Due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, food prices are higher in real terms today than at any point since the early 1970s. Yet it is the underlying political economy of the global food system that has created the conditions where hundreds of millions of people don’t get enough to eat.
By studying American courts from a comparative perspective, an important truth emerges: our judiciary is not simply compositionally conservative, at particular moments in history, but structurally conservative, as an institution.
The existing system of international economic law is under great strain. This post offers a reading of the problem and proposes alternative directions for the future. In brief, the system has evolved from what John Ruggie called “embedded liberalism” to what David M. Trubek and I describe as “embedded neoliberalism.” The past couple of decades have witnessed something of a truce between those who designed the system and those who now are actors within it. But today this truce is largely crumbling.
Companies and their investors extract large amounts of wealth from people’s data. Yet because tax law treats users of digital platforms as consumers, rather than producers, neither these users nor their home countries receive any compensation in return. How might international tax law be used to mitigate the harms of this exploitative arrangement?
To conclude our symposium on Root & Branch Reconstruction in Antitrust, this post offers a glimpse into an alternative universe where horizontal coordination among small players is embraced as a social good.
In developing countries, inflation is often driven by the failure of the food supply chain. While economists are well-aware of this, they do not adequately value policies other than monetary policy for responding to inflation. It is time to discard this short-sighted approach.
How inflation affects a country depends on how its currency is situated within the global monetary order. Peripheral states with subordinate currencies are both vulnerable to, and constrained by, monetary policy decisions at the core, an arrangement that penalizes the global periphery in ways that parallel historical patterns of uneven exchange.
In the wake of a historic victory by India’s farmers, Veena Dubal and Navyug Gill reconvene to discuss the events that have unfolded over the past year, how to understand Modi’s capitulation, and what lessons other social movements can draw from this victory.
Industrial agriculture is a major contributor to climate change, as well as a source of exploitation across the globe. Any just transition from fossil fuels must radically rethink current systems of food production and work towards reaching food sovereignty.
In theory, REDD+ is designed to be a win-win: it brings capital to economically struggling communities while ensuring that forests worldwide are protected for the good of the global community. Yet as theory of the Stranger King makes apparent, some colonialist approaches are softer and gentler than others — colonizing as invitees, rather than by force.
To ensure support for its Global War on Terror, the United States has exploited the Pakistani government’s reliance on foreign credit to guarantee cooperation in US counterinsurgency operations. In leveraging its role as a lender to provide Pakistan with short-term financial relief, the United States has deepened Pakistan’s economic dependency, undermined the nation’s chance for a more equal domestic political and economic arrangement, and consolidated the power of its domestic military elite.
LPE challenges the purportedly self-explanatory relationship between law and “the economy.” This framework is especially productive when turned transnationally.
Supply chains, properly understood, are political entities seeking to govern us. Once we appreciate this fact, it becomes easier to see how we might hold this form of corporate power to account.
The second part of our Q&A with Odette Lienau, discussing global debt relief, corruption and waste, and the possibility of a sovereign debt restructuring mechanism.
The LPE Blog asks Odette Lienau some questions about global debt in the wake of COVID-19, recent international initiatives to provide debt relief, and the rise of China as a major lender to sovereign states.
