Crash Course Economics – Détails, épisodes et analyse

During the pandemic and its aftermath, the world witnessed a revival of new narratives and strategies related to industrial policy in a geopolitically competitive environment. We invite Angela Wigger to reflect on the history of competition policy in the EU and provide a deeper understanding of the latest “come-back” of EU industrial policy. She will explain how EU competition policy is enshrined in the shift towards a neoliberal order since the 1980s. Angela will provide a perspective on contemporary competition policy since the financial crisis, reflecting on the role of political institutions like the European Commission.

We will further ask Angela:

• How should we understand the concept of “competition” in the context of the EU?
• Whose interests do the EU’s competition policy serve, both in terms of industries and geopolitical actors?
• Are alternative types of competition policy feasible, and how should we shape them?

Angela Wigger is an associate professor on Global Political Economy at the Radboud University in Nijmegen (the Netherlands). She researches capitalist crises from a historical materialist perspective. Focal points are the geopolitics of EU industrial and antitrust policy, industrial re-shoring attempts, the “competitiveness” fetish, internal devaluation and debt-led accumulation in the age of rentier capitalism.

She wrote “The Politics of European Competition Regulation. A Critical Political Economy Perspective” (with H. Buch-Hansen, 2011, Routledge/RIPE) and published in journals like New Political Economy, New Political Science, RIPE, JCMS, Economy & Society, Globalizations, Geoforum, Capital & Class, Ephemera, and many more.

You can get in touch with Angela via this address: angela.wigger@ru.nl Follow Angela here on X: @AngelaWigger

About Crash Course Economics

Crash Course is a platform designed to open up debate on how we can move out of the current crisis and make the necessary steps towards achieving social, economic, ecological and regenerative justice.

Crash Course is inviting global experts to break down complex issues in lay terms and make them accessible to all so that we can understand how to shape our economic system for a just recovery and future.

Website: https://crashcourseeconomics.org/

Newsletter: https://dashboard.mailerlite.com/forms/366770/110811319736730927/share

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu3cbKwed48Bu7dkQDVjRQA

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CrashEconomics

Music credit: "Capital G" by Nine Inch Nails, "Tribal Remix" by Imnotlouis (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 US) 

In this episode we do a deep dive into the realm of Big Pharma. As with Big Tech, this industry epitomises large-scale rentier income extraction by corporations. Despite the industry's assertions that the costs associated with drug research and development justify high prices, the stark reality of profit margins unveils a different narrative.

We will further ask Nick:

• How did pharmaceutical companies transform over the past decades, and what implications does this have for the accessibility of medicines?
• What characterizes the business model of Big Pharma, and why should this be a matter of concern for us all?
• What is a pathway toward change in the pharmaceutical landscape? Which stakeholders should play a role, and what specific changes are imperative for progress?

For over 20 years Nick Dearden has been a campaigner against corporate globalisation and for global economic justice. He is also the director of the British NGO Global Justice Now. Last October, he published his latest book on the pharmaceutical industry: Pharmanomics. How Big Pharma Destroys Global Health.

About Crash Course Economics

Crash Course is a platform designed to open up debate on how we can move out of the current crisis and make the necessary steps towards achieving social, economic, ecological and regenerative justice.

Crash Course is inviting global experts to break down complex issues in lay terms and make them accessible to all so that we can understand how to shape our economic system for a just recovery and future.

Website: https://crashcourseeconomics.org/

Newsletter: https://dashboard.mailerlite.com/forms/366770/110811319736730927/share

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu3cbKwed48Bu7dkQDVjRQA

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CrashEconomics

Music credit: "Capital G" by Nine Inch Nails, "Tribal Remix" by Imnotlouis (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 US) 

Since March 2020, 80 IMF lending arrangements have been approved. These arrangements arise in an era of historical global debt levels. The world is witnessing an insufficient and inadequate multilateral response to the Covid-19 pandemic, which will lock a large number of countries in a decade-long crisis of debt and austerity.

• What are the effects of growing debt piles for the public heath care sector in the Global South?
• How can we prevent that IMF austerity measures will arrest development efforts in the next decade?
• Which institutional changes are needed at the level of International Financial Institutions to avoid policy responses that create new debt traps?

Daniel Munevar is a Senior Policy and Advocacy Officer supporting Eurodad's work on debt justice. He is interested in the analysis of the links between debt sustainability and the 2030 Agenda. Before joining Eurodad in 2020, Daniel worked for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and advising the Ministries of Finance of Colombia and Greece on debt related issues. Daniel has a Masters degree in Public Policy from the University of Texas in Austin. He speaks Spanish, English and a bit of Swedish.

María José Romero is Policy and Advocacy Manager for Eurodad's work on publicly-backed private finance and Development Finance Institutions (DFIs). Her role involves research and analysis, advocacy and monitoring policy developments. She joined Eurodad in 2012 and before that she worked at the secretariat of the Latin American Network on Debt, Development and Rights (LATINDADD), based in Peru, on tax justice and development finance. While in Uruguay, her home country, she was for five years Coordinator of the IFIs Latin American Monitor project at the Third World Institute (ITeM), where her main roles were networking and policy monitoring at a regional and global level on IFI-related issues and development finance. She is currently a PhD candidate in Development Economics at SOAS, University of London, with a research project on the global promotion of public-private partnerships in health and education. 

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About Crash Course Economics
Crash Course is a platform designed to open up debate on how we can move out of the current crisis and make the necessary steps towards achieving social, economic, ecological and regenerative justice.

Crash Course is inviting global experts to break down complex issues in lay terms and make them accessible to all so that we can understand how to shape our economic system for a just recovery and future.

Website: https://crashcourseeconomics.org/
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/g54ZMD
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu3cbKwed48Bu7dkQDVjRQA
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CrashEconomics

Dominic Brown will discuss the strategies being proposed by popular movements in the Global South to confront their debt. He will reflect on current movements and their demands from a historical perspective with a focus on South Africa – his home country. Brown will demonstrate how debt issuance in the Global South is often used to implement neoliberal and austerity policies, and discuss how this tendency can be stopped from the bottom up.

Is there a perspective for collective opposition from the side of ‘Southern’ countries towards the new debt crisis that is looming now that the pandemic is locking down economies? To what extent do the current campaigns build on the former ones? What lessons can be drawn from the Jubilee 2000 Debt Cancellation Campaign? How does the issue of debt connect to other issues, such as inequality and poverty? And how does debt unite different social struggles? Which theory of change underlies all these movements that fight for global justice and redistribute change?

Dominic Brown is Economic Justice Programme Manager at the Alternative Information & Development Centre (AIDC). AIDC was formed in 1996 in response to the democratic transition in South Africa and the new opportunities and challenges it brought those seeking greater social justice within the democracy.

Over the years AIDC has played a leading role in various civil society responses to ongoing inequality including facilitating the launch and building of the South African Jubilee 2000 debt cancellation campaign, and the Right to Work Campaign.

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About Crash Course Economics
Crash Course is a platform designed to open up debate on how we can move out of the current crisis and make the necessary steps towards achieving social, economic, ecological and regenerative justice.

Crash Course is inviting global experts to break down complex issues in lay terms and make them accessible to all so that we can understand how to shape our economic system for a just recovery and future.

Website: https://crashcourseeconomics.org/
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/g54ZMD
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu3cbKwed48Bu7dkQDVjRQA
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CrashEconomics

Ewa Karwowski will guide us through ways to quantify and recognize financialization in the global south. Also we will discuss why this particular theoretical frame may be useful to look at contemporary issues that developing countries face and how it is related to structural issues.

Ewa Karwowski (University of Hertfordshire) is focused on the operations of large corporations, particularly how firms' behaviour has changed in a financialised setting. Her expertise centers on finance, financialisation and development.

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About Crash Course Economics
Crash Course is a platform designed to open up debate on how we can move out of the current crisis and make the necessary steps towards achieving social, economic, ecological and regenerative justice.

Crash Course is inviting global experts to break down complex issues in lay terms and make them accessible to all so that we can understand how to shape our economic system for a just recovery and future.

Website: https://crashcourseeconomics.org/
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/g54ZMD
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu3cbKwed48Bu7dkQDVjRQA
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CrashEconomics

In this episode of Crash Course Sara Murawski en Rodrigo Fernandez discuss Dependency Theory with Ingrid Kvangraven. How does dependency theory help us to formulate different answers to the problems developing countries face today. We try to understand what it is and why it has been lost in debates on the global south, after being dominant in the 70s and 80s.

Since the IMF and the world bank imposed their neo-liberal adjustment programs, development has become synonymous with attracting foreign direct investments (FDI) from multinational corporations. In this dominant worldview, developing countries need to focus on implementing policies (‘reforms’) that attract FDI at all cost. Success can be achieved by following the prescribed market-oriented changes that convert economic assets and activities in a potential tradable financial asset.

Dependency theory on the other hand departs from the opposite perspective. In this approach ‘underdevelopment’ is the result of a specific type of integration in a capitalist global economy that is uneven.

“Core countries benefit from the global system at the expense of periphery countries, which face structural barriers that make it difficult, if not impossible, for them to develop in the same way that the core countries did.”

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About Crash Course Economics
Crash Course is a platform designed to open up debate on how we can move out of the current crisis and make the necessary steps towards achieving social, economic, ecological and regenerative justice.

Crash Course is inviting global experts to break down complex issues in lay terms and make them accessible to all so that we can understand how to shape our economic system for a just recovery and future.

Website: https://crashcourseeconomics.org/
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/g54ZMD
Podcast: http://podcast.crashcourseeconomics.org/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CrashEconomics
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Crash-Course-113416687059951

Sara Murawski en Rodrigo Fernandez speak with Andew Fischer about Debt, Dependence and Development in Historical Perspective.

This lecture presents several past and present cases to demonstrate this dynamic and its continuing importance for facing the challenges of contemporary economic development, including the imperative of global redistribution.

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About Crash Course Economics
Crash Course is a platform designed to open up debate on how we can move out of the current crisis and make the necessary steps towards achieving social, economic, ecological and regenerative justice.

Crash Course is inviting global experts to break down complex issues in lay terms and make them accessible to all so that we can understand how to shape our economic system for a just recovery and future.

Website: https://crashcourseeconomics.org/

Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/g54ZMD

Podcast: http://podcast.crashcourseeconomics.org/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CrashEconomics

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Crash-Course-113416687059951

Daniela Gabor speaks with Sara Murawski and Rodrigo Fernandez about monetary policy and austerity in the fourth and final webinar of Crash Course series on monetary policy, central banks and ideology.

How can monetary policy be used to prevent economies from suffering another decade of austerity? What are the concrete policy options we have?

What are different linkages between monetary and fiscal policy? What can we learn from history?

Monetary policy is portrayed as being purely a technical matter: is there a role for ideology in constructing a monetary framework?

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About Crash Course Economics

Crash Course is a platform designed to open up debate on how we can move out of the current crisis and make the necessary steps towards achieving social, economic, ecological and regenerative justice.

Crash Course is inviting global experts to break down complex issues in lay terms and make them accessible to all so that we can understand how to shape our economic system for a just recovery and future.

Website: https://crashcourseeconomics.org/

Newsletter: https://crashcourseeconomics.us10.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8367ecf9343da28ffa5d80d46&id=e197615bf5

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu3cbKwed48Bu7dkQDVjRQA

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CrashEconomics

Pablo Bortz speaks with Sara Murawski and Rodrigo Fernandez about monetary policy and the effects on the Global South in the third webinar of Crash Course series on monetary policy, central banks and ideology.

In this interview we will ask what effect the previous round of QE had on the global south? How did it inflate debt levels? What can we expect from the current crisis-led monetary policy in developed economies?

• What are the policy areas and instruments we need to look at to mitigate these effects? Is there a role for central banks and monetary policy in the global south?
• How should we move from inward-looking central banks in the global north to a mandate that includes global monetary policy?

Pablo G. Bortz obtained his Ph.D. at the Delft University of Technology. He is the author of Inequality, Growth, and ‘Hot’ Money (Edward Elgar). He is currently Professor of Macroeconomics at the University of San Martín, Argentina and he also teaches at the University of General Sarmiento. He worked at the Argentine Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Central Bank, and was Economic Affairs Associate at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

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About Crash Course Economics

Crash Course is a platform designed to open up debate on how we can move out of the current crisis and make the necessary steps towards achieving social, economic, ecological and regenerative justice.

Crash Course is inviting global experts to break down complex issues in lay terms and make them accessible to all so that we can understand how to shape our economic system for a just recovery and future.

Website: https://crashcourseeconomics.org/

Newsletter: https://crashcourseeconomics.us10.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8367ecf9343da28ffa5d80d46&id=e197615bf5

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu3cbKwed48Bu7dkQDVjRQA

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CrashEconomics

Benjamin Braun speaks with Sara Murawski and Rodrigo Fernandez about central banking, finance and power, in the second webinar of Crash Course series on monetary policy, central banks and ideology.

What does the post-2007 web of interdependencies between monetary authorities, systemic banks and other leading financial actors look like? Why is this important to understand the prospects for change?

Responses by central banks, particularly the Fed, after the Covid-19 crash were decisive and strong – and prevented a meltdown. What are the likely distributional effects of this rescue operation in the longer term? Where are the politics in all of this?

How does ideology play a role in the ability to imagine a different monetary system?

Benjamin Braun (PhD) is a Senior Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne and a member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (2019–2020). His research focuses on the comparative and international political economy of financial and monetary systems and has been published, among others, in Economy and Society, Review of International Political Economy, and Socio-Economic Review. He tweets at @BJMbraun.

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About Crash Course Economics

Crash Course is a platform designed to open up debate on how we can move out of the current crisis and make the necessary steps towards achieving social, economic, ecological and regenerative justice.

Crash Course is inviting global experts to break down complex issues in lay terms and make them accessible to all so that we can understand how to shape our economic system for a just recovery and future.

Website: https://crashcourseeconomics.org/

Newsletter: https://crashcourseeconomics.us10.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8367ecf9343da28ffa5d80d46&id=e197615bf5

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu3cbKwed48Bu7dkQDVjRQA

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CrashEconomics