Globalisation and (post)colonialism

In this project, I study how economic development is shaped by cross-country knowledge flows via trade, foreign direct investment (FDI), and other channels. Using novel micro data for several Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, I measure the quantitative importance of three channels: technical knowledge embodied in imported machinery, technical and organizational knowledge embodied in expatriate managers, and disembodied knowledge transfers taking place within multinational firms. I then analyze what impact foreign knowledge has on the firms and the workers of the host economy, and what are its implications for aggregate productivity and income inequality. The project relies on several existing databases for Hungary and Romania, which will be complemented with newly purchased, collected and compiled data. The outcome of the project will be seven research studies and a collection of firm-level data sets covering CEE countries, including a large cross-country firm survey on the local supplier linkages of multinational companies. My proposed project improves upon the state of the art in four ways. First, as a comprehensive study using novel micro data, it uncovers new facts about the relative importance of the channels of knowledge flows. Second, it improves the identification of causal effects relative to existing studies by exploiting the detailed micro data. Third, it uses the micro estimates to quantify the aggregate impact of foreign knowledge on the economy. Fourth, it discusses how foreign knowledge affects different firms and workers differently, and, more specifically, how it may contribute to income inequality. More broadly, the research findings help evaluate the relative efficacy of trade, FDI, and immigration policies in promoting economic growth and can inform theories about the channels and barriers of productivity convergence.

NOPOOR aims to build new knowledge on the nature and extent of poverty in developing countries to provide policymakers with a broader understanding of poverty. We believe that poverty cannot be tackled without a comprehensive approach. We know that poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon, but NOPOOR will explore new and uncharted dimensions. It is not just a picture of poverty, but also an understanding of poverty entry and exit processes that is needed for achieving MDGs and for making more effective the policies. Nineteen experienced partners are involved in the project, which includes ten teams from developing and emerging countries in three regions (Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia). These countries have implemented different poverty reduction policies, and this will form the basis for the comparative and case studies approach taken. The project will identify key mechanisms that explain the persistence and exacerbation of poverty, which have been altered by the insertion of developing countries into the globalization process, including trade, aid, FDI and migration, and by the growing interdependence of economies. Causes may differ between countries. This calls for policies and actions to be tailored to each poor country’s characteristics, including their access to resources, political regime, quality of institutions and governance. These points are developed by various approaches, including political economics, and different methods: surveys, econometric studies and case studies. NOPOOR will put significant resources into generating new knowledge from original surveys, database work and qualitative work. .It will also look forward to future scenarios. Conclusions will be oriented to policy recommendations. Beyond this contribution to scientific knowledge, NOPOOR will pursue an active policy of dissemination and capacity building, including training of young Southern researchers and the implementation of a permanent network with National Institutes of Statistics (NIS). The project is policy-oriented. NOPOOR will accompany the EU's agenda for its policy against poverty by consultations, guidance notes, and policy briefs on issues relating to the program. The review of MDG will constitute an important point of focus in the future years.

NOPOOR aims to build new knowledge on the nature and extent of poverty in developing countries to provide policymakers with a broader understanding of poverty. We believe that poverty cannot be tackled without a comprehensive approach. We know that poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon, but NOPOOR will explore new and uncharted dimensions. It is not just a picture of poverty, but also an understanding of poverty entry and exit processes that is needed for achieving MDGs and for making more effective the policies. Nineteen experienced partners are involved in the project, which includes ten teams from developing and emerging countries in three regions (Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia). These countries have implemented different poverty reduction policies, and this will form the basis for the comparative and case studies approach taken. The project will identify key mechanisms that explain the persistence and exacerbation of poverty, which have been altered by the insertion of developing countries into the globalization process, including trade, aid, FDI and migration, and by the growing interdependence of economies. Causes may differ between countries. This calls for policies and actions to be tailored to each poor country’s characteristics, including their access to resources, political regime, quality of institutions and governance. These points are developed by various approaches, including political economics, and different methods: surveys, econometric studies and case studies. NOPOOR will put significant resources into generating new knowledge from original surveys, database work and qualitative work. .It will also look forward to future scenarios. Conclusions will be oriented to policy recommendations. Beyond this contribution to scientific knowledge, NOPOOR will pursue an active policy of dissemination and capacity building, including training of young Southern researchers and the implementation of a permanent network with National Institutes of Statistics (NIS). The project is policy-oriented. NOPOOR will accompany the EU's agenda for its policy against poverty by consultations, guidance notes, and policy briefs on issues relating to the program. The review of MDG will constitute an important point of focus in the future years.

This project studies the challenges that policy makers face in a world where globalization is proceeding at high speed and knowledge creation is the key to prosperity. It consists of two main parts: one focuses on optimal growth policies, the other on policy externalities induced by market integration. The first part builds on the premise that fostering innovation requires appropriate regulations on product market competition and on Intellectual Property Rights. The following questions will be addressed. What are the optimal competition and IPR policies when economic growth requires both innovation and technology diffusion? Are competition and IPR policies complements or substitutes? How does the optimal policy mix change with economic development? How do optimal contractual relationships evolve with development? What are the misallocations created by market power when sectors and firms are heterogeneous in technology and in the exposure to foreign competition? Are trade liberalization and competition policy complements or substitutes? The second part studies the consequences of and remedies to the growing mismatch between economic and political borders created by globalization. The following questions will be addressed: Why does the size of governments increase with globalization? Does higher international factor mobility lead to a race to the bottom in taxation? What is the effect of trade openness on pollution and environmental regulations? Can globalization induce governments to adopt more stringent environmental regulations? Does market integration call for a reorganization of the world political structure? Can the tendency to reinforce supra-national entities and the process of political fragmentation within states be complementary reactions to globalization?

The research project has as general objective to provide further insights to the welfare comparation between trade in goods and migration. A complementary objective is to provide an adequate framework for the discussion of migration policies. There are three issues related to migration flows that are important from a practical point of view and are the object of this research project: The effects of migrants on the cost of providing public goods, the effects of migrants on welfare of local labour force, and the effects of migrants on housing markets. The project aims to build general enough models to analyze the welfare consequences of free mobility of persons within countries when there are public goods that can be congested, to design policies to regulate international migration, and to propose realistic policies to compensate deserving losers from migration flows (some of them based on housing markets). More specifically, the project plans to construct a model with local public goods and congestion levels endogenously determined and, for such a model, define and explore the welfare characteristics of the competitive equilibrium for different forms of financing public goods and find conditions for obtaining gains from migration. On the other hand, the project wants to analyze non linear second best redistributive policies that make Pareto gains from migration attainable. Finally, the project aims to introduce explicitly housing markets in a General Equilibrium model and analyze how housing price equilibrium vary when migration is freed, and how tax policies based on housing market prices can act a regulatory migration device and as a compensation device of possible losers with migration.

Swedish retirees are part of a growing stream of Northern Europeans who migrate to Southern Europe to retire in the sun. Exploring the relations between streams of migrants who meet in Spain, and their intermediaries, this project explores issues of mobility and the globalization of care/service, of crucial importance to welfare states and the future of work, elderly care and retirement conditions in Ageing Europe.

In Swedish public discourse, retirees born in the 1940s are considered a growing cohort of relatively wealthy consumers, with more cosmopolitan preferences and habits, and different demands compared to previous generations. Swedish retirees are part of a growing stream of Northern Europeans who migrate to Southern Europe to retire in the sun. Exploring the relations between streams of migrants who meet in Spain, and their intermediaries, this project explores issues of mobility and the globalization of care/service, of crucial importance to welfare states and the future of work, elderly care and retirement conditions in Ageing Europe.

The central research question this project will pose is: how did mobility in the great age of travel and discovery (c.1550–1700) shape English perceptions of human identity based on cultural identification and difference? The role of those marked by transcultural mobility was central to this period. Our current world is all too familiar with the concepts that surfaced or evolved as a result: ‘foreigners’, ‘strangers’, ‘aliens’, ‘converts’, ‘exiles’, or even ‘translators’, ‘ambassadors’ and ‘go-betweens’. There is an urgent need to consolidate our fragmented understanding of this crucial issue, which continues to shape current debates. TIDE offers a direct and timely response to this challenge, combining established methodologies with a set of ambitious and innovative approaches. By bringing together multiple discourses that tackled the fraught question of human identity in this era, ranging across literature, trade, diplomacy, governance, law, religion and ethnography, it will open a new perspective on cross-cultural encounters. It will put pressure on our understanding of cultural difference, transculturality and identity, and generate a new understanding of key terms, concepts, and debates. It will produce new knowledge about the unique role played by literature, and break fresh ground through the combination of academic research with new writing. Its returns would be significant: a fundamental improvement to our current understanding of cultural differentiation and assimilation, as well as a lasting and creative insight into their consequences.

Das Forschungsprojekt "Von der Flüchtlingshilfe zur Fluchthilfe" geht aus von der Problematik des Asylparadoxes und dem Umgang zivilgesellschaftlicher Akteure mit seinen Konsequenzen: Zwar gelten in Deutschland das Grundrecht auf Asyl und die völkerrechtlichen Prinzipien des Flüchtlingsschutzes und viele Staaten gewährleisten Flüchtlingsrechte. Um diese zu erlangen, müssen die meisten Schutzsuchenden allerdings mangels legaler Einreisemöglichkeiten illegal Grenzen überqueren und sich in riskante Situationen begeben. Insbesondere durch die sich in den Jahren 2015 und 2016 zuspitzende Lage entwickeln sich in Deutschland vermehrt gesellschaftliche Auseinandersetzungen um den Zugang zu Flüchtlingsschutz. Das Forschungsprojekt analysiert diese Auseinandersetzungen mit Fokus auf das Engagement zivilgesellschaftlicher Initiativen für die sichere Einreise von Flüchtenden. Daher geht das Projekt der Forschungsfrage nach, welche Handlungsansätze und Strategien zivilgesellschaftliche Initiativen im Kontext von Migrations- und Fluchtregimen entwickeln, um sich angesichts beschränkter Einreisewege und humanitärer Notlagen für einen Zugang zum Schutz für Geflüchtete einzusetzen und Fluchthilfe zu leisten.

... Eine rechtsethnologische Untersuchung des Aufeinandertreffens von migrantischen Lebensentwürfen und rechtlicher Systembildung in verwaltungsgerichtlichen Streitfällen "Hypothese ist, dass zwischen Migranten und staatlichen Akteuren eine Interaktionssituation entsteht, von der auch jenseits des Gesetzgebungsprozesses Impulse für eine Rechtsentwicklung ausgehen. Zentrale Fragen sind, wie Migranten als Akteure die Möglichkeiten verwaltungsgerichtlichen Rechtsschutzes erleben, wie Rechtsanwender in ihrem Arbeitsalltag Migrationsdynamiken und -folgen bearbeiten und welche Auswirkungen diese soziale Praxis auf das Verwaltungsrecht und die Rechtsstaatsvorstellungen der beteiligten Akteure hat. Dr. Vetters geht von der Hypothese aus, dass zwischen Migranten und staatlichen Akteuren eine Interaktionssituation entsteht, von der in der Rechtswirklichkeit auch jenseits des Gesetzgebungsprozesses intendierte und unintendierte Impulse für eine Rechtsentwicklung und eine Transformation von Rechtsstaatsvorstellungen ausgehen. In einer empirischen Untersuchung wird diese Interaktionsdynamik einschließlich der aus ihr resultierenden Prozesse der Rechtsfortbildung und -transformation systematisch erfasst und im Hinblick auf die Ausgestaltung von Rechtsstaatlichkeit unter Bedingungen soziokultureller Pluralisierung in Deutschland eingeordnet. Zunächst wird hierfür eine Datengrundlage in Form einer Falldatenbank mit mindestens 200 Fällen geschaffen, die bislang fehlt, da insbesondere die Justizstatistik keine Daten über den Migrationshintergrund enthält. Dazu werden zunächst explorative Interviews mit Migranten geführt, um so Rechtsgebiete zu identifizieren, die – neben den klassischen Gebieten wie dem Ausländer- und Asylrecht – für die migrantische Biographie von besonderer Relevanz sind bzw. in denen der Migrationshintergrund eine Rolle spielt. Für diese Referenzgebiete sollen dann weitere Daten durch teilnehmende Beobachtung, Interviews und Analyse schriftlicher Quellen in den Akteursfeldern „Migranten“, „Anwalt/Rechtsberatungsorganisation“, „Verwaltungsgericht“ und „Behörden“ erhoben werden. Aus dieser Falldatenbank sollen dann solche Fälle ausgewählt werden, in denen sich unterschiedliche Aspekte der Rechtsentwicklung und Transformationen von Rechtsstaatsvorstellungen andeuten. Auf dieser Grundlage ist geplant, 12 bis 16 detaillierte Einzelfallstudien zu bilden, anhand derer unterschiedliche Aspekte der Rechtsentwicklung und Transformation von Rechtsstaatsvorstellungen dokumentiert und analysiert werden können. Anhand verschiedener Teilfragen werden dabei die beiden großen Teilbereiche untersucht, welche Transformationen der Ordnungsidee der Rechtsstaatlichkeit in der Rechtswirklichkeit als Ergebnis von Interaktionen zwischen den am verwaltungsgerichtlichen Verfahren beteiligten Akteuren zu beobachten sind und inwiefern transformierte Rechtsstaatsvorstellungen der Akteure auf die Rechtsanwendung und -entwicklung zurückwirken."

In times of austerity, the politics of the welfare state involve tough choices and even trade-offs: whose risks should benefit from social solidarity in a context of shrinking resources? Should the welfare state prioritize the needs of the elderly or those of the young? Those of people in the workforce or outside of the workforce? Of natives or of immigrants? How countries answer these key questions depends on the welfare state priorities of citizens, political elites and economic elites. However, we know still very little about these priorities and their determinants, and we know even less about the mechanisms that foster support for social solidarity – i.e. support for inclusive social security beyond self-interest. This project wants to make use of recent methodological advances to investigate precisely these priorities and mechanisms. The project will have two phases: the goal of the first phase is to identify the most salient distributive conflicts and welfare trade-offs in eight European countries. It includes an original data collection on social policy priorities among citizens, politicians, employers and trade unions (based on conjoint survey and interviews), as well as content analysis of the actual welfare politics in these countries. The second phase builds on the findings of the first phase, but its objective is to go beyond conflict towards coalitions. It will again combine conjoint surveys and content analysis to identify the factors that foster support for social policies among those actors who are unlikely to benefit directly from these policies. The project will investigate the relative importance of three factors: compensation, framing and mediation. The project breaks new theoretical and methodological ground in comparative welfare state research. It conceptualizes and studies both the trade-offs and the potentials for coalitions, which will determine the fate of the European welfare state in the 21st century.

This proposal aims to measure, document, and understand the historical origins of contemporary African inequality that has a strong ethnic component. The focus is on the interplay of the nation and the ethnicity that co-evolve, sometimes violently and sometimes peacefully across the continent. The proposal consists of four closely related projects. The first project develops a large database portraying the evolution of inequality and intergenerational mobility in education covering the full post-independence period using census data from many countries. Decomposing inequality and mobility in education into a between-ethnicity and a within-ethnicity component, it provides an autopsy of the cross-country, cross-region, and dynamic patterns. Then it examines the mechanisms linking inequality with well-being, employing a plethora of geo-referenced micro data. The second project extends widely-used anthropological maps and cross-cultural data on pre-colonial Africa to examine the legacy of deeply-rooted ethnic-specific institutional and economic traits on development. The project aims exploring the key mechanisms and examining exactly which aspects of statehood (courts, land rights, bureaucracy) matter for development. The third project assesses the impact of colonial “divide-and-rule” strategies and ethnic-based favouritism/discrimination on contemporary African political economy. To this end it compiles an original database of ethnic power relations during colonization and then examines whether ethnic political power and inequality post-independence is related to the differential treatment of ethnicities from the colonial administration. The fourth project assesses the long-run development impact of colonial concessions to private corporations and their main features (e.g., forced labour, violence, method of extraction), compiling a pan-African dataset covering all concessions and applying state-of-the-art econometric techniques to establish causal relationships.