, it explores how technological innovation in horticulture is connected to the scope and conditions of employment and proposes a heuristic to conceptualise the observed dynamics. Our analysis that reads interview data with actors in the Dutch agri-food sector through the lens of the global value chain (GVC) literature contrasts with the pessimistic prediction of widespread technological unemployment. We find product upgrading, e.g., into high value-added products, and process upgrading, e.g., through climate control in greenhouses, to offer potential for more and secure employment. However, workers’ higher work intensity and the dismantling of entitlements to rest and reproduction in an attempt to ‘make people work like machines’ represent the underbelly of these dynamics

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare and exacerbates the existing insecurities of sex workers, a highly stigmatised, often criminalised and economically precarious group of workers. In the Netherlands, sex workers continue to experience different forms of violence despite the occupation’s legalisation, making it a ‘profession in limbo’. This paper therefore seeks to formulate answers to the questions: What are sex workers’ everyday experiences of (in)security? And: How has the COVID-19 pandemic influenced these? Given sex workers’ historical exclusion from policy formulation, we engage with these questions through collaborative research based on semi-structured interviews with sex workers in The Hague. Our analysis reveals a stark mismatch between the insecurities that sex workers’ experience and the concerns enshrined in the regulatory environment. While the municipality’s regulation of the sex industry focuses on sexually transmitted infections (STIs), occupational safety and health issues that sex workers experience also include psychological problems, insufficient hygiene in the workplace and the risk of violent clients. Besides, income insecurity is a key concern for sex workers. The decline in legal workspaces during the past two decades has not translated into higher service rates. Net earnings are further reduced when window operators pass on the risks of illness or damage to sex workers. Furthermore, operators act as powerful gatekeepers of access to remunerative employment. Here, sex workers identify gender-based discrimination with resulting more severe employment and income insecurities for transwomen and male sex workers. This legal liminality is enabled not only by the opaque legal status of sex work in the Netherlands, but also by the gendering of official regulation. Our study mirrors research from the Netherlands and beyond that documents sex workers’ widespread exclusion from COVID-19 support packages. Over and beyond this, we find that immigration status intersects with and mediates these exclusionary processes. We conclude that, firstly, to effectively address the insecurities that sex workers experience and fear, regulation needs to shift from its current criminal law and public health focus to a labour approach. Secondly, over and above such decriminalization, policies and civil society actors alike need to address the gender and sexual hierarchies that underpin sex worker stigma as well as migrants’ discrimination which have come out as powerful mediators of sex workers’ insecurities.

Export promotion policies and programmes (EPP) are increasingly popular to enhance export performance, but the evidence from their reported estimates appear puzzling and yet vary widely. We examine 1869 estimated parameters dealing with EPP and firm-level export performance from 37 studies published up to including 2020. Our main findings are threefold. First, constructing 26 moderator variables reflecting the context in which researchers obtain their estimated parameters, we uncovered that differences across the primary studies are mainly driven by the characteristics of the data, the types of firms targeted, the set of variables controlled in the underlying estimation techniques, the adopted a four-dimensional view of export performance, and the publication characteristics. Second, controlling for publication selection bias and reducing potential endogeneity issues, the implied gains from trade-promotion polices is about 0.069, suggesting a small practical impact by the existing guidelines. Third, unlike the econometric evaluation technique, we find robust evidence that the firm-extensive and destination-extensive margins appeared to be associated with mediating factors of publication bias

Prior to 1994, South Africa was infamous for its racialised policies and seemingly limitless measures of social control through a regime of apartheid, or racialised separation. Its unforgiving approach of previous, white-minority governments extended to mainly black foreigners, including refugees from the civil war in Mozambique from 1977–1992. After democratic elections in 1994, South Africa’s immediate post-apartheid migration regime was still largely oriented around an unreconstructed, apartheid-era approach of controlling the admission into, residence in, and departure from South Africa. This dire situation triggered a call for reform, to which policymakers were very slow to respond. Ultimately, in its efforts to develop and implement a border management and migration framework, the South African government has heavily relied on legal frameworks, border control policies, strategies and technologies transplanted from Europe and the United States. But, despite all this investment in a precedent-based yet foreign machinery, the government still struggles with its porous borders and irregular immigration. As a result, attempts to manage migration through policy reforms in South Africa have been fraught with challenges and contradictions. Particularly from around 2008, South Africa has not only embraced a spate of ever-more restrictive policies and laws that aim to sift out the desirable from the undesirable migrants, it has defied court judgements that have found the government to be in contravention of the law and the Constitution and obliged it to change. This has culminated in an explicitly deterrent and security-oriented approach that continues to lack effective judicial oversight. In this Working Paper, we present a comprehensive overview of South African migration and Border Control policies over a 25-year period. In a separate paper, which builds on this thick description, we argue that South Africa’s efforts to deter immigrants has not been framed by globally-accepted principles, based on South Africa’s ratification of international treaties governing refugees and migrants in particular, but rather has continued to be a policy of rather arbitrary enforcement is a sad reflection of deep-seated governance problems that the country faces generally.

The early results of the 2020 Census of the People’s Republic of China shed light on the highly politicised issue of Han Chinese population shares in the Tibetan areas of western China. Two opposite patterns are evident. The Han share increased in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) in the 2010s and the increase accelerated in comparison to the 2000s, but from a small base, reaching 12 percent in 2020. It also appears to be mostly concentrated in the capital city of Lhasa and to a lesser extent in a few other strategic locations in the province. In contrast, the Han share fell in the other half of Tibetan areas. The fall also accelerated in Qinghai and Gansu. If trends continue, minorities will become the majority of Qinghai within a few years. These insights confirm earlier analyses that the dominant structural trend facing these relatively poor peripheral areas is net outmigration, not net in-migration. Because outmigration is stronger among the Han than among minorities, combined with higher fertility and natural population increase rates among minorities (Tibetans in particular), there is a tendency for rising minority shares. This tendency is only counteracted by extremely high levels of subsidisation, such as in the TAR. These population dynamics need to be carefully differentiated, both inside Tibet but also from other regions in China such as Xinjiang. The development implications also run counter to the logic underlying recent allegations of forced or coerced labour in Tibet.

Social policies predate the welfare state and have left their mark on the genesis and development of the welfare state in different countries, that testifies to the importance of historical and ideological path-dependencies of social policies in different countries. The political/political-economy ecology literature links theories of social welfare and welfare state to environmental issues like resource use through the relationship between economic growth and sustainability. Orthodox mainstream neo-classical and Keynesian economics rely on economic growth in order to raise living standards but using different channels and mechanisms. It is this reliance on economic growth and its depletive effect on environmental resources that has lied at the heart of the critiques of growth oriented liberal/neo-liberal or Keynesian economic policies, and for that matter, economic policies of centralised economies of socialist countries. This paper will start with a critique of conservative environmentalism that is inspired by Malthusian population pressure (with all its social policy implications), that to some extent also informs the degrowth approach. It would then ask how to meet the increasing health, education and other social needs whilst minimising the depletion of natural resources. I argue that the answer to the question of a sustainable social policy in part lies in an economic model, a la Kalecki and others, that can manage/negotiate the composition of output whilst investing in resources to reduce depletion of natural resources and greenhouse emissions. This is a growth strategy based on ‘the human theory of needs’ that meets the needs of current generation and provides some measure of inter-generational justice. The welfare and social policy counterpart of this should involve public and collective provisioning of socially necessary services of health and education as well as a range of other care services that will reduce per capita cost through economies of scale and scope whilst providing an equitable access to these services – universal provision and access and not targeting is at the heart of this approach.

This paper examines North–South linkages in the politics of contemporary food assistance and social welfare, and in particular the normalisation of poverty and humanitarian crisis caused by increased digitalisation, privatisation and individualisation of aid or welfare. Migrants and displaced populations are considered as extreme cases and we examine how these policies and practices are leading to the growth of a global precariat who are constantly on the edge of survival (or death). We use Sudan, India and the UK as case-study countries which have seen persistently high levels of acute malnutrition or rising levels of hunger (as in the case of the UK), as well as the introduction of new digital welfare systems. Digital practices often aim to improve access to food and form a key part of humanitarian and welfare assistance, thereby creating digital welfare states. In the past decade Sudan has seen a shift from emergency food aid to digital cash interventions, including the establishment of a new national cash-based Family Support Programme (FSP). India’s Public Distribution System (PDS) has been undergoing digital transformation since 2010. In the UK, welfare has been digital by default since 2012 and from 2016 assistance for asylum seekers is provided through biometrics and debit cards. The Covid pandemic has accelerated processes of digitalisation across all three countries. In this paper, we argue that digitalisation has not addressed hunger, but instead is likely to lead to exclusions and invisibility of the already politically marginalised groups. Additionally, a number of troubling political and economic questions linked to identity, surveillance and profit have been subsumed in the larger debate about efficiency and accountability in provisioning. On the other hand, evidence of protests and organised struggles indicates a growing opposition to the digitalisation of bodies and lives.

In this working paper, I investigate what I see as the major themes for the debate that we need to have to be prepared for the next pandemic. These themes are developed against the background of a more thorough investigation in my monograph Pandemic Economics (van Bergeijk 2021) about the history of pandemic research. An addendum to the book is necessary, as the pandemic and recovery constantly unfold. Humanity cannot rely on modern medicine to beat the next ‘disease X’ and the world cannot afford the extortionate health and economic policy interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic again. Therefore, a major global investment project is necessary to reduce the vulnerability to and impact of pandemics. It is important to recognize that inequalities to a large extent determine pandemic vulnerability and hence, adjustment of SDGs is necessary. From the COVID-19 pandemic we learned that the international economic organizations suffered from disaster myopia and that the self-image of the advanced economies is distorted. It also has become apparent that ‘beggar-thy-neighbour’ health care was generally practiced while global health care should have been the norm. A discussion on the related issues of rationing, triage and scarcity of health care during a pandemic is urgently needed.

This cuir paper narrates the stories of six cuir bodies in the Andean Ecuador, who co-cuired art and cyberspace, during the cuir times of Covid-19. This paper moves away from mainstream forms of knowledge production. It presents instead a cuir way to do research in which we become copensantes (cothinkers). This term represents our decision of collectively reflect, feel, experiment and be rebellious. Based on the stories we shared in our co-created online safe place, and through the queer ecology (QE) framework, this paper contributes to disrupt the culture/nature divide and its resulting natural/unnatural distinction used to justify the rejection and violence against cuirs in Ecuador. I situate this discussion by unpacking the construction of femininities and masculinities in this context, the ways they are abscribed on cuir bodies and their implications. Finally, I explore the personal and political dimension of cuir art, that by travelling across the cyberspace, are depicted in this paper generating contagion through new cuirnaturecultures. In this paper, we generate noise and motivate the reader to rethink with us the possibilities of going beyond the binary of masculinity/feminity; to reflect with us about the right of cuir lives to exist; and to embody with us a cuir meaning of freedom

Economies vary in their reliance on public or private capital accumulation, and this variation has long been believed to lead to different distribution outcomes. In this paper, we take the share of public capital in total capital stock and public capital per GDP as the main explanatory variables. We then estimate the effect that capital ownership has on income inequality by using a panel data consisting of 145 economies in the period from 1980 to 2015. Our empirical results show that a higher ratio of public capital in total capital stock could lower the Gini coefficients of both original and disposable income distribution. Furthermore, we note that public capital per GDP is a sound measurement of public investment’s accumulative contribution to the economy and find that it reduces income inequality, while private capital per GDP affects income inequality in the opposite direction. Accounting for the heterogeneity in development level, we further find that the negative effect that public capital has on income inequality is much more salient among low- and middle-income countries.

We meta-analyse 36 primary studies on determinants of the effectiveness of economic sanctions published over the years 1985-2018, using the Protocol of the Meta-Analysis in Economics Research-network. We investigate the impact of trade linkage, sanction duration and prior relations on sanction success. While the descriptive analysis and weighted averages suggest that the impact of the three variables of interest is significant and conforms to a priori theoretical expectations, our econometric analysis uncovers significant publication bias in the results. Bias is significant and large for the three variables of interest and the genuine impact of these variables on success and failure of sanctions after correction for publication bias is insignificant. Moreover, we find that bias in this literature increases over time.

Put simply, accountability is about saying what you do and doing what you say. This paper explores the concept of social accountability (SA), which we understand here as any citizen-led action beyond elections that aims to enhance the accountability of state actors. We approach SA in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region from a perspective that blends development studies with comparative politics and Middle East studies. First, we trace the notion of accountability as a governance concept. Secondly, we discuss dominant theories on SA as a mechanism to improve public service delivery. Thirdly, we identify three main categories of social accountability initiatives (SAI’s) and summarize their respective strengths and weaknesses. We then observe how the scholarly literature on SA has largely bypassed the MENA region. We argue that this neglect is underserved and surprising, given the many initiatives that emerged across the region during the decade following the 2011 uprisings. In the final part of the paper, we propose three thematic axes that form a future research agenda which we hope is relevant for researchers based in the region as well as for (international, regional and national) policy makers and practitioners.

Productivity development is a key issue for export-driven growth and development. We use East African Community (EAC) firm-level data. Instead of focusing on single EAC partners, using the World Bank Enterprise Surveys, investigate firm-level productivity difference for seven countries that are part of the COMESA-EAC-SADC tripartite free trade area (TFTA). Using export and ownership dimensions, we identify four types of firms: National Domestic, National Exporters, Foreign Domestic and Foreign Exporters. We find a clear export productivity premium for national manufacturing firms and service sectors, but not for foreign owned firms. We also find clear foreign-ownership productivity premium for both domestic and exporting firms in manufacturing sectors but less clear in services sectors. The gap between national export premium and foreign-ownership premium is stronger in manufacturing firms as opposed to service sectors. Moreover, we find clear and strong productivity premia in size, training programmes and level of development in the manufacturing firms. In the services sector, these premia are always smaller and only significant for medium-sized firms. There is no difference in experience premium between sectors in terms of both significance and magnitude of the estimated coefficients.

Current literature is unclear about how highly governed (i.e. more coordinated/ integrated) value chains may influence the level and chance of improvement in workers’ conditions (e.g. levels of security and voice). This research evaluates and considers labour outcomes (i.e. levels of security and voice) within the Brazilian Orange Juice Value Chain (OJVC). The OJVC in São Paulo, Brazil, is an “old”, vertically coordinated chain that delivers, via three large firms - Cutrale, Citrosuco and Louis Dreyfus Commodities (LDC) - a vast proportion of the world’s orange juice. The methodology used in this research applies indicators of security to various workers (on farms; at factories; for local/regional transporters and in the port) as well as a model of identity to the different unions operating across this chain. A typology and rank of orange chain workers are made based on findings in terms of these indicators. This paper centres on the concept of labour agency as a means to understanding the impacts of value chain inclusion on labour security and voice. The mapping of worker’s levels of security shows labour outcomes as both difficult and varied in form and cause but also that crucial (final) transport workers have considerably better chances for upgrading their conditions. Labour outcomes are also related to unions, which may have space to embark on new local strategies and alliances, if they so choose. Looking at labour identity through identity analysis also shows the problems unions and workers have balancing local level specifics of representation with their “need” to forge global alliances, particularly within chains. Finally, the paper illustrates the value of grounding studies of labour security and agency at the intersection of (highly political and hierarchical) vertical chains and horizontal, local processes of labour control, as suggested by Global Production Network protagonists.

This paper examines how and why a zoonotic, ‘novel’ coronavirus disease, Covid-19, became a pandemic of such magnitude as to bring the world to a standstill for several months. Though the WHO inaccurately projected Covid-19 as the first pandemic by a coronavirus, it had been preceded by two others also caused by a similar coronavirus: SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) in 2002-03 and MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome) in 2014. In fact, following the SARS pandemic, the possibility of the emergence of pathogenic, virulent, ‘novel’ strains had been predicted. Therefore, the emergence of Covid-19 coronavirus should have come as no surprise, yet ‘preparedness’ to deal with the emergency was seriously lacking. A major reason for the worldwide escalation was due to the inordinate delay in Covid-19 pandemic declaration by the WHO till geographical spread and severity had heightened considerably. This enabled the justification of draconian ‘suppression’ measures based on questionable science. This paper argues that the ‘lockdown’ strategy coming after the virus had seeded across countries initiating local transmission, was a political decision wrapped up in epidemiological parlance to give it a scientific veneer. Using the Foucauldian interpretation of the public health responses to three diseases – leprosy, plague and smallpox –as models for three distinct forms of power techniques, this paper explores the biopolitical reasons for the adoption of the ‘plague’ model of governance which exercised ‘in full’, a transparent, unobstructed power as the almost universal blueprint across the world to contain Covid-19.

This paper formally models the rise in populist politics during the last decade. In the literature the rise in populism is attributable both to cultural and economic factors. Chief among the latter is the inequality engendered by globalization and technical progress. When the plight of the marginalised is ignored by mainstream centrist parties, populist challengers rush in emphasizing cultural factors, invoking an enviable bygone past reminiscent of the golden age of capitalism. In what follows we apply prospect theory, where disenchanted individuals support populists because they promise to enact what is desirable, even at the expense of harming their already disadvantaged economic position. Support for populism depends upon the desirability of some of their nationalist policies to an already pre-disposed vote bank, as well as the calculus of meme verification. The model also incorporates political competition between a populist challenger and a liberal politician, where memes and messages are the strategic variables. It is postulated that nations ruled by populists are more likely to suffer more greatly from pandemic shocks, due to their public policies, except through serendipity or when the populist adopts more benevolent authoritarian practices.

Today many European citizens and many migrants into Europe live under fear and anxiety. Existing political structures dichotomize the two sets of insecurities and so contribute to perpetuate them. The insecurity of citizens is seen as attainable independent of and despite the insecurity of migrants, rather than as part of a common (shared) human security. In response, this essay presents ideas from human security analysis, as a partner, complement and extension of human rights thinking in relation to migration. It is argued that such an analysis, with concrete practical options, can contribute to the creation of structures through which interdependency of EU citizens’ security and that of migrants is recognised and upheld. Section 2 outlines the migration crisis that has been felt in Europe and some reasons behind it. Section 3 considers the responses of securitization of migration and militarization at the EU’s southern borders, and of supplementary humanitarianism. We analyse why the EU migration policy system, conceived outside of a conception of common human security, produces negative feedback and is counterproductive. In Section 4 we argue in general terms why human security analysis is a required partner to human rights thinking and practice. Section 5 then concretely suggests how a human security perspective could help to frame, balance and extend human rights analysis and contribute in migration policy and practice. These suggestions include generating legal channels for migration, addressing the conceptual confusions revolving around migration through introducing a more comprehensive concept of ‘protection-seeker’, developing a European-wide regularisation mechanism, using human security as a meta-legal figure in migration cases, and developing a perspective that combines human rights criteria with enlightened self-interest. Finally, Section 6 discusses the partial reflection of such a perspective in the 2018 Global Compact on Migration.

This study assesses whether Syrian refugees intend to return to Syria, taking account of the economic, cultural and institutional differences between their country of origin and the host country. We develop a simple theoretical model on return migration and optimal duration of stay in the host country to identify the potential trade-offs faced by refugees. We then assess the theoretical predictions empirically with a sample of 577 Syrian refugees living in Germany and Turkey. Three return scenarios are considered: (i) ever returning, (ii) returning when it is as safe in Syria as before the war, and (iii) returning within two years. Refugees in the immediately neighbouring country of Turkey are more likely to regard their stay as temporary (76%) compared to those who fled to geographically more distant Germany (55%, p-value of difference=0.000). Concerning the correlates of intended return, we observe that socio-demographic and economic characteristics tend to have limited predictive power for re-migration intentions, independent of the host country. Similarly, while refugees value freedom of speech and belief, the existence of these liberties does not feed into the return migration decision in either of the host countries. Thus, attempts to impose these values on the Assad Government are unlikely to trigger mass return movement. From a policy perspective, we analyse whether random exposure to positive or negative information regarding return migration impacts on the refugees’ intentions. We find no systematic impact on the decision to migrate back. This demonstrates that host governments cannot expect (rapid) information disseminated by refugee agencies – even if it provides support – to impact the refugees’ decision making about return. Overall, the analysis suggests that neither proximate nor distant host countries should bank on the speedy return of the Syrian refugees but should focus on refugee integration, independently of how long they intend to stay.

The work of economist and philosopher Amartya Sen (1933-) has attracted attention in other fields too, including in political science, human geography, planning, health and social policy, and, to a lesser but growing extent, in sociology and occasionally anthropology. This paper, written as part of a project on Indian social theorists, discusses Sen’s relation to social theorizing. While he is not a ‘social theorist’ in the sense recognized in sociology and anthropology, being grounded instead in the earlier perspectives of Adam Smith, Condorcet and J.S. Mill, much of his work, both theoretical and empirical, proves of interest to a wide range of social scientists. The paper’s first main part outlines his contributions as a social analyst, under four connected headings: (1) theorization on how people reason as agents within society; (2) ‘entitlements analysis’ of the social determinants of people’s access or lack of access to goods; (3) theorizing the effective freedoms and agency that people enjoy or lack, in his ‘capability approach’ (CA); (4) treatments of societal membership, identity and political life, including a liberal theory of personal identity and a strong advocacy of and high expectations for ‘voice’ and deliberative democracy. The second part characterizes Sen’s intellectual style, marked by systematic conceptual refinement, associated emphases on complexity, heterogeneity, and individuality, including personal individuality, and a reformist optimism. The third part treats his relation to ‘social theory’ as considered by sociologists, including the connections, contributions and possible blind spots: in his attention to work by sociologists, in his system for theorizing human action in society, in treatment of power structures and capitalism, and in his optimistic programmatic conception of personhood that stresses the freedom to make a reasoned composition of personal identity. The final substantial part discusses his preoccupation with public reasoning and democracy, and the focus on an arguably idealized version of the former and relative neglect of the sociology of the latter. It contrasts the ideal of a reasoning polity with features and trends in independent India. Nevertheless, Sen’s programmes or critical autonomy in personhood and for reasoned politics carry significant normative force, and his analytical formats can help not only structured evaluation but investigation of obstacles to more widespread agency, voice and democratic participation.

This study re-examines the validity of oil-hinders-democracy hypothesis by comparing the long-term effects of oil abundance and oil dependence democracies individually. Based on five novel measures of democracy from V-DEM dataset, we test this hypothesis on data from 95 developing countries over the period 1932–2014. Our analyses show some nuances in the oil-democracy relationship. First, that oil wealth adversely affects democracy across the full sample. Second, once we ?classified developing countries into five sub-samples, we consistently ??nd that the influence of oil wealth (abundance/dependence) measures on democracy varies across geographical regions? as well as small and large-scale oil endowment countries. Third, we find that institutional quality in the form of rule of law plays a crucial role in altering the oil–democracy link. Overall, we provide ample support for ‘Conditionalist view’. In other words, oil has different effects on democracy in the context of oil abundancy, geographic regions, and institutional aspects. More importantly, it seems that oil abundance does not hinder democracy in each of the five sub-samples and in some instances can even be a blessing. Thus, it is worthy to make a distinction between these two types of oil wealth to better understand the oil-democracy relationship.

This paper examines how negative shocks to arms imports due to external arms embargoes affect the military expenditure, quality of democracy and internal and external conflicts in a sample of 48 mainly developing countries for the period of 1990–2017. An important innovation is that we include both political and conflict factors in a Panel Vector Autoregressive (PVAR) model of arms sanctions. The results show that the responses of political system and different indices of democracy including electoral, liberal, participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian democracy to decreases in arms imports (as a percentage of GDP) are positive and statistically significant, and that of military expenditures (as a percentage of GDP) is negative and significant. Furthermore, our findings show that while arms restrictions do not significantly impact on religious tensions and external conflicts, they may intensify ethnic tensions and internal conflicts in developing countries. Overall the results indicate that arms embargo weakens the military sector by creating the negative impact on military expenditure and the size of armed forces and destabilizes the government. Although this improves democratic characteristics in developing countries, it may lead to higher ethnic tensions and internal conflict. In contrast to military expenditures, the responses of education expenditures, health expenditures and GDP per capita to negative shocks in arms imports are positive. The overall results are robust to different definitions of arms shocks, and different indicators of political institutions (V-DEM democracy indices and polity2), as well as differing orderings of variables in the panel VAR system.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the short-run effects of economic sanctions taking the form of restrictions on international trade in goods and services, as well as brakes on international financial flows. A Keynesian disequilibrium, demand driven macroeconomic paradigm is postulated. The target country is envisaged to be part of the global South, the sender country is viewed to be located in the global North, and the sanctions are general rather than targeted at specific firms and sectors. The trade sanctions can take two forms: a diminution of exports to the target country and a reduction in exports from the target nation. Both type of sanctions damage the target country’s economy on impact: the first by lowering aggregate supply in the target country, the latter by worsening its terms of trade. From the viewpoint of the sender country, its economy may benefit from the demand generated by the rent from export restrictions to the targeted economy. Financial sanctions are more unequivocal in their damage to the target economy, they lower the supply of funds or capital in the target nation with adverse consequences for the supply of credit, investment finance, as well as reduced options on how to finance government expenditure.

Border walls have recently proliferated and become a global phenomenon with about a third of the countries having at least one wall or fence along its borders. This trend contrasts the idea of the global village and fits into a trend towards deglobalization. So far little attention has been given to their unintended effect. This article fills this gap by developing a gravity model for the years 1990-2014 regarding 118 countries, 44 (37%) of which had a wall during the research period. The impact of border structures on cross-border trade is economically and statistically significant. Countries separated by a wall trade on average 4 to 73 percent less than would ceteris paribus be the case if the border wall did not exist.

This report describes the main findings and recommendations of research carried out for the Partners for Resilience (PfR) alliance on how the PfR programme is affected by – or may affect – conflict. Although PfR works in different conflict-affected countries and contexts, it does not address conflict or insecurity explicitly. This is potentially problematic for PfR’s effectiveness. It is therefore important to consider whether PfR could or should address conflict more explicitly. For this research, a qualitative analysis of the experiences within the ongoing PfR programme was conducted in all 10 countries: Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mali, Philippines, South Sudan, Uganda and the regional programmes in Asia, Africa and Central America. The research was conducted by consultants and researchers from the International Institute of Social Studies, the Hague. The core of the study consisted of an online survey, for which PfR staff and partners from all countries were invited, in addition to Skype interviews and a desk study. In all, 52 people participated. The overall recommendation for PfR is to address conflict more explicitly in its IRM approach and to integrate conflict in the design and programming of a new phase. This would entail acknowledgment by PfR that conflict is impacting the goals of PfR work, and a commitment to support and train staff in addressing conflict. More concretely, the report offers several recommendations and ideas for next steps. In line with suggestions of research participants, the key elements for conflict-sensitive programming for PfR partners are: 1. transparent communication towards all parties 2. facilitation of multi-stakeholder dialogues to increase parties’ understanding of conflict dynamics 3. the creation of a safe spaces for stakeholders. It is also suggested that Netherlands embassies play a role in addressing conflict and supporting PfR, for example by lobbying stakeholders and supporting partners financially or otherwise. Moreover, PfR should create a conflict-sensitivity toolbox and develop guidelines for conflict-sensitive and inclusive policy and programming (not just including women, but also ethnic minorities) and training for its worldwide staff in the use of conflict risk assessment tools. We believe that these steps will make the work of PfR more effective and decrease the risk that interventions feed into conflict. A more detailed set of recommendations feature at the end of this report.

This research paper examines Nicaraguan migrant women’s engagement with transnational social protection (TSP) in Spain and Nicaragua. Although in recent years TSP has emerged as a relevant research agenda in migration studies, not much is known about the ways in which migrants, particularly women, navigate welfare systems and mobilize resources to access and provide social protection across borders. By approaching this study from a gender lens, and by privileging the voices of migrants, this work represents an innovative and original contribution to the growing scholarship on TSP.

This study examines how negative oil shocks (due to the oil boycotts) could affect the military expenditure and the quality of democracy in the oil rentier states of Middle East by applying the annual date from 1990 to 2017. I use both economic and political variables in a panel vector autoregressive (PVAR) model of oil boycotts. The estimated PVAR models show significant impacts of oil boycotts both on key economic factors (government revenues, defence and non-defence expenditures) and on the different indicators of the political system.

Governments and policy-makers promote formalization through various interventions ranging from simplifying registration procedures to increasing enforcement of the law. But despite various efforts, not much is known about the effects of interventions aiming at formalizing informal firms. This meta-analysis examines the empirical literature on the impact of such formalization interventions. We systematically assessed the literature on the impact of formalization policies resulting in 568 observations from 18 studies conducted by 33 researchers and published until June 2018. We analyzed the meta-impact of (i) cost, (ii) benefit and (iii) enforcement policy interventions and assessed whether the resulting outcomes are influenced by the type of data, econometric approach, and specification as well as publication bias. The findings suggest that policies increasing the benefits after formalization are associated with the highest formalization rates. Yet, the overall impact of the studied policy interventions remains weak when we control for publication quality and method heterogeneity. Overall, we only find modest evidence for increased formalization associated with the so far implemented interventions suggesting that it is high time to consider new approaches in addressing the informal economy.

Law-based, civic-led advocacy has long been an important means for addressing rule of law deficits and problems of development and governance more generally. Authoritarian regimes, official and/or corporate foreign-based corruption and the structural limitations of formal rule of law mechanisms to deliver impartial justice have forced legal advocates to think creatively. This has resulted in some interesting examples of civic-led, law-based advocacy through both informal and formal structures, aimed at pursuing social justice. However, it is important to clearly distinguish legal mobilisation from illegitimate forms of legal instrumentalism, such as lawfare. In this Working Paper, I set out some of my current research ideas in this area and in particular explain my approach to researching legal mobilisation, which I regard as a practice as well as a socio-legal concept and approach, with a particular emphasis on the use of law as a form of political legitimacy.

Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) is one of the world’s largest food security programs. The program supports chronically food insecure rural households and at the same time promotes long-term food security through the creation of rural infrastructure. While studies on the PSNP have examined various features of the program, there is limited knowledge on the quality and durability of infrastructure built through the program. Ensuring and maintaining the quality of local public goods built through the PSNP and similar social protection programs is a costly and recurring issue. Motivated by the long-term objective of the program, this paper analyses the role played by a key design feature of the PSNP, that is, its Community Based Participatory Watershed Development approach in influencing a project’s physical condition and its operational status. The paper is based on survey data and technical assessments provided by soil and water conservation engineers covering a sample of 249 Soil and Water Conservation (SWC) projects located in 53 watershed communities. The survey is complemented by qualitative information gathered through interviews and discussions. The location of multiple projects, with differing levels of participation in the same watershed communities permits estimation of the effects of community participation after controlling for community fixed effects. We find that projects in which beneficiaries play a larger role in project monitoring and evaluation are substantially less likely to be damaged and be in better operational condition. These results support the idea that community participation translates into more durable infrastructure.

The financial crisis of 2009 has had a devastating impact on the people of Europe, throwing millions into unemployment and poverty. The impact was most severe in the Southern and Eastern members of the EU. The EU’s response was more concerned with the impact of the crisis on the viability of the banking and financial sector than on employment, poverty and livelihood. Following a brief discussion of the empirical evidence on the social impact of the crisis, this paper provides a critical appraisal of a major EU initiative in 2013: the Social Investment Package (SIP). The social investment (SI) approach to social policy has its origin in the social democratic response to the Great Depression of the 1930s. In Sweden Ava and Gunnar Myrdal argued for a new approach to social policy that would focus on social investment in human capital. Notwithstanding the intrinsic merits of a SI approach this paper argues that it is a policy paradigm without a foundation in any specific economic theory, and its adoption has been influenced by country specific historical, social and economic institutions and developments. The SIP has been primarily focused on the supply side of the labour market in order to increase people’s skills and their participation in the labour market and society at large. It also covered other related key areas of early childhood education, housing and social protection. The SIP has been complemented by the launch of the European Pillar of Social Rights that if backed up by appropriate legislation and setting up of rules similar to the European Monetary Union would strengthen the social dimension of the EU leading to a European Social Union. The EU has to balance its plan for economic and monetary union based on free market with its desire for social cohesion and a social union. The latter requires some degree of fiscal union to provide support for regions and people who have been left behind and have been negatively affected by the economic policies of the EU and member states. Social cohesion calls for asymmetric solidarity and redistributive policies. A Europe that has defined itself by its enlightenment and progressive ideas since the French revolution has to go back to the basics and invoke the rich intellectual heritage that aspired to ‘equality, fraternity and liberty’ for human kind. The idea of a social contract between citizens and the state should be put at the heart of economic and social policies at European level in order to mitigate and eventually eliminate not only the negative social impact of the crisis but move towards a more equitable, democratic and prosperous Europe.

Fertility and mortality decline are major drivers of Iran's population aging. A rapid and sharp fall in fertility rates over the past three decades as well as a substantial rise in life expectancy are causing rapid aging of Iran’s population. The present paper uses the 2015 United Nations Population Division data to discuss the trends, determinants and the implications of population aging in Iran. According to the medium fertility variant, people age 60 and older will represent 31 percent (almost 29 million people) of Iran’s population by 2050. The population age 65 and older is projected to be 22 percent (more than 20 million) and that of aged 80 and older 3.8 percent (around 3.5 million) in 2050, that are almost four-times the corresponding figures in 2015. Data on the speed of population aging show that Iran is the second fastest aging country in the world in terms of the percentage point increase in the population age 60 and over between 2015 and 2050; Iran is second only to South Korea, by less than .01 percent. The rapid population aging of Iran has significant implications for all societal institutions and decision makers that have to be addressed by the Iranian society. Gender-related issues and socio-economic security in old age are two key issues resulting from such a fast population aging. As with many rapidly aging populations, Iran needs a strategy for social and economic support for an aging population that will not promote views of aging people as a burden.

This study explores the link between the EU Social Investment Package and availability, access and use of financial services. There are two dimensions to ‘social investment’: the investment dimension refers to resources that need to be invested in order to increase welfare and capabilities of the population, whilst the social dimension is about society’s collective effort for raising such investment as well as sharing in its benefits. Financial inclusion matters for achieving human capability. Financial services and human capability have a two-way and dynamic relationship, because access to financial services improves human capability, which in turn leads to more efficient use of financial services. This dynamic interaction evolves throughout the life of an individual, its contingencies and changed circumstances in relation to, e.g., health, education, family formation, employment, retirement.

Strong economic growth in China and the concomitant increase in its share in global production constitute the most important geo-economic shift of the post war period. With the re-emergence of China as a truly global player discussions on Chinese world leadership have re-emerged. This paper takes a long-run economic-historic perspective and investigates global macroeconomic conditions indicated by theories of collective action and hegemonism (in particular [lack of] dominance in production and fragmentation of global production) in order to assess the future outlook for the production of global public goods. The importance of these measures follows from the fact that in a fully fragmented world economy public goods cannot be arranged. If the share of the hegemon or the leading group in the benefits provided by the global public good is low, then the public good is less likely to be produced. What will be the consequences of China’s emergence for global governance, its efficacy and its sustainability?