{"title":"International regime uncertainty","authors":"Helen V Milner, Erik Voeten","doi":"10.1093/oxrep/grae007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxrep/grae007","url":null,"abstract":": Questions about the future of US supremacy, the global spread of liberal democracy, and liberal international economic institutions create what we call ‘international regime uncertainty’: doubts about the fundamental principles, rules, norms, and decision-making procedures that govern areas of international affairs. This includes both probabilistic assessments of the risk that prevailing principles and institutions cease to function but also fundamental uncertainty over what alternative institutional arrangements and governing principles may emerge. Irrespective of actual systemic change, international regime uncertainty can affect transnational economic and political activities by increasing structural policy uncertainty and the probability of bargaining failures. The political uproar over energy transition policies that seemingly violate core principles of the international trade regime illustrates these points.","PeriodicalId":48024,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Review of Economic Policy","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.8,"publicationDate":"2024-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141502255","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Classical realism and the challenge of global economic governance","authors":"Jonathan Kirshner","doi":"10.1093/oxrep/grae010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxrep/grae010","url":null,"abstract":"This paper considers the prospects for global economic governance from the perspective of classical realism. It explains why, from this perspective, the American-led liberal international order, is over—and is not coming back. Classical realism anticipates a US renunciation of the orchestration of global governance, one rooted principally in shifts in its purpose, rather than by changes to its relative capabilities. This transformation of American purpose is a consequence of its domestic politics—in particular, the rise in economic inequality, the emergence of plutocracy, and the dysfunctional political polarization stimulated by those trends—a predictable result of a tectonic shift in the culture of capitalism from one associated with the ‘compromise of embedded liberalism’ towards the exaltation of ‘shareholder value’. This yields pessimistic conclusions not only about American foreign policy, which is likely to be more short-sighted, mercurial, and transactionalist, but also regarding the prospects for global economic governance. Realism sees international cooperation as challenging to establish and maintain, given the consequences of anarchy. In the coming years, episodes of cooperation will surely emerge, but they will likely be ad-hoc, mini-lateral, and fragile. Orchestrating ambitious schemes of global economic governance is less likely when a predominant power has lost interest in such things.","PeriodicalId":48024,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Review of Economic Policy","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.8,"publicationDate":"2024-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141502378","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How to construct a new global order","authors":"Dani Rodrik, Stephen Walt","doi":"10.1093/oxrep/grae011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxrep/grae011","url":null,"abstract":": We advance principles for the construction of a stable and broadly beneficial world order that does not require significant commonality in interests and values among states. In particular, we propose a ‘meta-regime’ as a device for structuring a conversation around the relevant issues, and facilitating either agreement or accommodation. Participating in this meta-regime would impose few constraints on states, yet in favourable circumstances could facilitate significant cooperation. It could also encourage increased cooperation over time even among adversaries, as participation in the meta-regime builds trust. We apply these ideas to several issue areas, including US–China competition.","PeriodicalId":48024,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Review of Economic Policy","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.8,"publicationDate":"2024-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141502258","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The new world order and the Global South","authors":"Oliver Della Costa Stuenkel","doi":"10.1093/oxrep/grae008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxrep/grae008","url":null,"abstract":"The shift of power away from the West is often seen as a key element of the crisis of liberal international order. The reluctance by most non-Western powers to side with the West vis-à-vis Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has contributed to the notion that the emerging order will be shaped by a contested system of spheres of influence, geopolitical tensions, and a much smaller common denominator vis-à-vis the normative elements of global order. Yet views across the Global South vis-à-vis the liberal order are far more nuanced, and pointing to non-Western powers as a culprit for the crisis of global order would be simplistic. Indeed, many countries in the Global South tend to be less opposed to the values themselves that undergird liberal order but question the Western-centric ways in which the rules and norms are applied and the in-built hierarchies and inequalities of liberal order. The main challenge of existing structures of global governance thus does not seem to be non-Western countries’ rejection of the underlying rules, but the question of whether today’s system is capable of functioning in a genuinely multipolar order, where power and privilege are less concentrated than in the past. The recent ‘geopoliticization’ of the global economy and the emerging ‘tech war’ suggest this process of adaptation will be enormously difficult. At the same time, while specific subgroups are explicitly opposed to a rules-based order, there are few signs that the Global South—a concept of little analytical usefulness beyond denoting the non-West—would be interested or capable of articulating a genuinely novel or alternative approach sufficiently attractive to garner broad support.","PeriodicalId":48024,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Review of Economic Policy","volume":"73 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.8,"publicationDate":"2024-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141502257","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Economic multilateralism 80 years after Bretton Woods","authors":"Maurice Obstfeld","doi":"10.1093/oxrep/grae009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxrep/grae009","url":null,"abstract":"The global economic institutions that grew from the Bretton Woods conference of 1944 aimed to create a cooperative policy environment conducive to recovery, development, continuing prosperity, social stability, and democracy. Prominent in the minds of the architects were the macroeconomic and trade policy coordination failures of the 1930s, which accompanied a world depression and the march towards the Second World War. The assumption of ‘embedded liberalism’ underlying Bretton Woods gave way to a much more market-oriented system by the early 1990s, fuelling strong growth in several large emerging markets and a period of hyperglobalization—but also social tensions in advanced economies. The result has been a changed geopolitical balance in the world as well as a backlash against aspects of globalization in many richer countries, notably the main sponsor of post-war international cooperation, the United States. At the same time, global cooperation is threatened despite the emergence of a broader range of shared global threats requiring joint action. The rich industrial countries that dominate the existing multilateral institutions should recognize them as being instrumental for channelling superpower competition into positive-sum outcomes that can also attract broad-based international support. However, leveraging those institutions will require buy-in from middle- and low-income countries, as well as from domestic political constituencies in advanced economies. The future of multilateralism depends on reconciling these potentially conflicting imperatives.","PeriodicalId":48024,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Review of Economic Policy","volume":"3 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.8,"publicationDate":"2024-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141502379","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Innovations in the repayment structure of microcredit contracts","authors":"Giorgia Barboni","doi":"10.1093/oxrep/grae002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxrep/grae002","url":null,"abstract":"Microfinance contracts typically require a fixed repayment schedule that, while ensuring repayment discipline, may inhibit entrepreneurship and business growth. In this article, I review the recent developments in the literature studying innovations in the repayment structure of microcredit contracts. Introducing flexible repayment schedules improves business outcomes by allowing microcredit borrowers to increase investment and to respond to income fluctuations to a higher extent. Although financial innovations hold the promise to foster business growth, and evidence suggests that their demand appears concentrated among financially sophisticated borrowers, they are feared to increase credit risk and hence their adoption among microfinance institutions is very limited. I explore potential challenges lenders face in offering these innovations and outline pathways towards a profitable implementation of such contracts.","PeriodicalId":48024,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Review of Economic Policy","volume":"104 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.8,"publicationDate":"2024-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140172982","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Net zero electricity: the UK 2035 target","authors":"Dieter Helm","doi":"10.1093/oxrep/grad037","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxrep/grad037","url":null,"abstract":"The UK is, like its peers in the EU, just under 80% dependent on fossil fuels. This figure has come down just over 10% since the 1970s, a period when the UK had major energy-intensive industries, most of which are now gone. The government is committed to achieving net zero for the electricity sector by 2035 on the pathway to net zero for the whole economy by 2050.. The Labour opposition has set 2030 as its electricity target. Setting out the scale of this challenge, this paper demonstrates how implausible the 2035 target is. On present policies there is little prospect that the 2035 target will be met (and virtually none for the Labour 2030 target). This paper reviews the multiple current policies and the capacity objectives and explores what would have to happen to meet the target. It sets out some of the consequences of failure to deliver, and the expectation of that failure.","PeriodicalId":48024,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Review of Economic Policy","volume":"34 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.8,"publicationDate":"2023-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138528757","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Climate change, complexity, and policy design","authors":"Pontus Braunerhjelm, Cameron Hepburn","doi":"10.1093/oxrep/grad047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxrep/grad047","url":null,"abstract":"The challenges of combatting climate change are unprecedented and now very urgent. Current approaches are not working fast enough. This paper, and this journal issue, conceive of the challenge as one of non-marginal structural and institutional change. Several different conceptual frameworks and pluralist theories are considered, emanating from complexity theory, economics, natural sciences, political economy, and strategy. These are deployed to identify potential accelerators, including synergies between climate action and other key political issues, and beneficial non-linear dynamics such as shifts in consumer preferences and technology learning curves. The delays in action also mean that removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is now necessary, and even unconventional geoengineering approaches may need to be considered. A pluralist and practical approach to climate action, accounting for different institutional and social contexts across countries, is argued to be required to accelerate action.","PeriodicalId":48024,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Review of Economic Policy","volume":"21 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.8,"publicationDate":"2023-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138528763","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Double dividend? Transnational initiatives and governance innovation for climate change and biodiversity","authors":"Harriet Bulkeley, Michele Betsill, Anouk Fransen, Stacy VanDeveer","doi":"10.1093/oxrep/grad046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxrep/grad046","url":null,"abstract":"Growing recognition of the need to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss together is leading to shifts in the global environmental governance landscape such that these two traditionally separate domains are increasingly interlinked. This process is taking place not at the level of the international policy regimes but rather through the work of transnational governance initiatives (TGIs) that connect state and non-state actors and which form an increasingly formalized part of the hybrid regime complexes through which global environmental governance is conducted. Central to these dynamics are ‘nature-based solutions’, interventions designed to work with nature to achieve multiple sustainability goals. In this paper, we demonstrate the ways in which TGIs frame and implement nature-based solutions. We show how this is leading to an evolution in market and asset-based responses to addressing these twin challenges and consider the wider consequences for how we understand what effective responses to the interlinked problems of climate and biodiversity entail.","PeriodicalId":48024,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Review of Economic Policy","volume":"43 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.8,"publicationDate":"2023-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138528764","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Green bonds and carbon emissions","authors":"Caroline Flammer","doi":"10.1093/oxrep/grad040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxrep/grad040","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines the relationship between green bonds (that is, bonds whose proceeds are committed to financing green projects) and carbon emissions at the aggregate level. Using data for US states, I find that the issuance of $1,000 of green bonds per capita is associated with a subsequent decrease in state-level emissions by 0.9–1.4 per cent. I obtain similar magnitudes using cross-country data. These results are stronger for green bonds that are certified by independent third parties, suggesting that certification is an important governance mechanism in the green bond market.","PeriodicalId":48024,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Review of Economic Policy","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.8,"publicationDate":"2023-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138528790","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}