Strategies for Dealing with Global Crisis: Distributional and Political Impacts
Background:
Different methods of adjusting to an international financial crisis have enormously different consequences in terms of the poverty and conflict potential which they create. This has been vividly illustrated by the differing experiences of countries affected by the cluster of global crises which initiated in East India in the late 1990s, but has not yet fed through into the policies of countries affected by crisis and international agencies seeking to support them. In this project we compare the impact of the recovery strategies adopted by a range of adjusting countries on poverty and political variables, in particular the degree of civil conflict. The hypothesis to be examined is that what matters for both poverty and civil conflict is the interaction between initial conditions, political institutions, economic policy instruments, and the international financial architecture, rather than any one of these in isolation. The implication to be explored is that the risk-protection methodology adopted in face of crisis needs to be different in the case of 'capital-account crises' such as those we are currently experiencing than in the case of conventional crises triggered by inflationary levels of spending. The project is a collaboration between economists and political scientists, and we use three main methodologies: regression analysis, CGE models, and country case-studies informed by a range of political science/hybrid approaches including stakeholder analysis, game theory and qualitative interviews with participants. The regression analysis is applied to all countries affected by crisis, with a control group, but the CGE and case-study methods are used only in a sample of six countries, differentiated by the gravity of the social impact.
Working Papers :
WEF0020
The 'Political Poverty Trap': Bolivia 1999-2007
Paul Mosley
WEF0019
Economic Crisis and Political Participation in a Transitional Economy: Evidence from Russia
Altay Mussurov, Paul Mosley
WEF0018
The Return of the State in Argentina
Jean Grugel, Maria Pia Riggirozzi
Journals, seminar papers and other publications:
J. Grugel and M.P. Riggirozzi, ‘The return of the state in Argentina’, forthcoming, International Affairs, 2007.
P. Mosley, ‘The “political poverty trap”: Bolivia 1999-2007’, unpublished University of Sheffield working paper
P.Mosley and A. Mussurov, ‘The social efficiency wage’, University of Sheffield working paper, to be presented to International Studies Association conference, Chicago, 28/2/07.
A. Mussurov, ‘Economic crisis and political participation in a transitional economy: evidence from Russia’, University of Sheffield working paper, to be presented to International Studies Association conference, Chicago, 28/2/07.
B. Thirkell-White, ‘The political economy of reactions to crisis in Indonesia and Malaysia’, unpublished paper, to be presented to International Studies Association conference, Chicago, 28/2/07Researchers:
Professor Paul Mosley
Dr T B Thirkell-White
Professor J Grugel
Professor A Gamble
University of Sheffield
Contact:
Professor Paul Mosley
Department of Economics
University of Sheffield
9 Mappin Street
Sheffield
S1 4DT
Tel: 0114 222 3397
email: p.mosley@sheffield.ac.uk
Duration of Research:
October 2004 - September 2006