Interviews

Displacement and Development

The same water produces electricity twenty times over the course of a basin. But these very low costs do not translate into benefits for the people.

Weaponizing Aid

On October 28, the Israeli Knesset voted to shut down the operations of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and to designate it as a terrorist organization. While this drastic attack on the UN was met with widespread condemnation from the international community, it was not wholly unexpected. For decades, Israel has regarded the number one provider of education and humanitarian services to the Palestinians of Gaza with contempt and suspicion. Just earlier this year, in response to still-unsubstantiated Israeli allegations that UNRWA employees took part in the October 7 attacks, the United States led a series of countries in terminating funding to the UN organization. 

Petro-Politics

In his bid to transform Colombia into a global leader of the green transition, President Gustavo Petro announced in 2023 that the country would stop signing new contracts for oil and gas exploration. Though celebrated by environmental advocates, the announcement was met with skepticism from various political actors, who have pointed to Colombia’s dependence on oil for its domestic energy needs and government revenues, as well as voiced concerns on behalf of those employed at Ecopetrol, the nation’s largest oil company.

Coalition Rule

India’s Lok Sabha elections in June ended a decade of single-party majority-rule for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). With the BJP winning 240 seats, down from the 303 they won in 2019 and short of the 273 needed for an absolute majority, the ruling party must now rely on its regional allies in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in order to govern. While the elections have been considered a setback for Modi, the BJP still won twice the vote share of its next-largest competitor, the Congress Party. And importantly, Modi’s reelection as prime minister marks only the second time in India’s history in which a ruling party has been elected to a third consecutive term.

Class and Commodities

Few economists in the course of Colombian economic history have matched the influence of Salomón Kalmanovitz, who has played a key role in the professionalization of the discipline since the 1970s, when he returned from the United States to teach microeconomics at the National University of Colombia before teaching Marxist political economy at the University of the Andes.

Supermarket Economics

Behind the retail grocery industry’s image of public routine churns an incredible and evolving feat of collective enterprise. The companies that own and operate grocery stores serve as the primary source of food for the country’s 130 million households. Employing some 2.8 million workers across 62,000 locations—about three stores for every incorporated municipality in the country—supermarkets are anchor institutions in the developmental pattern of American capitalism. (Employment at warehouse clubs such as Costco and supercenters such as Walmart: another 2.4 million workers.)

Market Ideologies

The Soviet Union’s construction of pipelines across Western Europe granted the superpower access to European markets—and capital. In his new book, The Soviet Union and the Construction of the Global Market, Oscar Sanchez-Sibony demonstrates how this move challenged American dominance of Bretton Woods institutions, ultimately provoking a broader rethinking of state-market relations. 

The Structure of the US Treasury Market

In the following interview, seasoned fixed-income portfolio manager Mohsen Fahmi questions this assumption. Fahmi is a veteran multi-asset fund manager with extensive experience managing fixed-income funds, including PIMCO Dynamic Bond, PIMCO GIS Dynamic Bond, and PIMCO Multi-Strategy Alternative Fund. After retiring as a fund manager from PIMCO, one of the world’s largest fixed-income investment firms, he continued to serve on the investment committee, helping set strategy for the firm’s $2 trillion in assets. Previously, Fahmi spent eleven years at Moore Capital Management and held positions at Salomon Brothers, Goldman Sachs, and J.P. Morgan. He currently serves as one of the nine Board of Guardians for the Sarawak Sovereign Wealth Future Fund.

Positioning Aden

Prior to October 2023, about a seventh  of global maritime trade passed through the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea to and from the Suez Canal. As a result of attacks by Houthi fighters on commercial ocean freight traveling through the area, that volume has fallen by more than half. Longer shipping routes around the Cape of Good Hope have increased freighting rates dramatically; the average price to ship a 40-foot container almost tripled from $1,400 to $4,000 between December and January. Today, the cost remains around $3,100. 

The Techno-Patrimonial Welfare State

The success of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the last decade of Indian politics, and its frontrunner status in this year’s parliamentary elections, has often been attributed to its welfare policies. The rise of Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT)—whereby beneficiaries can receive transfers from over 500 government welfare schemes directly into their bank accounts—has been crucial in this regard. Over the past decade of BJP rule, the amount paid through DBTs increased from 60 billion INR (approximately 718.8 million USD) to 2.1 trillion INR (approximately 25.1 billion USD), reaching over 1 billion registered beneficiaries as of September 2023, according to data released by the Ministry of Finance. The rapid expansion of DBTs was facilitated by several advances in technology: the increased availability of affordable mobile phones and internet plans in India, especially after the launch of Reliance Jio in 2016; the rise of Aadhaar, the government’s biometric identification program that offered the first all-purpose ID in the country; and the establishment of Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, the government’s financial inclusion program announced by Prime Minister Modi in 2014, which has been responsible for opening over 500 million new bank accounts for largely unbanked Indian citizens.  

A Progressive Tax Reform?

In 2022, Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first left-wing president of the twenty-first century, emerged victorious alongside a coalition of liberal ministers experienced in the public sector and academia. One key figure in this coalition was José Antonio Ocampo, an academic with several political appointments over the past three decades, who served as Colombia’s Minister of Finance during the first year of Petro’s term.

Petrobras in Transition

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s campaign for his third term as Brazil’s president was defined by the idea of reconstruction. This encompassed both a political recovery from the antidemocratic reign of Jair Bolsonaro as well as the promise of reindustrialization and a green transition for Brazil’s economy. Key to such efforts, the role of state-owned petroleum giant Petrobras has been a focus of debate in the Brazilian development story. 

Milei and the World

It didn’t take long for the new President of Argentina, Javier Milei, to don gloves in the international arena and showcase his libertarian approach to foreign policy. Some political gestures have already stirred conflicts with Brazil and China—the country’s two most significant trading partners. In December, Milei invited former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro to his presidential inauguration, and last month, his administration initiated relations with Taiwan by arranging meetings with representatives from the Taiwanese trade office and Taiwan's representative in Buenos Aires.

Petro at COP28

Upon entering office in July 2022, Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro voiced a strong stance against fossil fuels, marking a contrast with other left-wing leaders in Latin America who rose to power through resources gained from extractive economies. Petro’s emphatic critique of oil and gas was apparent at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) held this year in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, the world’s sixth-largest oil exporting country. 

Governing the Climate

An interview with Navroz Dubash on COP28, the history of international climate diplomacy, and the developmentalist turn in climate politics

Milei’s Argentina

On December 10, the fortieth anniversary of Argentina’s redemocratization, Javier Milei was sworn in as the country’s new president. Milei—a far-right economist who calls himself an “anarcho-capitalist,” denies the existence of the military dictatorship, and claims to be a fan of both Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro—won the second round of the Argentine elections with almost 56 percent of the vote. Promising to dollarize the economy and cut public spending, he defeated Sergio Massa, current minister of finance and a representative of the Peronist party, Unión por La Patria.