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This graphic contrasts the price range of electricity costs stemming from renewable sources with that of fossil fuels for the years 2010 and 2016. For more on the interplay between technological innovation and the geopolitics of energy, see Severin Fischer’s chapter for Strategic Trends 2018 here. For more CSS charts, maps and graphics on economics, click here.
This article was published by VoxEU.org on 1 March 2017.
The Scramble for Africa has contributed to economic, social, and political underdevelopment by spurring ethnic-tainted civil conflict and discrimination and by shaping the ethnic composition, size, shape and landlocked status of the newly independent states. This column, taken from a recent VoxEU eBook, summarises the key findings of studies that use high-resolution geo-referenced data and econometric methods to estimate the long-lasting impact of the various aspects of the Scramble for Africa.
Editor’s note: This column first appeared as a chapter in the Vox eBook, The Long Economic and Political Shadow of History, Volume 2, available to download here.
When economists debate the long-lasting legacies of colonisation, the discussion usually revolves around the establishment of those ‘extractive’ colonial institutions that outlasted independence (e.g. Acemoglu et al. 2001), the underinvestment in infrastructure (e.g. Jedwab and Moradi 2016), the identity of colonial power (e.g. La Porta et al. 2008) and the coloniser’s influence on early human capital (Easterly and Levine 2016).1 Following the influential work of Nunn (2008), recent works have explored the deleterious long-lasting consequences of Africa’s slave trades (see Nunn 2016, for an overview). Yet, between the slave-trade period (1400-1800) and the arrival of the colonisers at the end of the 19th century, the Scramble for Africa stands out as a watershed event in the continent’s history. The partitioning of Africa by Europeans starts, roughly, in the 1860s and is completed by the early 1900s. The colonial powers signed hundreds of treaties, which involved drawing on maps the boundaries of colonies, protectorates, and ‘free-trade’ areas of a largely unexplored and mysterious continent (see Wesseling 1996 for a thorough discussion).2 In this context it is perhaps not surprising that many influential scholars of the African historiography (e.g. Asiwaju 1985, Wesseling 1996, Herbst 2000) and a plethora of case studies suggest that the most consequential aspect of European involvement in Africa was not colonisation per se, but the erratic border designation that took place in European capitals in the late 19th century.
This article was originally published by the Harvard International Review on 15 April 2016.
On the heels of the annual International Monetary Fund/World Bank conference and an Ebola-ridden year, the world is reminded of the significance of global health policy, not only for disease prevention but also for international relationships and the future direction of health care. Recent international health initiatives have pragmatically stressed the importance of defense and economics. This slant, particularly in the relatively new Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA), raises questions about future approaches to global health. The GHSA has acquired significant funding for outbreak response, but its treatment of global health as an international security issue rather than a humanitarian one warrants a cautious assessment.
At the recent G20 meeting in Sydney, representatives committed to increase growth by more than $2 trillion over the next five years through the adoption of ambitious and comprehensive structural reforms. However, research just released by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) suggests that while focussing on productivity and employment is vital for economic prosperity, so too are concerted efforts to increase peace.
The Global Costs of Violence Containment report provides one of the first estimates of the economic cost of violence and the fear of violence to the world economy. It finds that violence, and attempts to prevent and protect against it, cost the global economy upwards of US $9.46 trillion per annum or 11 per cent of Gross World Product.
PARIS – France is gravely ill. So ill, in fact, that Standard & Poor’s recently cut its sovereign-credit rating – the country’s second downgrade in less than two years. The decision was accompanied by warnings that the budgetary and structural reforms that President François Hollande’s administration has implemented over the last year have been inadequate to improve France’s medium-term growth prospects. Now, the pressure is on for structural reforms covering everything from labor markets to taxation.
While the S&P downgrade was unexpected, it was not exactly shocking. The recent downturn in France’s industrial output has created large trade deficits, and is undermining the competitiveness of small and medium-size enterprises. Unemployment stands at about 11%, with a record-high 3.3 million workers registered as jobless in October.