Wednesday, 24 April 2013

Shale gas could be lower carbon than imported fuel, say climate advisers

The Committee on Climate Change warned that relying on gas would scupper the UK's chances of meeting emissions targets
 
Blackpool Shale Gas Drilling
Shale gas drilling in the UK would be a lower carbon form of fuel than imported gas if it is extracted in a well-regulated way, the government’s chief climate change advisers have said. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Shale gas extracted in the UK would be lower carbon than imported gas from countries such as Qatar, and help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions if well regulated, the government's chief climate change advisers have said.
But in a report published on Wednesday, the Committee on Climate Change also sounded caution on the prospects for widespread development of shale in the UK. It said that relying heavily on gas would scupper the UK's chances of meeting emissions targets in the longer term, and prevent needed investments in low-carbon technologies.
David Kennedy, chief executive of the committee, the statutory body set up to advise ministers on meeting the UK's climate targets, warned that the prospect of a "dash for gas" for the UK's future energy supply was destroying the confidence of investors in renewable energy. "It is economically sensible to invest in low-carbon technologies. The government has committed to low-carbon support mechanisms to 2020, but they have said after that we might have a dash for gas – and this is destroying the confidence of investors, particularly in the renewables sector."
Echoing the views of big energy companies including BP, he said shale gas was unlikely to be a "game-changer" in the UK, in contrast to the US where large deposits and the ease of exploiting them has led to a gas boom. "Shale gas cannot be regarded as a low-carbon fuel source [but] it can have lower emissions than imported liquefied natural gas," the committee's report found. "UK shale gas may therefore play a useful role substituting for imported gas in meeting demand for heat, and for gas-fired generation to balance the system or in conjunction with carbon capture and storage."
But for this to be the case, measures must be taken to control methane leaks while extracting shale gas – methods known as "green completion" in the US – and wider environmental issues, such as the potential for pollution and impact on water supplies and local amenities, must also be addressed.
The committee's findings will re-ignite the bitter row over gas and renewable energy. Some sections of the government are keen to pursue a dash for gas, believing it will help to "keep the lights on" and avoid subsidies to renewables. But last year, Lord Deben – chair of the committee and former Tory environment minister – wrote to David Cameron to warn such a move would put the UK's emissions targets out of reach from the 2020s. Renewable energy companies are also known to be jittery over anti-wind comments from sections of the Tory party, and concerned that the government is opposing an EU-wide renewable energy target for 2030, which other big nations such as Germany and France support.
Green campaigners also focused on research from the CCC that found the UK's carbon footprint was increasing, instead of shrinking, if imports were taken into account. The UK is a major importer of manufactured goods, especially from China, and the CCC examined the impact on the climate of emissions from the production of these goods. It found that the best way to ensure emissions fall globally, instead of just in the UK, was to put in place an international agreement on emissions, such as the United Nations is hoping to forge in 2015.
Joss Garman, political director at Greenpeace UK, said: "Of course to prevent dangerous climate change the transition to a cleaner economy based on new industries and technologies can't only happen in the UK. That's why it's essential we and the rest of Europe work to deepen partnerships with other countries – both in the developed and developing world – who are also committed to cutting carbon emissions."
The CCC report also found that energy-intensive companies in the UK had been largely unharmed by measures aimed at bringing down greenhouse gas emissions – because of the generous terms of the regulations, their energy and operating costs had not been rendered uncompetitive, despite complaints from sections of heavy industry. The committee estimated that these measures could increase energy bills by around £5 for the typical household in 2020.
on No comments:
Labels: , , , , ,

The Great Tax Robbery: How Britain became a tax haven for fat cats and big business, by Richard Brooks

 

 Oxfam

Posted by Chris Johnes Director, UK Poverty Programme                
6th Mar 2013

The deep levels of economic pain and austerity that are currently felt by so many people across the UK started in 2007 with the first banking crash. Many have argued that the roots of disaster were laid well before then in a mix of lax financial regulation and unsustainable levels of public spending. However, far too little emphasis has been put on the other reason why public spending became so unsustainable; Britain's legacy of hosting tax abusing corporations, and our failure to reap the tax benefits of their profits.
The Great Tax Robbery, by former HMRC accountant and now Private Eye journalist Richard Brooks, lays bare a state of affairs that is both highly shocking and a gripping read. For an organisation like Oxfam - now campaigning for global tax reform as part of the IF Campaign - the situation he describes has a real and disturbing impact on poverty in the UK, as well as overseas.
The Great Tax Robbery jacketThe story is certainly one to inspire anger. Large parts of the UK's tax system have been crafted by powerful corporations as the Government has increasingly drawn expert advice on tax from the ranks of the lawyers and accountants who advise the same big companies, despite the extraordinary conflict of interest this represents with quite predictable results.
The level of pandering to special interest groups has reached quite extraordinary levels, even to the point of stunning the lobbyists themselves. The recent introduction of tax exemptions for companies' branches in tax havens is believed by some experts, quoted in the book, to "lead to most large multinationals paying reduced or no UK corporate tax".
According to one accountant that Brooks quotes, this was an action that; "nobody in the private sector could believe, it was just so stupid."
Even the lobbyists for elite interests believe Government has conceded too much.
Such a revealing quote speaks volumes. According to Brooks, we have now reached a state where even the lobbyists for elite interests believe Government has conceded too much. One starts to wonder whether we have entered the realms of Never-Never Land.

Terrorists, the Mafia - and corporate tax avoiders

The book also tells the story of how a number of small states, mostly tiny islands and many under direct British control, have been allowed to run rogue tax systems. These systems shelter corporate tax avoiders, wealthy tax evaders and even more unsavoury fellow travellers - from the Mafia to terrorist groups - from any meaningful levels of tax or transparency - and in doing so vastly reduce the tax available to Governments around the world.
And what are the consequences of this? On us; the taxpayers, and the millions of people on low incomes struggling to make ends meet in a UK that is squeezing many into poverty? Every pound dodged in tax, is a pound lost for all of us.
Tax receipts, which pay for public services, social security and, of course, those essential bank bail outs, have been slowly stagnating for years, especially those paid by the very wealthy.
Between 1999 and 2011, as corporate profits rose by a staggering 58%, corporation tax paid rose by only around 5%. Of this tax, a significantly greater percentage was paid by small companies who went from paying 15% of corporation tax to around 40% in the same period.
Sadly, this has not been a story of small business success and dynamic entrepreneurship. It was the result of changing tax regimes for larger companies who could afford to operate off shore. All this is so gruelling to hear that it is hard to decide which part of the book is worse; the part detailing how large corporations have been able to negotiate their own tax bills with the Taxman, or the part showing how they have increasingly been able to actually write the laws around tax themselves.

Undermining the principle of equality before the law

These processes have served to undermine one of the fundamental principles of democracy: equality before the law. It sends the message that a different law applies if you are rich enough to employ the right accountants or, even better, if you are deemed important enough to be asked to help write the laws yourself. As Brooks says; "when a tax system favours an elite over the majority, it is fatally undermined."
"When a tax system favours an elite over the majority, it is fatally undermined."
Richard Brooks
Brooks' story of specialist interests, secret deal-making and the abuse of power is not new, although his excellent writing both brings the complexity of tax to life and gives it historical context. Much of the story has been uncovered by the work of the Public Accounts Committee and the Tax Justice Network, but the idea that politicians or businesses are recognising their errors is sadly misplaced.
Although the Government is making some small welcome steps on global tax transparency, its attempts to tackle avoidance at home are weak, with its new General Anti Abuse Rule being supervised by a corporate tax lawyer. Similarly, the Labour Party's policy review on tax is drawing advisers from the ranks of the "Big Four" accountancy firms, who continue to promote large scale tax avoidance (and indeed urge tax havens to refuse to cooperate with the UK on transparency initiatives).
This is the result of a system where laws seem too complex for government to manage, and the interests of large corporations trump our own. It may well spell the end of properly funded public services and social security for UK citizens, if the tax pot continues to be undermined so dramatically. Brooks vividly illustrates how the tax evaded by individual companies could fund large parts of the NHS, while other estimates of the missing "tax gap" put it at similar levels to the UK's budget deficit.
As UK citizens, we can either wake up to this threat which is derailing our society and corrupting our politics, or we can slide into the squalor of a state that resembles a plutocracy as much as a democracy. What we can no longer say, however, is that we haven't been warned.
on No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,

Macroprudential Regulation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 
 

Jump to: navigation, search

The term macroprudential regulation characterizes the approach to financial regulation aimed to mitigate the risk of the financial system as a whole (or "systemic risk"). In the aftermath of the late-2000s financial crisis, there is a growing consensus among policymakers and economic researchers about the need to re-orient the regulatory framework towards a macroprudential perspective.

Contents

[edit] History

As documented by Clement (2010),[1] the term "macroprudential" was first used in the late 1970s in unpublished documents of the Cooke Committee (the precursor of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision) and the Bank of England. But only in the early 2000s—after two decades of recurrent financial crises in industrial and, most often, emerging market countries[2]—did the macroprudential approach to the regulatory and supervisory framework become increasingly promoted, especially by authorities of the Bank for International Settlements. A wider agreement on its relevance has been reached as a result of the late-2000s financial crisis.

[edit] Objectives and justification of macroprudential regulation

The main goal of macroprudential regulation is to reduce the risk and the macroeconomic costs of financial instability. It is recognized as a necessary ingredient to fill the gap between macroeconomic policy and the traditional microprudential regulation of financial institutions (Bank of England, 2009[3]).

[edit] The macro and microprudential perspectives: understanding the difference

Following Borio (2003),[4] the macro- and microprudential perspectives differ in terms of their objectives and understanding on the nature of risk. Traditional microprudential regulation seeks to enhance the safety and soundness of individual financial institutions, as opposed to the macroprudential view which focuses on welfare of the financial system as a whole. Further, risk is taken as exogenous under the microprudential perspective, in the sense of assuming that any potential shock triggering a financial crisis has its origin beyond the behavior of the financial system. The macroprudential approach, on the other hand, recognizes that risk factors may configure endogenously, i.e. as a systemic phenomenon. In line with this reasoning, macroprudential policy addresses the interconnectedness of individual financial institutions and markets, as well as their common exposure to economic risk factors. It also focuses on the procyclical behavior of the financial system in the effort to foster its stability.
Table macroprudential vs microprudential.
Differences between macro- and microprudential approaches (Source: C. Borio, 2003).

[edit] Theoretical rationale for macroprudential regulation

On theoretical grounds, it has been argued that a reform of prudential regulation should integrate three different paradigms:[5] the agency paradigm, the externalities paradigm, and the mood swings paradigm. The role of macroprudential regulation is particularly stressed by the last two of them.
The agency paradigm highlights the importance of principal-agent problems. The main argument is that in its role of lender of last resort and provider of deposit insurance, the government alters the incentives of banks to undertake risks. This is a manifestation of the principal-agent problem known as moral hazard. More concretely, the coexistence of deposit insurances and insufficiently regulated bank portfolios induces financial institutions to take excessive risks.[6] This paradigm, however, assumes that risk arises from individual malfeasance, and hence it is at odds with the emphasis on the system as a whole which characterizes the macroprudential approach.
In the externalities paradigm, the key concept is called pecuniary externality. This is defined as an externality that arises when one economic agent's action affects the welfare of another agent through effects on prices. As argued by Greenwald and Stiglitz (1986),[7] when there are distorsions in the economy (such as incomplete markets or imperfect information[8]) policy intervention can make everyone better off in a Pareto efficiency sense. Indeed, a number of authors have shown that when agents face borrowing constraints or other sorts of financial frictions, pecuniary externalities arise and different distorsions appear, such as overborrowing, excessive risk-taking and excessive levels of short-term debt.[9] In these environments macroprudential intervention can improve social efficiency. An International Monetary Fund policy study argues that risk externalities between financial institutions and from them to the real economy are market failures that justify macroprudential regulation.[10]
In the mood swings paradigm, animal spirits (Keynes) critically influence the behavior of financial institutions' managers, causing excess of optimism in good times and sudden risk retrenchment on the way down. As a result, pricing signals in financial markets may be inefficient, increasing the likelihood of systemic trouble. A role for a forward-looking macroprudential supervisor, moderating uncertainty and alert to the risks of financial innovation, is therefore justified.

[edit] Indicators of systemic risk

In order to measure systemic risk, macroprudential regulation relies on several indicators. As mentioned in Borio (2003),[11] an important distinction is between measuring contributions to risk of individual institutions (the cross-sectional dimension) and measuring the evolution (i.e. procyclicality) of systemic risk through time (the time dimension).
The cross-sectional dimension of risk can be monitored by tracking balance sheet information—total assets and their composition, liability (financial accounting) and capital structure—as well as the value of the institutions' trading securities and securities available for sale. Additionally, other sophisticated financial tools and models have been developed to assess the interconectedness across intermediaries (such as CoVaR[12]) and each institution's contribution to systemic risk (identified as "Marginal Expected Shortfall" in Acharya et al., 2011[13]).
To address the time dimension of risk, a wide set of variables are typically used, for instance: ratio of credit to GDP, real asset prices, ratio of non-core to core liabilities of the banking sector, and monetary aggregates. Some early warning indicators have been developed encompassing these and other pieces of financial data (see, e.g., Borio and Drehmann, 2009[14]). Furthermore, macro stress tests are employed to identify vulnerabilities in the wake of a simulated adverse outcome.

[edit] Macroprudential tools

A large number of instruments have been proposed;[15] however, there is no agreement about which one should play the primary role in the implementation of macroprudential policy.
Most of these instruments are aimed to prevent the procyclicality of the financial system on the asset and liability sides, such as:
The following tools serve the same purpose, but additional specific functions have been attributed to them, as noted below:
  • Countercyclical capital requirement - to avoid excessive balance-sheet shrinkage from banks in trouble.
  • Cap on leverage (finance) - to limit asset growth by tying banks' assets to their equity (finance).
  • Levy on non-core liabilities - to mitigate pricing distorsions that cause excessive asset growth.
  • Time-varying reserve requirement - as a means to control capital flows with prudential purposes, especially for emerging economies.
To prevent the accumulation of excessive short-term debt:
  • Liquidity coverage ratio
  • Liquidity risk charges that penalize short-term funding
  • Capital requirement surcharges proportional to size of maturity mismatch
  • Minimum haircut requirements on asset-backed securities
In addition, different types of contingent capital instruments (e.g., "contingent convertibles" and "capital insurance") have been proposed to facilitate bank's recapitalization in a crisis event.

[edit] Implementation in Basel III

Several aspects of Basel III reflect a macroprudential approach to financial regulation.[16] Indeed, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision acknowledges the systemic significance of financial institutions in the rules text. More concretely, under Basel III banks' capital requirements have been strengthened and new liquidity requirements, a leverage cap and a countercyclical capital buffer have been introduced. Also, the largest and most globally active banks are required to hold more and higher-quality capital, which is consistent with the cross-section approach to systemic risk.

[edit] Effectiveness of macroprudential tools

For the case of Spain, Saurina (2009)[17] argues that dynamic loan loss provisions (introduced in July 2000) are helpful to deal with procyclicality in banking, as banks are able to build up buffers for bad times.
Using data from the UK, Aiyar et al. (2012)[18] find that unregulated banks in the UK have been able to partially offset changes in credit supply induced by time-varying minimum capital requirements over regulated banks. Hence, they infer a potentially substantial "leakage" of macroprudential regulation of bank capital.
In the sphere of emerging markets, several central banks have applied macroprudential policies (e.g., use of reserve requirements) at least since the aftermath of the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the 1998 Russian financial crisis. Most of these central banks' authorities consider that such tools effectively contributed to the resilience of their domestic financial systems in the wake of the late-2000s financial crisis.[19]

[edit] Costs of macroprudential regulation

There is available theoretical and empirical evidence on the positive effect of finance on long-term economic growth. Accordingly, concerns have been raised about the impact of macroprudential policies on the dynamism of financial markets and, in turn, on investment and economic growth. Popov and Smets (2012)[20] thus recommend that macroprudential tools be employed more forcefully during costly booms driven by overborrowing, targeting the sources of externalities but preserving the positive contribution of financial markets to growth.
In analyzing the costs of higher capital requirements implied by a macroprudential approach, Hanson et al. (2011)[21] report that the long-run effects on loan rates for borrowers should be quantitatively small.[22]
Some theoretical studies indicate that macroprudential policies may have a positive contribution to long-run average growth. Jeanne and Korinek (2011),[23] for instance, show that in a model with externalities of crises that occur under financial liberalization, well-designed macroprudential regulation both reduces crisis risk and increases long-run growth as it mitigates the cycles of boom and bust.

[edit] Institutional aspects

The macroprudential supervisory authority may be given to a single entity, existing (such as central banks) or new, or be a shared responsibility among different institutions (e.g., monetary and fiscal authorities). Illustratively, the management of systemic risk in the U.S. is centralized in the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), established in 2010. It is chaired by the United States Secretary of the Treasury and its members include the Chairman of the Federal Reserve System and all the principal U.S. regulatory bodies. In Europe, the task has also been assigned since 2010 to a new body, the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB), whose secretariat is ensured by the European Central Bank. Differently from its U.S. counterpart, the ESRB lacks direct enforcement power.

[edit] The role of central banks

In pursuing their goal of preserving price stability, central banks remain attentive to the evolution of real and financial markets. Thus, a complementary relationship between macroprudential and monetary policy has been advocated, even if the macroprudential supervisory authority is not given to the central bank itself. This is well reflected by the organizational structure of institutions such as the Financial Stability Oversight Council and European Systemic Risk Board, where central bankers have a decisive participation. The question of whether monetary policy should directly counter financial imbalances remains more controversial, although it has indeed been proposed as a tentative supplementary tool for addressing asset price bubbles.[24]

[edit] The international dimension of macroprudential regulation

On the international level, there are several potential sources of leakage and arbitrage from macroprudential regulation, such as banks' lending via foreign branches and direct cross-border lending.[25] Also, as emerging economies impose controls on capital flows with prudential purposes, other countries may suffer negative spillover effects.[26] Therefore, global coordination of macroprudential policies is considered as necessary to foster their effectiveness.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Clement, P. (2010). The term "macroprudential": origins and evolution. BIS Quarterly Review, March.
  2. ^ See Reinhart, C. and Rogoff, K. (2009). This time is different: Eight centuries of financial folly. Princeton University Press.
  3. ^ Bank of England (2009). The role of macroprudential policy. Bank of England Discussion Paper, November.
  4. ^ Borio, C. (2003). Towards a macro-prudential framework for financial supervision and regulation? BIS Working Papers No 128, February.
  5. ^ de la Torre, A. and Ize, A. (2009). Regulatory reform: Integrating paradigms. The World Bank. Policy Research Working Paper 4842.
  6. ^ See Kareken, J. and Wallace, N. (1978). Deposit insurance and bank regulation: A partial-equilibrium exposition, Journal of Business, 51: 413-438.
  7. ^ Greenwald, B. and Stiglitz, J. (1986). Externalities in economies with imperfect information and incomplete markets, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 101: 229-264.
  8. ^ http://www.econport.org/content/handbook/Imperfect-Information.html
  9. ^ For surveys in this literature, see e.g. Bianchi, J. (2010). Credit externalities: Macroeconomic effects and policy implications. American Economic Review: Papers & Proceedings, 100: 398-402; and Korinek, A. (2011). The new economics of prudential capital controls: A research agenda. University of Maryland. Mimeo.
  10. ^ De Nicolo, G., G. Favara and L. Ratnovski (2012). Externalities and macroprudential policy, IMF Staff Discussion Note 12/05.
  11. ^ Borio, C. (2003). Op.cit.
  12. ^ See Adrian, T. and Brunnermeier, M. (2011). CoVaR. NBER Working Papers 17454, National Bureau of Economic Research.
  13. ^ Acharya, V., Pederssen, L., Phillipon, T. and Richardson, M. (2010). Measuring Systemic Risk. New York University. Mimeo.
  14. ^ Borio, C. and Drehmann, M. (2009). Assessing the Risk of Banking Crises – Revisited. BIS Quarterly Review, March.
  15. ^ See, inter alia, Shin, H. (2011). Macroprudential policies beyond Basel III. In: BIS Papers No 60, December; Hanson, S., Kashyap, A. and Stein, J. (2011). A macroprudential approach to financial regulation. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 25: 3-28; Goodhart C. and Perotti, E. (2012). Preventive macroprudential policy. VoxEU.org, 29 February; and the references in Galati, G. and Moessner, R. (2011). Macroprudential policy -- a literature review. BIS Working Papers No 337, February.
  16. ^ See Borio, C. (2011). Rediscovering the macroeconomic roots of financial stability policy: journey, challenges and a way forward. BIS Working Papers No 354, September.
  17. ^ Saurina, J. (2009). Dynamic provisioning: The case of Spain. The World Bank. Note Number 7, July.
  18. ^ Aiyar, S., Calomiris, C. and Wieladek, T. (2011). Does Macro-Pru leak? Evidence from a UK policy experiment. NBER Working Papers 17822, National Bureau of Economic Research.
  19. ^ For the case of some Latin American countries, see e.g. Castillo, P., Contreras, A., Quispe, Z. and Rojas, Y. (2011). Política macroprudencial en los países de la región. In: Revista Moneda, Central Bank of Peru.
  20. ^ Popov, A. and Smets, F. (2012). On the tradeoff between growth and stability: The role of financial markets. VoxEU.org, 3 November.
  21. ^ Hanson, S., Kashyap, A. and Stein, J. (2011). A macroprudential approach to financial regulation. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 25: 3-28.
  22. ^ See also Schanz, J., Aikman, D., Collazos, P., Farag, M., Gregory, D. and Kapadia, S. (2011). The long-term economic impact of higher capital levels. In: BIS Papers No 60, December, as well as the references cited therein.
  23. ^ Jeanne, O. and Korinek, A. (2011). Booms, Bust and Growth. Johns Hopkins University and University of Maryland. Mimeo.
  24. ^ See Bernanke, B (2008). Monetary policy and the housing bubble. Speech at the Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association, Atlanta, Georgia. January 3, 2010.
  25. ^ Bank of England (2009), Op.cit.
  26. ^ Korinek, A. (2011), Op.cit.

[edit] Further reading and external links



Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Macroprudential_regulation&oldid=545882129"

on No comments:
Labels: , ,

Big thinkers still stumped on global economic crisis

22 April 2013 Last updated at 00:05

 

By Andrew Walker BBC World Service economics correspondent, Washington
cat in tree Like a cat stuck up a tree, economists say they have no idea how to rescue the global economy


Related Stories


More than five years after the onset of the financial crisis, you might have thought economic policy makers would know what to do next.

Well they don't. Or at the very least, there is nothing like the kind of consensus that prevailed before the financial crisis.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been hosting a conference on rethinking economic policy, organised by four experts in the area, including the IMF's own chief economist.

One of the other organisers - the Nobel Prize winner George Akerlof of the University of California - had a vivid analogy for the state of uncertainty the economics profession now faces.

"It's as if a cat has climbed this huge tree - the cat of course is this huge crisis. My view is 'oh my God the cat's going to fall and I don't know what to do'."

Another one of the organisers, David Romer also of the University of California, picked up the analogy: "The cat's been up the tree for five years. It's time to get the cat down from the tree and make sure it doesn't go back up."

The trouble for the economics profession is, according to the last of the conference hosts and another Nobel Prize winner, Joseph Stiglitz: "There is no good economic theory that explains why the cat is still up the tree".
Changed world
No more cats I promise. But the analogy give a sense of the degree of uncertainty this stellar gathering of economists grappled with.

Joseph Stiglitz Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz says there is no theory to explain the ongoing economic crisis

It is a very different world from the apparently more comfortable one we lived in before the crisis.

What were the key features of that world?

The main economic policy tool was in the hands of central banks. They set interest rates, raising them to keep inflation low and cutting them when the economy was weak.

Fiscal policy - government spending and taxation - was no longer seen as part of the routine toolkit for keeping the economy on an even keel.

Financial regulation was for the most part relatively light touch.

What we got was the worst financial crisis and the deepest recession for the wider economy since the Great Depression in the 1930s.

For Joseph Stiglitz, the crisis was evidence for his view that "economies are not necessarily stable or self-correcting".

There was quite a lot of support for that kind of view and for the idea that various state agencies have an important role in doing something about it.

Many favoured more financial regulation, especially measures that are intended to help stabilise the whole financial system rather than individual banks.

 

"We don't have a sense of our final destination… Where we end I really don't have much of a clue."”
 

Olivier Blanchard IMF chief economist
 
 
 

If you really want to know, it's called macro-prudential policy and it's an idea that has really built up a head of steam in the last few years.

One example is a limit on the size of loans relative to the price of the asset such as a house that it's used to buy - the loan-to-value ratio.

It sounds like a reasonable idea, but there was acknowledgement that these policies and their effects are not well understood.

And David Romer, one of the organisers, didn't think he had heard anything big enough to produce a really robust financial system.

Then there is monetary policy. Before the crisis the main tool was interest rates, but the toolkit has since expanded to include quantitative easing - shovelling money into the financial system hoping it will stimulate more spending.

There was support for that but it wasn't universal.
'Not a clue'
Allan Meltzer of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania for one thought it was a huge amount of stimulus with very little effect.

printing money Academics are divided on the merits of economic stimulus

There is also a debate about what should be the aim of monetary policy.

The idea of inflation targets gained widespread acceptance ahead of the crisis.

Now there is a debate about whether that's enough, but there was no consensus on whether change is needed.

David Romer said the approach seemed good for 15 or 20 years, but subsequently showed itself incapable of generating enough demand in the economy.

But Stefan Gerlach of Goethe University in Frankfurt argued that "it doesn't really make sense to rethink the entire monetary policy framework for an event that happens about once in a century".

There was no great enthusiasm for the rapid increase in government debt in the rich countries over the last few years, but few would go as far as the conservative view of Allan Meltzer:

"If we want financial stability, economic stability and other good things don't we begin by restricting budget deficits? Formally, indefinitely and for all future time?"

Which leaves us where? Confused? You are not the only one.

There were plenty of ideas for sure. But this is how the IMF's chief economist Olivier Blanchard put it at the end of the conference:

"We don't have a sense of our final destination… Where we end I really don't have much of a clue."

That may be disconcerting, but then the crisis has been an enormous jolt to economic policy, and it would perhaps be even more unsettling if there weren't some fundamental rethinking going on.
on No comments:
Labels: , , ,

Tuesday, 23 April 2013

Developing a Plan for the Planet A Business Plan for Sustainable Living



Blogger Ref Link  http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Transfinancial_Economics
  • Developing a Plan for the Planet
  •  : Gower Green Economics and Sustainable Growth Series
  • The world struggles with increasing threats to global sustainability, caused by population growth, overuse of fresh water resources, depletion of biodiversity, and reliance on non-renewable energy sources. There is an urgent need for an overall plan to address these challenges in a coordinated and effective manner. Whether in government, business, community or as an individual, we need to begin acting a lot smarter, faster and more collaboratively if we are going to avert the potential devastating impacts on this planet.

    Plan for the Planet outlines a co-ordinated approach to tackling the global challenges we face which can be implemented at every level. Using proven business management wisdom and principles, this book provides perhaps the most comprehensive and robust framework within which business, government and the community can work together to build a sustainable world. Whether you want to understand how to prepare your organisation and yourself to deal successfully with the global challenges, or seize the opportunities which are fast developing with the emergence of the sustainability revolution, you will benefit from reading this timely book.
  • Contents: Why we need a plan for the planet; Part I Understanding Our Current Situation. Part II Understanding the Key Global Challenges: Executive Brief No. 1: population growth; Executive Brief No. 2: climate change; Executive Brief No. 3: energy supplies; Executive Brief No. 4: water and food supplies; Executive Brief No. 5: planet sustainability and biodiversity; Executive Brief No. 6: extreme poverty; Executive Brief No. 7: global health; Executive Brief No. 8: universal education; Executive Brief No. 9: conflict and peace; Executive Brief No. 10: financing a sustainable world; Executive Brief No. 11: the challenge of interconnectivity - the perfect storm or the perfect opportunity; Part III Developing a Plan for the Planet: Building a global vision for Planet Earth; Global objectives and strategies: addressing our key global challenges; Taking responsibility: translating understanding into action. Part IV Managing a Plan for the Planet: Ten global management best practices; Global management best practices: Applications to managing a plan for the planet; Global management best practices: a health check. Part V Delivering a Plan for the Planet: Leveraging the triangle of change; Leveraging international organisations and government; Leveraging the business contribution; Leveraging the power of the people; Embracing the new green revolution; Embracing the spiritual imperative; Epilogue; Appendices; Bibliography; Index.
  • About the Author: Ian Chambers conceived, developed and produced A Plan for the Planet based on his work with global corporations, government and the telecommunications industry over the last 20 years, by combining his unique insights into management practice with his parallel work on global sustainability. His business career has spanned a range of executive roles including business development strategy and planning, sales and marketing, as well as global transformational change and program management.

    He has been an active member of the Green Economics Institute Advisory Board and a member of the Academic Journals Advisory Board where his focus has been on establishing practical approaches to sustainable business development and global sustainability management.

    John Humble was an international management consultant who pioneered the practice of Management by Objectives, Service Management, the Social Responsibility Audit and the importance of Corporate Values. His six books have been translated into 17 languages. His six film series on Management by Objectives (EMI, London) was internationally acclaimed and produced in 5 languages.

    His distinctions include The Ford Foundation Businessman Award, the Burnham Medal of the British Institute of Management, the Social Responsibility Award of Management Centre Europe and Fellowship of the International Academy of Management.
  • Reviews: 'This is a controversial subject that polarises opinions. Much of what is written elsewhere is opinion rather than substance. Here is a book that deserves attention because the arguments are supported by clearly identifying data that can not only be independently checked because it is clearly set out in a tabulated form. The advantage is that it makes it possible for the reader to make eventual adjustments that will become necessary through future events and developments. A book worth buying and a book worth keeping.'
    Dr Peter Starbuck (on Amazon.co.uk)
  •  
  • The authors have set up a website:   http://iplanfortheplanet.com/index.html    to support the book

    Extracts from this title are available to view:

    Full contents list

    Chapter 1: Why we need a plan for the planet

    Article in Sustainability issue of APM’s Project Magazine
on No comments:
Labels: , , , ,

The New Glocal Economy

Posted on September 14, 2012 by
 
Ref Resilence Economics
 
 
Over the past few years, it seems like people have been feeling pulled in all directions.  Businesses have learned how to do more with fewer people.
In many industries, we have seen the disappearance of jobs, the workplace, and the workweek.  Work happens anytime and from anywhere.  Yet, other businesses are comparatively unchanged. Why is this?  We currently have two separate economies running in parallel – the digital and the physical.    
One of my friends is now telecommuting from Malaysia to the University of Wisconsin.  Another is a software developer who set up shop in Buenos Aires, simply because it features a lower cost of living and a better lifestyle.
Meanwhile, even basic language barriers are gradually disappearing.  Anyone who posts a design project on CrowdSpring may get dozens of proposals from around the world.  Some of the more entrepreneurial freelancers are now using online tools such as Google Translator.  This enables them to communicate with buyers and do business in a way that was simply not possible five years ago.
Customer service jobs were outsourced overseas a long time ago.  Over the next decade, expect more of the knowledge professions to follow.  Telemedicine may mean that your family doctor is calling in from Hyderabad.  Accounting is another profession that may soon find itself being relocated overseas.
While the digital economy has been going global, there are signs that the physical economy will become more localized over the coming decade.
Let’s take a look at a few reasons why this might be happening:
Cost.  Asian economics expert Joergen Oerstroem Moeller notes that European companies are “gradually discovering that transport costs erode the competitive advantages of outsourcing to China.”
Shipping from Asia made more sense when gasoline was cheaper than bottled water.  This is no longer the case.  British retailer Marks & Spencer is planning to shorten the length of its supply chain by only shipping products within its own hemisphere.  The company believes this may save GBP 175 million in costs annually.
Technology.  New technologies such as 3D printing and scanning have the potential to move production to the masses.  Instead of shipping to the other side of the globe, some types of manufacturing may move to the desktop, just like the printing industry did two decades ago.
We are just a few years away from being able to scan simple objects (such as repair parts) and then “faxing” them to customers who can print those parts on site – effectively minimizing delivery time.
Social Preference.  There has also been in increased interest in buying local artisanal goods when they are available, particularly among Generation Xers and Millenials.   For example, the rising popularity of the slow food movement has given new life to many traditional family farms.  The USDA now reports that there are over 7,800 farmers markets in the U.S.
Meanwhile, these trends are further supported by emerging social technologies, such as time banking and local currencies.
So, while the digital economy happens “anytime, anywhere”, parts of physical economy may evolve more slowly.  Workplaces that require the maintenance of physical facilities or equipment will continue to need people in traditional jobs, because flexible locations and hours do not work for everything.
Good business values will always remain the same – showing up on time, doing a great job, and being appreciative to customers will never go out of favor.
(Note, this article previously appeared on CSRwire.)
on No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , ,

Monday, 22 April 2013

Hernando de Soto Polar


Hernando de Soto Polar
Hernando de Soto Polar bw hi res.jpg
Born(1941-06-03) June 3, 1941 (age 71)
Arequipa, Peru
NationalityPeruvian
FieldThe economics of the informal sector,
research in property rights theory
InfluencesMilton Friedman
Hernando de Soto Polar (or Hernando de Soto; born 1941) is a Peruvian economist known for his work on the informal economy and on the importance of business and property rights. He is the president of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD), located in Lima, Peru.[1]

Contents

[edit] Childhood and education

Hernando de Soto was born in 1941 in Arequipa, Peru. His father was a Peruvian diplomat. After the 1948 military coup in Peru, his father chose exile in Europe, taking his wife and two young sons with him. De Soto was educated in Switzerland, where he attended the International School of Geneva and then did post-graduate work at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva. He later worked as an economist, corporate executive and consultant. He returned to Peru at the age of 38.[2] His younger brother Álvaro served in the Peruvian diplomatic corps in Lima, New York and Geneva and was seconded to United Nations in 1982; he retired from the U.N. in 2007 with the title of Assistant Secretary General. He is very well known as an international adviser.

[edit] Reforms in Peru and elsewhere

Between 1988 and 1995, he and the Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD) were responsible for some four hundred initiatives, laws, and regulations that changed Peru's economic system.[3]
In particular, ILD designed the administrative reform of Peru's property system which has given titles to more than 1.2 million families and helped some 380,000 firms which previously operated in the black market to enter the formal economy.[4] This latter task was accomplished through the elimination of bureaucratic "red-tape" and restrictive registration, licensing and permit laws that made the opening of new businesses very time-consuming and costly.
Yale University political scientist Susan C. Stokes believes that de Soto's influence helped change the policies of the recently elected Alberto Fujimori from a Keynesian to a neoliberal approach. De Soto convinced then-president Fujimori to travel to Chicago, Illinois, where Fujimori met with several important figures within the International Monetary Fund, the US Department of State, and the Chinese embassy, who convinced him that he had to abide by the rules set by the international financial institutions. These policies led to a reduction in the rate of inflation.[5]
The Cato Institute and The Economist magazine have argued that de Soto's policy prescriptions brought him into conflict with and eventually helped to undermine the Shining Path guerrilla movement. By granting titles to small coca farmers in the two main coca-growing areas, he deprived the Shining Path of safe haven, recruits and money, they have argued, and the leadership was forced to cities where they were arrested.[6][7] ILD notes a large terrorist attack on de Soto and statements by Shining Path leader Abimael Guzman who saw ILD as a serious threat.[8]
After the split with Fujimori, he and his institute designed similar programs in El Salvador, Haiti, Tanzania, and Egypt, and has gained favor with the World Bank, the World Bank allied international NGO Slum Dwellers International and the government of South Africa.
Since its work in Peru in the 1980s, his institute, the ILD, has worked in 23 countries. Heads of state in 35 countries have sought the ILD's services, and ILD staff has personally met with 29 of them to discuss precisely what the ILD might do to help their economies prosper.
The impact of de Soto's institute in the field of development –on political leaders, experts and multi-lateral organizations– has been widespread and acknowledged. For example:
  • The ILD's Institutional reform Program has attracted the interest of strategically key nations concerned with internal conflict and terrorism.
  • The ILD has designed successful reforms that have inspired major initiatives in former client countries, such as Egypt, the Philippines, Honduras, and Tanzania.
  • The ILD's influence and ideas have also inspired reforms in countries where it has yet to work, such as China, Russia, South Africa, Thailand, and India, which includes two of the world's fastest growing emerging economies.
  • The ILD is recognized as the world authority in understanding extralegal economies, influencing the protocols of large multilateral organizations by helping them to understand the realities that the poor and the excluded face, day to day. These include institutions such as the Commission for Legal Empowerment of the Poor, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), USAID and the World Bank.
In 2009, the ILD turned its attention back to Peru and the plight of the indigenous peoples of the Peruvian Amazon jungle. In response to Peruvian President García's call to all Peruvians to present their proposals toward solving the problems leading to the bloody incidents in Bagua, the ILD has assessed the situation and presented its preliminary findings. ILD has published a short videotaped documentary, The Mystery of Capital among the Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon, summarizing its findings from indigenous communities in Alaska, Canada and the Peruvian jungle.[9]

[edit] Main thesis

The main message of de Soto's work and writings is that no nation can have a strong market economy without adequate participation in an information framework that records ownership of property and other economic information.[10] Unreported, unrecorded economic activity results in many small entrepreneurs who lack legal ownership of their property, making it difficult for them to obtain credit, sell the business, or expand. They cannot seek legal remedies to business conflicts in court, since they do not have legal ownership. Lack of information on income prevents governments from collecting taxes and acting for the public welfare. "The existence of such massive exclusion generates two parallel economies, legal and extra legal. An elite minority enjoys the economic benefits of the law and globalization, while the majority of entrepreneurs are stuck in poverty, where their assets –adding up to more than US$ 10 trillion worldwide– languish as dead capital in the shadows of the law." To survive, to protect their assets, and to do as much business as possible, the extra legals create their own rules. But because these local arrangements are full of shortcomings and are not easily enforceable, the extralegals also create their own social, political and economic problems that affect the society at large.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, responsible nations around the developing world have worked hard to make the transition to a market economy, but have in general failed. Populist leaders have used this failure of the free market system to wipe out poverty in the developing world to beat their "anti-globalization" drums. But the ILD believes that the real enemy is within the flawed legal systems of developing nations that make it virtually impossible for the majority of their people –and their assets– to gain a stake in the market. The people of these countries have talent, enthusiasm, and an astonishing ability to wring a profit out of practically nothing.
What the poor majority in the developing world do not have, is easy access to the legal system, which, in the advanced nations of the world and for the elite in their own countries, is the gateway to economic success. For it is in the legal system where property documents are created and standardized according to law. That documentation builds a public memory that permits society to engage in such crucial economic activities as identifying and gaining access to information about individuals, their assets, their titles, rights, charges and obligations; establishing the limits of liability for businesses; knowing an asset's previous economic situation; assuring protection of third parties; and quantifying and valuing assets and rights.[11] These public memory mechanisms in turn facilitate such opportunities as access to credit, the establishment of systems of identification, the creation of systems for credit and insurance information, the provision for housing and infrastructure, the issue of shares, the mortgage of property, and a host of other economic activities that drive a modern market economy."[12]

[edit] Praise for work

Time magazine chose de Soto as one of the five leading Latin American innovators of the century in its special May 1999 issue Leaders of the New Millennium, and included him among the 100 most influential people in the world in 2004.[13] De Soto was also listed as one of the 15 innovators "who will reinvent your future" according to Forbes magazine's 85th anniversary edition. In January 2000, Entwicklung und Zusammenarbeit, the German development magazine, described de Soto as one of the most important development theoreticians.[14] In October 2005, over 20,000 readers of Prospect magazine of the UK and Foreign Policy magazine of the U.S. ranked him as number 13 on the magazines’ joint survey of the world's Top 100 Public Intellectuals Poll.
U.S. presidents from both major parties have praised de Soto's work. Bill Clinton, for example, called him "The world's greatest living economist",[15] George H. W. Bush declared that "De Soto's prescription offers a clear and promising alternative to economic stagnation…"[16] Bush's predecessor, Ronald Reagan said, "De Soto and his colleagues have examined the only ladder for upward mobility. The free market is the other path to development and the one true path. It is the people's path… it leads somewhere. It works."[17] His work has also received praise from two United Nations Secretaries-General Kofi Annan—"Hernando de Soto is absolutely right, that we need to rethink how we capture economic growth and development"[18]—and Javier Pérez de Cuéllar—"A crucial contribution. A new proposal for change that is valid for the whole world."[19]

[edit] Prizes

Among the prizes he has received are:
  • The Freedom Prize (Switzerland)
  • The Fisher Prize (United Kingdom)
  • 2002
  • 2003
    • received the Downey Fellowship at Yale University
    • the Democracy Hall of Fame International Award from the National Graduate University (USA)
  • 2004
  • 2005
    • an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from the University of Buckingham (United Kingdom),
    • The Americas Award (USA)
    • named the Most Outstanding of 2004 for Economic Development at Home and Abroad by the Peruvian National Assembly of Rectors
    • received the Prize of Deutsche Stiftung Eigentum for exceptional contributions to the theory of property rights
    • the 2004 IPAE Award by the Peruvian Institute of Business Administration
    • the Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award 2005 (USA) in tribute to his outstanding accomplishments
    • the BearingPoint, Forbes Magazine's seventh Compass Award for Strategic Direction
    • was named as a "Fellow of the Class of 1930" by Dartmouth College.
  • 2006
    • the 2006 Bradley Prize for outstanding achievement by the Bradley Foundation.[21]
    • the 2006 Innovation Award (Social and Economic Innovation) from The Economist magazine (December 2, 2006) for the promotion of property rights and economic development.[22]
  • 2007
    • The Poder BCG Business Awards 2007, granted by Poder Magazine and the Boston Consulting Group, for the "Best Anti-Poverty Initiative"
    • the anthology Die Zwölf Wichtigsten Ökonomen der Welt (The World's Twelve Most Influential Economists, 2007), included a profile of de Soto among a list that begins with Adam Smith and includes such recent winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics as Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen.
    • the 2007 Humanitarian Award in recognition of his work to help poor people participate in the market economy.
  • 2009
    • Honorary Patron of the University Philosophical Society of Trinity College (Ireland) for having excelled in public life and made a worthy contribution to society.
    • the inaugural Hernando de Soto Award for Democracy awarded by the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) in recognition of his extraordinary achievements in furthering economic freedom in Peru and throughout the developing world.[23]
  • 2010
    • the Hayek Medal for his theories on liberal development policy ("market economy from below") and for the appropriate implementation of his concepts by two Peruvian presidents.
    • the Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Cabinet (Council of Ministers) in recognition of his contribution toward the betterment of humankind and having worked for the future of the earth through his commitment.

[edit] World Justice Project

Hernando de Soto serves as an Honorary Co-Chair for the World Justice Project. The World Justice Project works to lead a global, multidisciplinary effort to strengthen the Rule of Law for the development of communities of opportunity and equity.[24]

[edit] Criticism and responses

De Soto has been criticized by some academics for methodological and analytical reasons, while some activists have criticized de Soto for being a representative figure of the movement for prioritizing property rights.
In his 'Planet of Slums'[25] Mike Davis argues that de Soto, who Davis calls 'the global guru of neo-liberal populism', is essentially promoting what the statist left in South America and India has always promoted – individual land titling. Davis argues that titling is incorporation into the formal economy of cities which benefits more wealthy squatters but is disastrous for poorer squatters, and especially tenants who simply cannot afford incorporation into the fully commodified formal economy.
Grassroots controlled and directed shack dwellers movements like Abahlali baseMjondolo in South Africa and the Homeless Workers' Movement (MTST)[26][27] in Brazil have strenuously argued against individual titling and for communal and democratic systems of collective land tenure because this offers protection to the poorest and prevents 'downward raiding' in which richer people displace squatters once their neighborhoods are formalized.
An article by Madeleine Bunting for The Guardian (UK) claimed that de Soto's suggestions would in some circumstances cause more harm than benefit, and referred to The Mystery of Capital as "an elaborate smokescreen" used to obscure the issue of the power of the globalized elite. She cited de Soto's employment history as evidence of his bias in favor of the powerful.[28] Reporter John Gravois also criticized de Soto for his ties to power circles, exemplified by his attendance at the Davos World Economic Forum. In response, de Soto told Gravois that this proximity to power would help de Soto educate the elites about poverty. Ivan Osorio of the Competitive Enterprise Institute has refuted Gravois's allegations pointing out how Gravois has misinterpreted many of de Soto's recommendations.[29]
Robert J. Samuelson has argued against what he sees as de Soto's "single bullet" approach and has argued for a greater emphasis on culture and how local conditions affect people's perceptions of their opportunities.[30] The risk that titling will undermine customary forms of tenure and insufficiently protect the rights of land users that depend on the commons, as well as the fear that titling schemes may lead to further reconcentration of land ownership unless strong support is provided to smallholders, has also led the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, to question the insistence on titling as a means to protect security of tenure : while security of tenure matters, he stated in a report to the UN General Assembly presented in October 2010, this should be achieved by registering the rights of landusers and by the adoption of anti-eviction and tenancy laws, rather than by promoting the creation of a market for land rights that could in fact lead to depriving the poor, priced out from such markets, of access to land.
In the World Development journal, a 1990 article by R. G. Rossini and J. J. Thomas of the London School of Economics questioned the statistical basis of de Soto's claims about the size of the informal economy in his first book The Other Path.[31] However, the ILD pointed out, in the same journal, that Rossini and Thomas’ observations "neither [addressed] the central theme of the book, nor [did it address] the main body of quantitative evidence displayed to substantiate the importance of economic and legal barriers that give rise to informal activities. Instead, [they focused] exclusively on four empirical estimates that the book [mentioned] only in passing".[32]
In the Journal of Economic Literature, Christopher Woodruff of the University of California, San Diego criticized de Soto for overestimating the amount of wealth that land titling now informally owned property could unlock, and argues that "de Soto's own experience in Peru suggests that land titling by itself is not likely to have much effect. Titling must be followed by a series of politically challenging steps. Improving the efficiency of judicial systems, rewriting bankruptcy codes, restructuring financial market regulations, and similar reforms will involve much more difficult choices by policymakers. "[33][34]
This criticism is viewed by some to misjudge de Soto's official opinion. His book Mystery of Capital devotes the majority of its contents to the theory that legal reform is by far the most significant element of property reform.
Roy Culpepper notes that it is often very difficult to establish who owns what among the poor. He also notes that the titling is biased against those who are completely landless and propertyless.[34]
Alan Gilbert finds that in Bogotá, for example, giving legal titles has not created a better housing market or better supply of credit for the poor.[34]
Legal scholar Jonathan Manders has argued that de Soto's vision of property rights reform is the correct one, but that the sequencing of proposed reforms will affect their sustainability over the long term.[35]
Empirical studies by Argentine economists Sebastian Galiani and Ernesto Schargrodsky have taken issue with de Soto's link between titling and the increase in credit to the poor, but have also pointed out that families with titles "substantially increased housing investment, reduced household size, and improved the education of their children relative to the control group".[36] A study commissioned by DFID, an agency of the U.K. government, further summarized many of the complications arising from implementing de Soto's policy recommendations when insufficient attention is paid to the local social context.[37]
There are many explanations regarding how and what in capitalism causes growth, according to de Soto. In an interview with The Economist, he emphasizes the primary role of institutions, and points to successful examples of now-developed countries that reformed their legal system in defense of his property rights-oriented policy recommendations. De Soto's conclusions have inspired other work on microcredit, and the importance of property and business rights. For instance, the World Bank's popular "Doing Business" series (launched in 2004) that provides data for over 175 countries worldwide on opening and closing businesses, obtaining credit, labor laws, and fulfilling contract and property rights, was inspired by the ILD's work in Peru and elsewhere.[38]
De Soto himself has often pointed out that his critics mistakenly claim that he advocates land titling by itself as sufficient for effective development: For example, in the ILD's new brochure he is quoted as saying, "The ILD is not just about titling. What we do is help Governments build a system of public memory that legally identifies all their people, their assets, their business records and their transactions in such a way that they can unleash their economic potential. No economy can develop and prosper without the benefits that clearly registered public documents bestow."[39]
In 2011, de Soto claimed that land titling helped "capture Osama Bin Laden."[40] He was ridiculed in social network Twitter after [41]
On January 31, 2012, de Soto was fined by state intellectual property rights organization INDECOPI for not including the term “coordinator” in addition to his role as author of the The Other Path.

[edit] Publications

[edit] Books

De Soto has published two books about economic development: The Other Path: The Invisible Revolution in the Third World in 1986 in Spanish (with a new edition in 2002 titled The Other Path, The Economic Answer to Terrorism), and at the end of 2000, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. Both books have been international bestsellers, translated into some 30 languages.
The original Spanish-language title of The Other Path is El Otro Sendero, an allusion to de Soto's alternative proposals for development in Peru, countering the attempts of the "Shining Path" ("Sendero Luminoso") to win the support of Peru's poor. Based on five years worth of ILD research into the causes of massive informality and legal exclusion in Peru, the book was also a direct intellectual challenge to the Shining Path, offering to the poor of Peru not the violent overthrow of the system but "the other path" out of poverty, through legal reform. In response, the Senderistas added de Soto to their assassination list, In July 1992, the terrorists sent a second car bomb into ILD headquarters in Lima, killing 3 and wounding 19.
In addition, he has written, with Francis Cheneval, Swiss Human Rights Book Volume 1: Realizing Property Rights, published in 2006 – a collection of papers presented at an International Symposium in Switzerland in 2006 on the urgency of property rights in impoverished countries for small business owners, women, and other fragile human groups, such as the poor and political refugees. The book includes a paper on the ILD's work in Tanzania delivered by Hernando de Soto.[42]
  • De Soto, Hernando. The Other Path: The Invisible Revolution in the Third World. Harpercollins, 1989. ISBN 0-06-016020-9
  • De Soto, Hernando. The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. Basic Books, 2000. ISBN 0-465-01614-6
  • De Soto, Hernando. The Other Path: The Economic Answer to Terrorism. Basic Books, 2002. ISBN 0-465-01610-3
  • De Soto, Hernando and Francis Cheneval. Swiss Human Rights Book Volume 1: Realizing Property Rights, 2006. ISBN 978-3-907625-25-5
  • Smith, Barry et al. (eds.)., The Mystery of Capital and the Construction of Social Reality, Chicago: Open Court, 2008. ISBN 0-8126-9615-8

[edit] Articles

Over the years, De Soto has also published a number of articles on the importance of inclusive property and business rights, legally empowering the poor, and the causes of the global financial crisis of 2008–09 in leading newspapers and magazines around the world. In 2001, Time magazine published "The Secret of Non-Success,"[43] the New York Times ran his post-September 11 op-ed essay "The Constituency of Terror,"[44] and the IMF's Finance & Development magazine published "The Mystery of Capital", a condensed version of the third chapter of his eponymous book.[45] In 2007, Time magazine published "Giving the Poor their Rights", an article written with former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, on the legal empowerment of the poor. In 2009, Newsweek International published his essay on the financial crisis, "Toxic Paper"[46] – along with an on-line interview with him, "Slumdogs and Millionaires."[47] That was soon followed by two more articles on the crisis, in the Wall Street Journal ("Toxic Assets Were Hidden Assets")[48] and The Los Angeles Times ("Global Meltdown Rule #1: Do the Math").[49] Versions of these articles also appeared in newspapers in France, Switzerland, Germany and Latin America. In 2011, Bloomberg published “The Destruction of Economic Facts”,[50] and The Washington Post recently ran “The cost of financial ignorance”.[51] When protests began in Cairo at the beginning of 2011, The Wall Street Journal published De Soto's "Egypt's Economic Apartheid",[52] and Financial Times later published "The free-market secret of the Arab Revolution".[53]
  • De Soto, Hernando. "Why Capitalism Works in the West but Not Elsewhere", International Herald Tribune, 5 January 2001.
  • De Soto, Hernando. "The Mystery of Capital", Finance & Development, March 2001, Volume 38, Number 1.[45]
  • De Soto, Hernando. "The Secret of Non-Success", Time magazine, 16 April 2001.[43]
  • De Soto, Hernando. "The Constituency of Terror", The New York Times, 15 October 2001.[44]
  • De Soto, Hernando. Push Property Rights, The Washington Post, 6 January 2002.[54]
  • De Soto, Hernando. "Law and Property Outside the West: A Few New Ideas About Fighting Poverty", Optima Special Issue on Sustainable Development. Vol. 48 No. 1, September 2002, pp 2–9.
  • De Soto, Hernando. "Law and Property Outside the West: A Few New Ideas About Fighting Poverty", NUPI. December 2002, pp. 349–361.[55]
  • De Soto, Hernando. "Law and Property Outside the West: A Few New Ideas About Fighting Poverty". In Marc A. Miles (ed.) The Road to Prosperity: The 21st Century Approach to Economic Development. Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Foundation, 99–119. 2004
  • De Soto, Hernando. "What if you can't prove you had a house?", International Herald Tribune/New York Times, 20 January 2006.[56]
  • De Soto, Hernando. "Toxic Paper", Newsweek, 21 Feb. 2009.[46]
  • De Soto, Hernando. "De Soto: la recesión tiene origen legal, no financiero", El Comercio, 3 March 2009 [2]
  • De Soto, Hernando. "Toxic Assets Were Hidden Assets", The Wall Street Journal, 25 March 2009[48]
  • De Soto, Hernando. "Crise financière: une crise… du papier", Le Figaro, 27 March 2009
  • De Soto, Hernando. "Global Meltdown Rule No. 1: Do the math", Los Angeles Times, 12 April 2009.[49]
  • De Soto, Hernando. “Staying in the dark about derivatives will bring economic collapse”, QFinance, 29 October 2010
  • De Soto, Hernando. “La Amazonía no es Avatar”, El Comercio, 5 June 2010
  • De Soto, Hernando. “Egypt’s Economic Apartheid”, The Wall Street Journal, 3 February 2011[52]
  • De Soto, Hernando. “The Destruction of Economic Facts”, Bloomberg Businessweek, 28 April 2011[50]
  • De Soto, Hernando. “The cost of financial ignorance”, The Washington Post, 7 October 2011[51]
  • De Soto, Hernando. “The free-market secret of the Arab revolution”, Financial Times, 8 November 2011[53]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Institute for Liberty and Democracy, "Hernando de Soto - Detailed Bio". (accessed 16 March 2013)
  2. ^ Source: Investors Business Daily, Monday November 6, 2006. Page A4. Leaders & Success. Article by IBD Reinhardt Kraus.
  3. ^ The Globalist | Biography of Hernando de Soto
  4. ^ 2004–2005 Frank Porter Graham Lecture
  5. ^ Stokes, Susan C. Are Parties What's Wrong with Democracy in Latin America?, April 1997
  6. ^ The Cato Institute: Hernando de Soto
  7. ^ "The economist versus the terrorist". The Economist. 30 January 2003. 
  8. ^ De Soto, Hernando. The Other Path: The Economic Answer to Terrorism. 2002
  9. ^ Institute for Liberty and Democracy. The Mystery of Capital among the Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon, video documentary with findings from indigenous communities in Alaska, Canada and the Peruvian jungle
  10. ^ "The Destruction of Economic Facts", by Hernando de Soto. April 28, 2010. Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Accessed online May 2, 2011 [1]
  11. ^ Barry Smith, ""Searle and De Soto: The New Ontology of the Social World", in Barry Smith, David Mark and Isaac Ehrlich (eds.), The Mystery of Capital and the Construction of Social Reality, Chicago: Open Court, 2008, 35–51.
  12. ^ Institute for Liberty and Democracy, The ILD's war against exclusion, p. 19. 2009
  13. ^ The 2004 Time 100
  14. ^ Hans-Heinrich Bass und Markus Wauschkuhn: Hernando de Soto – die Legalisierung des Faktischen, in: E+Z Entwicklung und Zusammenarbeit, 2000, Nr. 1, S. 15-18.
  15. ^ The University of North Carolina news release
  16. ^ Source for President George H. W. Bush's remarks: Text of Remarks by the President to the World Bank/International Monetary Fund Annual Meeting, 27 September 1989, announcing NAFTA. Press release.
  17. ^ The Cato Institute
  18. ^ Annan, Kofi. Transcript of Press Conference By Secretary-General Kofi Annan at International Labour Organization, Geneva, 16 July 2001
  19. ^ Transworld Publishers
  20. ^ The Cato Institute: Hernando de Soto
  21. ^ Bradley Foundation – Prizes
  22. ^ "The Economist's Innovation Awards", The Economist, Nov 9th 2006 -subscription required
  23. ^ Highlights of CIPE's 25th Year
  24. ^ "About". Retrieved 2010-02-23. 
  25. ^ Mike Davis, Planet of Slums, Verso, 2006 pp.79–82
  26. ^ MTST – Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Teto
  27. ^ Brazil's Landless Workers Movement
  28. ^ Bunting, Madeleine "Fine words, flawed ideas" The Guardian, Monday 11 September 2000
  29. ^ Osorio, Ivan. Will the Real Hernando de Soto Please Stand Up?, originally published as Osorio Op-ed in Tech Central Station, February 2, 2005
  30. ^ Samuelson, Robert J. "The Spirit of Capitalism", Foreign Affairs. January/February 2001.
  31. ^ Rossini, R. G. and J. J. Thomas. "The size of the informal sector in Peru: A critical comment on Hernando de Soto's El Otro Sendero", in World Development, Volume 18, Issue 1, January 1990, Pages 125–135.
  32. ^ Instituto Libertad y Democracia Lima Peru. "A reply", in World Development, Volume 18, Issue 1, January 1990, Pages 137–145.
  33. ^ Woodruff, Christopher. Review: Review of de Soto's "The Mystery of Capital", Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 39, No. 4 (Dec., 2001), pp. 1215–1223
  34. ^ a b c Clift, Jeremy. "People in Economics: Hernando de Soto" – Finance & Development – December 2003.
  35. ^ Manders, Jonathan. Sequencing Property Rights in the Context of Development: A Critique of the Writings of Hernando De Soto, 37 CORNELL INT’L L.J. 177 (2004).
  36. ^ Galiani, Sebastian and Ernesto Schargrodsky. Property Rights for the Poor: Effects of Land Titling – Ronald Coase Institute, Working Paper Series, revised January 2009,
  37. ^ Daley, Elizabeth and Mary Hobley. Land: Changing Contexts, Changing Relationships, Changing Rights (for DFID's Urban-Rural Change Team) September 2005
  38. ^ Home – Doing Business – The World Bank Group
  39. ^ Institute for Liberty and Democracy, The ILD's war against exclusion, p.21. 2009
  40. ^ De Soto: "Titling helped capture Osama Bin Laden (in Spanish)
  41. ^ De Soto's comment causes hilarity (in Spanish).
  42. ^ De Soto, Hernando and Francis Cheneval. Swiss Human Rights Book Volume 1: Realizing Property Rights, 2006.
  43. ^ a b De Soto, Hernando. "The Secret of Non-Success", Time magazine, 16 April 2001 – published in New horizons for foreign direct investment, Issue 548 – Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development,Global Forum on International Investment
  44. ^ a b De Soto, Hernando. "The Constituency of Terror", The New York Times, 15 October 2001.
  45. ^ a b De Soto, Hernando. "The Mystery of Capital", in Finance & Development, March 2001
  46. ^ a b De Soto, Hernando. "Toxic Paper", Newsweek, 21 Feb. 2009.
  47. ^ Sheridan, Barrett . "Slumdogs vs. Millionaires", Newsweek, 20 Feb. 2009.
  48. ^ a b De Soto, Hernando. "Toxic Assets Were Hidden Assets", The Wall Street Journal, 25 March 2009
  49. ^ a b De Soto, Hernando. "Global Meltdown Rule No. 1: Do the math", Los Angeles Times, 12 April 2009
  50. ^ a b De Soto, Hernando. “The Destruction of Economic Facts”, Bloomberg Businessweek, 28 April 2011
  51. ^ a b De Soto, Hernando. “The cost of financial ignorance”, The Washington Post, 7 October 2011
  52. ^ a b De Soto, Hernando. “Egypt’s Economic Apartheid”, The Wall Street Journal, 3 February 2011
  53. ^ a b De Soto, Hernando. “The free-market secret of the Arab Revolution”, Financial Times, 8 November 2011
  54. ^ De Soto, Hernando. in "PERU Push Property Rights." The Washington Post. 2002. HighBeam Research. (January 8, 2010).
  55. ^ De Soto, Hernando. "Law and Property Outside the West: A Few New Ideas About Fighting Poverty", NUPI. December 2002, pp. 349–361.
  56. ^ De Soto, Hernando. "What if you can't prove you had a house?", International Herald Tribune/New York Times, 20 January 2006.

[edit] External links

Authority control

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hernando_de_Soto_Polar&oldid=544493854"

on No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)