Search Results

This chapter takes a look at developing countries and confirms whether free trade is beneficial in promoting economic development. It analyzes whether countries such as Japan, Korea, and China grow rich by rejecting free trade and instead pursuing closed markets and industrial policies. The chapter addresses the issue of fairtrade and how rich-country agricultural subsidies and import tariffs harm developing countries. It also assesses how developing countries harm themselves with their own anti-trade policies. It discusses whether protectionist trade policies contributed to the East Asian growth miracle, whether labor standards should be used to address worker exploitation in sweatshops, and whether “fair trade” offers a satisfactory route to development.

The global economic governance architecture has in recent decades undergone a deep metamorphosis with respect to the institutional arrangements responsible for the economic needs of a growing, developing world. The international financial institutions formed during the Bretton Woods era (mid-1940s) such as World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organization have long served as multilateral institutions in charge of addressing critical issues in the international financial system. However, the rise of larger developing economies (for example India, China, Brazil) has allowed these countries to enjoy greater roles in the global economic and political landscape. This chapter provides a comprehensive account of some ‘old’ and ‘new’ institutional arrangements that shape the governing dynamics of a new global economic order; it further argues for a (re)defined institutional approach to developmental growth that is useful in designing financial lending policies for developing economies to accomplish a more robust, inclusive growth process.

This chapter specifically features the challenges for people living with dementia and their carers in rural areas of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). It highlights the vital role of the community and primary health care workers and the need to raise awareness and skill development. The chapter considers how supra-national organisations and responses might specifically affect dementia care and development of policy in LMICs, including the role of the World Health Organisation which has produced planning and strategy guidance plus a range of useful tools for under-resourced settings. Other sectors significant to dementia care improvement, are civil society and the research community – of which key organisations are discussed. In LMIC settings dementia can be a poorly understood and culturally contested issue, and the care of people in resource-depleted rural areas of developing countries still requires significant work and advocacy. While WHO strategies can influence the worldwide burden of dementia substantially in the next 10 years, the chapter highlights that particular attention should be given to development and studies of rural areas of LMICs.

The chapter presents a new framework for categorizing economic growth models and applies it to twenty-eight OECD countries from 1995 to 2016. The framework draws on three fundamental ways in which economies can benefit from additional demand: the private sector (households and companies) can spend more than its income, the public sector can spend more than its revenues, or the economy sells more abroad than it imports. The empirical section uses fuzzy-set ideal type analysis to identify the combinations in which advanced economies used these three ways of boosting demand in three subperiods between 1995 and 2016. The results show that most economies use at least one of the three sources of extra demand to tackle the era of low growth. At the same time, there are clear differences in growth models between groups of countries. These are in line with clusters that the literature commonly identifies due to their institutional similarities. The growth models in this chapter are therefore outcomes of differences in growth regimes.

This chapter focuses on the most frequent argument in favour of limiting trade, which implies that jobs will be saved in industries that compete against imports. It explains how reducing trade saves jobs only by destroying jobs elsewhere in the economy. It analyzes the opponents of free trade that have argued that imports have replaced good, high-wage jobs with bad, low-wage jobs. The chapter contradicts critiques of free trade by arguing that jobs in industries that compete against imports have been largely low-skill, low-wage jobs. It also examines the extent to which trade with developing countries has contributed to the rise in inequality within the United States.

The problem of adaptation to climate change is complex and multifaceted. At its core, however, are two simple questions: what actions should be taken to prevent or reduce harm that will be caused by anthropogenic climate change, and who should pay for those actions that have costs? In this chapter I focus on the latter question, concerning liability for the funding of adaptation. I argue that obligations for funding adaptation are based on ethical principles governing just relationships between individuals in a “life-support commons,” which are essentially the same as the norms of justice governing other forms of harm. Simply, it is wrong to harm others by abusing a commons, and if one does, one owes compensation. In this view, ethics and justice address the rights and responsibilities of individuals; obligations between countries are derivative, based on the aggregate characteristics of their populations, and pragmatic, given the existing state system. Furthermore, liability can be disaggregated in other ways; as I argue, it is equally important that the distribution of liability can be differentiated between classes within nations. A simple quantitative exercise applying these principles of justice to the adaptation problem suggests net liability from the North to the South but also net liability for adaptation from wealthy classes in the South. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) devotes a small but significant amount of attention to adaptation to climate change. Only in the last few years, however, with the creation of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) Fund and the Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF) under the UNFCCC, the creation of an Adaptation Fund under the Kyoto Protocol, as well as the support for the development of National Adaptation Plans of Action (NAPAs), have delegates and advocates begun to focus seriously on the problems of adaptation and adaptation funding. Given the disproportionate share of current and past emissions from the industrialized countries of the North and the evidence that the developing countries of the South are more vulnerable to climate damages, almost any plausible interpretation of “common but differentiated responsibilities” implies that the North should shoulder the major part of the costs of adaptation.

This chapter summarises key themes across rural and remote dementia care internationally. It highlights consistent issues as well as innovations and points to note, across the three areas of policy, practice and research. The chapter concludes there is still significant work to be done in finding and translating new models for providing high quality rural dementia care and thus good experiences for people with dementia, carers and communities. The chapter throws down the gauntlet inviting more research and study in this area.

In this book we reviewed the course of energy consumption over the ages and projected the level of consumption through 2050. To facilitate the discussion, we introduced a new unit of energy—a cubic mile of oil equivalent, or CMO—that enables description of global energy flows in terms and numbers that are immediately comprehensible. We surveyed the various sources of energy in current use, established the quantities used, and projected our future needs on a global basis. While for much of our history the availability of energy has played an important role in determining the potentials and abilities of humans, in recent times energy has become much more important because resources are coming under strain. Greater energy use is beginning to influence our environment more strongly than ever before. A characteristic of global energy supply systems is the slowness with which they can shift. The slowness is a consequence of several factors. The size of the incumbent technologies and the advantage that they have in terms of learned improvements, economies of scale, and delivery infrastructure, play an important role in the rate at which new technologies are adopted. New technologies are often more expensive simply because cost reductions occur with experience, and it takes time for something new to penetrate the markets and build an experience base. Government subsidies and research and development (R&D) investments can help break this vicious cycle, but in the end the technologies have to deliver value to the customers before they can be adopted widely. There are also limited numbers of manufacturing and delivery systems in place for new technologies. Because basic energy supplies adapt slowly to change—as do most technologies—while energy demand grows more rapidly with population and income, we must act now to bring new supplies and new patterns of energy demand into play to meet the projected global energy demands of mid 21st century. Time is of the essence! Abundant energy has become an essential part of modern life, and we cannot go without it if we wish to retain even a small fraction of our current civilization.