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Alternatives
Monetary Union Stability: The need for a government banker and the case for a European public finance authority
Thomas I. Palley

There is accumulating evidence that the euro's current architecture is unstable. The source of instability is high interest rates on highly indebted countries which creates unsustainable debt burdens. Remedying this problem requires a central bank that acts as government banker and pushes down government bond interest rates to sustainable levels. That can be accomplished by the creation of a European Public Finance Authority (EPFA) that issues public debt which the European Central Bank (ECB) is allowed to trade.

Modernizing Russia: Round III. Russia and the Other BRIC Countries: Forging ahead, catching up or falling behind?
Erik S. Reinert and Rainer Kattel
Looking at Russian economic dynamics through evolutionary and Schumpeterian Other Canon lenses, the authors provide alternative explanation as to why Russia is still lagging behind other BRIC and leading catching-up economies. In this context they argue that learning from successful cases of managing industrial policy under the WTO – what the rest of the BRIC economies have long been doing – is perhaps the main issue for Russia's economic policy-making in the near future.
   
Rethinking Investment Provisions in Free Trade Agreements
Smitha Francis
Developing country governments are increasingly resorting to comprehensive trade agreements involving profound commitments in public policy, which have wide-ranging adverse consequences on food security, industrial development, financial stability, etc. This paper analyses investment disciplines in FTAs in order to come to an understanding of their overall impact on a developing country FTA partner's policy space, and therefore, on its development prospects. It is argued that given the links between trade and investment commitments within and across different FTAs, South-South FTAs have become as problematic as North-South FTAs.
Development Banks: Their role and importance for development
C.P. Chandrasekhar
The role of development banks in the development trajectories of late industrialising, developing countries cannot be overemphasised. However, with financial liberalisation of the neoliberal variety transforming financial structures, some countries are doing away with specialised development banking institutions on the grounds that equity and bond markets would do the job. This is bound to lead to a shortfall in finance for long-term investments, especially for medium and small enterprises.
   
Evolution Versus Equilibrium
Jan Kregel
Post Keynesian economists have followed Joan Robinson's criticism of general equilibrium theory as abolishing history by allowing all contracts to be executed today for all future contingencies. This was the justification for the support of financial innovation to provide for the completeness of futures markets. The recent crisis has shown that force of history. Instead, many evolutionary and Keynesian economists have suggested the approach of cumulative causation as an approach that includes history and eschews equilibrium. This approach may provide a way to take history seriously in economic analysis.
Coordination of Innovation Policies in the Catching-up Context: A historical perspective on Estonia and Brazil
Erkki Karo and Rainer Kattel
This paper highlights some of the crucial weaknesses of innovation policy-research that limit the relevance of this research for policy-making practices in catching-up countries. The authors propose a framework that takes a multi-level and dynamic approach towards studying innovation-policy-making processes. Applying this framework, the authors examine the evolution of innovation policy and governance trajectories of Estonia and Brazil and how this has affected the capacities for technological accumulation and development.
   
Measuring the Progress of Societies:
A Mexican perspective
Alicia Puyana
The author delves into the concept of progress and development; how the definitions have changed over changing global paradigms, how the subject of economics itself has witnessed reinterpretations etc.
The article is written in the context of the experiences of Mexico over the last 50 years.
2010 - A Year of Innovations in the Global Poverty Reduction Agenda
Timo Voipio and Gabriele Koehler
2010 has been a tumultuous year. It has been marked by major policy regressions with many countries reverting back to severe austerity programmes - or 'fiscal consolidation', thus increasing socio-economic divides. At the same time, however, as a notable countermovement, there have been seven policy innovations on the global poverty and social justice agenda.
   
Ten Theses on Neo-developmentalism
On May 24 and 25 of 2010, a group of economists sharing a Keynesian and structuralist development macroeconomics approach convened in São Paulo to discuss ten theses on New Developmentalism. This document is a summary of the suggestions that emerged from the two day long discussion.
The Cambridge Diagnosis on the State of Economic Science
Andrew Cornford
Reflections of the Observatoire de la Finance on the conference of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET),
'The Economic crisis and the Crisis in Economics', Cambridge, 8-11 April 2010.
   
The Global Economic Crisis: Challenges and opportunities for public administration
S.K. Rao

Following a discussion of the factors leading to the recent financial and economic turmoil, this article offers evidence that some countries that have relied more on the role of government and the public sector have managed to contain the crisis in a more successful way. There is, therefore, a need to revisit, redefine and bolster the roles of government and reposition the public sector.

Looking to the Future: Examining the dynamics of ALBA
Emine Tahsin

This paper examines whether and to what extent the experiences of ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America) succeed in putting up an ideological challenge against neoliberalism. The path
of the socialist Cuba and the Bolivarian revolution of Venezuela are the main driving forces of the ALBA project. As a result, socio-economic development on the basis of equity and complementarity has been realized under ALBA integration. ALBA has also
played a role in reducing the vulnerabilities of the Cuban economy.

   
Corporate and Cooperative Solutions for the Agrarian Crisis in Developing Countries
Sripad Motiram & Vamsi Vakulabharanam

This article discusses credit and marketing arrangements for small farmers in developing countries.
The authors draw on the mixed experience with agricultural cooperatives in developing countries to
present the design of a credit and marketing cooperative. The authors argue that in conjunction with
other state policies, this arrangement works better for small farmers than other alternatives, in particular
corporate ones.

Redistribution and Stability: Beyond the Keynesian / neo-liberal impasse
Harry Shutt
Answer to the current economic problems does not lie in a return to Keynesian policies of yesteryear. Rather a permanent solution lies in the fundamental shift in the goal of economic policymaking from growth maximisation to income distribution.
   
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Economics Associates 2012
 

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