Search results

The popular uprising in Sri Lanka on July 9th, 2022, led to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fleeing the country. It represented a stunning culmination of a wave of protests during the recent past. The proximate cause of the uprising was the worst economic crisis that Sri Lanka had experienced since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The breakdown was long in the making since the island nation became the first country in South Asia to take the neoliberal turn in the late 1970s. The dramatic collapse was catalyzed by a sovereign debt crisis with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Nevertheless, like all great revolts, it has led to a counter revolution by the ruling class, including the reconfiguration of the old regime.

We examine the tremendous consequences of recent events, both in terms of Sri Lanka's long history of struggles involving working people and the global unravelling underway. We explore whether Sri Lanka is a harbinger of more global political economic changes to come. The process includes the possibility of systemic resistance to financialization in the scores of countries in the Global South experiencing tremendous debt distress. In this regard, we ask whether Sri Lanka's revolt could yet become a revolution. To frame the potential implications, we turn to a deeper interrogation of classic Marxist theories and concepts.

The purpose of this study is to examine the politics, political economy, and fallout of hawkish regulatory policy on prescription drugs in Nigeria. Hawkish regulatory policy on prescription drug in Nigeria, such as opioid analgesics, is a very complex and multifaceted one, which usually involves the interplay of many factors and parties.

Policy manuals, official government gazettes (legislations, regulations, Acts and decrees), academic literature and a direct ethnographic observation of events surrounding the regulation of prescription drugs were reviewed and engaged.

The results revealed that Nigerian and global political economy and politics interface to define the direction of the new restrictive opioid policy, with resultant friction between prohibition and consumption. The reviews showed that the overarching “get-tough” and “repressive” policy are not necessarily founded on empirical evidence of an increase in prescription drug sales or use, but more as a product of the interplay of both internal and external politics and the prevailing socioeconomic order.

Instead of borrowing extensively from or being influenced by repressive Western drug laws and perspectives, Nigerian policymakers on prescription opioids should take control of the process by drawing up a home-grown policy that is less intrusive and punitive in nature for better outcomes. A mental sea change is required to understand the intrigues of Western power in Nigeria’s politics and political economy to avoid the continuous symptomatic failure of drug policy.

The politics and economic influence of the United Nations, USA and Western powers, as well as the axiom of moral panic of prescription drugs scares within the Nigerian environment, are particularly significant in the making of the emerging hawkish policy on prescription drugs in Nigeria.

Nested within institutional theory and the political economy perspective, this study aims to examine Chinese outward foreign direct investments (OFDI)-supporting organizations and fostering mechanisms for its SMEs in Europe’s largest economy, Germany.

The authors conduct a multiple-case study to present rich insights from elite interviews with representatives of Chinese and German governmental organizations, intermediary parties and specialized OFDI consultants. In addition, the authors analyze secondary data such as presentations, websites, brochures, social media and recent Chinese OFDI policies for SMEs. The findings are triangulated by interviewing business owners and senior executives of seven Chinese SMEs that have invested in Germany.

Cooperating with Germany’s federal government, China’s ministries implemented an effective OFDI support network in Germany, which connects and benefits both economies. This includes Chinese governmental organizations, privately-held national champions, German–Chinese business associations and linked intermediary parties. These organizations support SMEs through four main mechanisms: networking and information, mutually beneficial knowledge transfer between innovation partners, lobbying for potential cooperation and an objective picture of Chinese OFDI and facilitating investment services.

This study advances OFDI theory and contributes to the growing discussion on the internationalization of Chinese SMEs by shedding light on China’s OFDI support organizations and mechanisms in the German market. The study also offers practical contributions. Understanding better how governments can spur internationalization is vital, as it determines the effectiveness of policymaking and fosters international mutual understanding, cultural exchange and firm growth and innovation (Ahlstrom, 2010), and hence ultimately contributes positively to society. Moreover, knowing the specific OFDI support organizations and measures China is currently adopting can serve as a helpful orientation for Chinese entrepreneurs who plan to invest in Germany.

Stock markets are highly sensitive to foreign and domestic events. Stock exchange markets react promptly to news and are known as an indicator of good and bad trading conditions. Terrorist attacks leave adverse effects on the economy and cause stock price volatility and, consequently, stock return volatility. Therefore, this paper aims to analyze the spatial effects of terrorism on stock market returns in the Middle East from 2008 to 2019.

This paper uses analytical research design and estimates spatial model. Before estimating the spatial model, the spillover effects were confirmed for the spatial autoregressive model using Moran’s diagnostic test for spatial dependence, Geary’s C test and Akaike statistic.

The results of this study on spatial panel data and based on spatial autoregressive estimator indicated that terrorism and associated neighborhood effects had a negative impact on stock returns in Middle East countries. Also, the corruption index and oil price negatively affected stock market return in these countries, while the democracy index had a positive effect on stock market returns. According to the results, to achieve a high and stable stock market return, it is recommended that high-level consultation is pursued with leaders of involved countries to reduce the devastating effects of terrorist activities, increase political and economic stability, attract stockholders to stock markets and spend corresponding incomes developing the infrastructures in this sector in countries of this region.

Most of the studies have investigated the impact of terrorism on the stock market returns at the national or provincial level. However, the effect of terrorism on the stock market index in the tense region of the Middle East, which is the center of terrorist attacks in the world, has not been dealt with by considering the spatial econometric effects. Thus, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is a first attempt to study the impact of terrorism on the stock market returns in Middle East countries using the spatial econometric approach.

This is a response to “Taming wicked problems”, a paper recently published in CPOIB in which modern slavery is framed as a wicked problem. The purpose of this study is to convey the author’s appraisal of its contribution to policymaking regarding modern slavery in global supply chains.

The author engages in a discursive review of “Taming wicked problems”, taking inspiration from its perceived strengths and weaknesses to expand on the problem of modern slavery as a challenge to international business (IB) researchers.

“Taming wicked problems” is welcomed as a provocative contribution to modern slavery research in IB, although it is perceived to give too little critical attention to the problem of modern slavery itself.

This is, by design, a subjective assessment of the treatment of modern slavery and policy from the perspective of an IB researcher who has previously studied the phenomenon without a wicked problem framing.

Modern slavery is a serious problem for IB scholars, as they have failed to extrapolate it from their analysis of international business strategy. This paper is intended to advance the disciplinary defence of vulnerable workers exploited to the ultimate benefit of MNEs.

IB must engage critically with international business strategies that heighten the risk of human rights violations. The persistence of modern slavery disadvantages all persons in employment.

This paper seeks to better define the offense implicit in modern slavery so to inform critical IB research into its causes and deterrence.

This paper assesses the environment of legitimacy by determining the role of institutional quality and policy uncertainty on the performance of five major South Asian stock markets (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal) using 21 years data from 2000 to 2020. The focus of this study is to approach the issue of the environment of legitimacy that leads to sustained market returns.

Panel cointegration tests of Kao and Pedroni are applied, and the Dynamic Panel Vector Autoregressive (PVAR) model is used to determine the estimates.

ADF P-Values of both Kao and Pedroni tests show that the panels are cointegrated; the statistical significance of the results of the Kao and Pedroni panel cointegration test confirms cointegration among the variables. After determining the most appropriate lag, the analysis is done using PVAR. The results indicate that institutional quality, policy uncertainty, and GDP positively affect stock market return. Meanwhile, government actions and inflation negatively affect stock market returns. On the other hand, stock market return positively affects institutional quality, government action, policy uncertainty, and GDP. While stock market return negatively affects inflation.

The sample is taken only from a limited number of South Asian countries, and the period is also limited to 21 years.

Based on our research findings, we have identified several policy implications recommended to enhance and sustain the performance of stock markets.

This paper uses a unique analytical tool, which gives a better insight into the problem. The value of this work lies in its findings, which also have practical implications and theoretical significance.

This chapter traces the origin of racism and reviews the historical and contemporary debates around race and racialisation in western thought. There are persistent disagreements surrounding the origin and nature of racism. Because of the evolution of racist ideas, behaviours and institutional practices and policies, there are various views about the meaning and analytical application of racism. This chapter explores how ideas of race – understood as innate and immutable human differences that can be classified and ranked hierarchically based on race – has emerged in western history and evolved over time. It examines how this has influenced social and political practices and associated policies across the evolution of modernity. The chapter specifically discusses the Atlantic slave trade and how it shaped the historical development of race and racism within the context of colonialism. It concludes with a discussion and critical review of some of the racist systems and policies which have been enforced across different multiracial countries.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a gender-sensitive analysis of economic agency in Islamic economic philosophy.

A critical review of classical ethics literature and the concept of khilafah is undertaken and discussed in conjunction with the current understanding of homo Islamicus.

Building on the principles of khilafah, the concept of homo Islamicus is a pious stand-in for the flawed homo economicus. Among its flaws is the complete absence of a discussion of women as economic agents. To remedy this the discipline must acknowledge explicitly the denial of women and gender from the discussion of moral agency and include gender as a category of analysis for economic agency. This is only possible by: (1) introducing a non-patriarchal reading of khilafah as the model of agency and (2) by operationalising taqwa as the cardinal virtue of the economic agent instead of neoliberal rationality.

If Islamic economic philosophy is to contend as an alternative mode of economics, it must consider gender and class dimensions in its micro-foundation discussion, economic agency is one of them.

This study reveals the patriarchal readings that are part of the foundation of the concept of the economic agent in Islamic economics, problematising it and providing a gender-sensitive concept of economic agency.