Who Benefits from Mining in Zambia?
PERI researcher Léonce Ndikumana and co-authors Dale Mudenda and Bilen Gurara examine why Zambia’s vast endowment of mineral resources has not delivered higher living standards for the vast majority of Zambians. This is while the sector is mostly dominated by foreign corporations. The authors review the history, industrial organization, and management of Zambia’s mining sector, and explore the respective impacts of ownership structures, the fiscal regime, exposure to external shocks, and the sector’s lack of transformational orientation. The paper includes proposals for achieving significantly greater benefits from mining to the Zambian people.
State-Level Employment Effects of Biden’s Green Energy, Manufacturing, and Infrastructure Programs
PERI researchers Robert Pollin, Jeannette Wicks-Lim, and Shouvik Chakraborty estimate the employment impacts in four U.S. states—Colorado, Michigan, Ohio, and Oregon—of the major 2022 – 2023 Biden measures supporting clean energy, manufacturing, and infrastructure investments, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Bipartisan infrastructure Law (BIL), and the CHIPS and Science Act. For the four states, the study estimates job creation and job quality measures. It also shows the demographic profile of the workforce—the ethnic and gender composition and educational levels—for sectors that will experience major job growth.
The Growth of “Private” U.S. Financial Markets
Over the past decade, “private” financial markets, which face little oversight by regulators, have grown to the point where they dominate financial activity. PERI researcher Lenore Palladino and Harrison Karlewicz describe the segments of the private market, including private equity firms and asset managers. The private markets have approximately tripled in size in the last decade to $26 trillion in gross assets, compared to $23 trillion for the U.S. commercial banking industry. This development introduces new systemic risks to the economy at large and for the institutional shareholders participating in these markets.
Designing Food Buffer Stocks for Inflation Control
In “Towards a Post-neoliberal Stabilization Paradigm: Revisiting International Buffer Stocks in an Age of Overlapping Emergencies Based on the Case of Food,” PERI researcher Isabella Weber and Merle Schulken draw on Keynes, Kaldor, and others to develop an alternative to neoliberal inflation control policies focused on interest rate hikes and austerity. Weber and Schulken show how price volatility in essential commodities such as food can lead to sellers’ inflation. They propose a food buffer stock system as part of a gradualist transition to post-neoliberalism and as a tool for an agricultural green transition.
